He had wanted to make the jump for years. It’s now done. Jean Charest is officially a candidate for the leadership of the federal Conservative Party. The former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and former Quebec Premier intends to boast of his experience on these two political scenes to present himself as a unifier who would know how to win a general election. But well aware that not all Conservatives will see it that way, Mr. Charest began his tour in Calgary to try to reassure them.
The website has been launched. The Twitter account, created. The slogan was also unveiled: “Built to win”. Jean Charest’s selling point is clear.
“Since its founding, the Conservative Party has always been a grand coalition. Each time his vital forces were united, he formed the government and achieved great things for Canada, “said the 63-year-old man in a press release, who is jumping back into the political arena with both feet. Not only does Jean Charest say he wants to unite all the Conservatives under the same tent, but he also pleads to rally Canadians when national unity “is undermined by multiple divisions”.
His supporters say the same thing. The former minister and lieutenant for Quebec Christian Paradis adds his voice to theirs. In a written statement, Mr. Paradis notes that his former boss Stephen Harper was the first “to unify [le] party and govern Canada”. Mr. Charest is, in his opinion, “a seasoned and unifying politician”, who “is the perfect person to govern Canada in this period of instability”. Former Senator André Pratte also joined his team as an advisor.
The campaign was launched through media interviews and a short video on its brand new Twitter account. A sign of the challenge that awaits him if he wants to convince enough Conservative members to support him, Mr. Charest still had less than 7,000 subscribers at the start of the evening. His main rival, Pierre Poilievre, joined more than 324,000 on Twitter.
In defense of conservative values
After leaving the Progressive Conservative Party in 1998 to join the Liberal Party of Quebec and stand up to the Parti Québécois, Mr. Charest insists today that he has always defended “conservative values”: fiscal conservatism, the market economy, economic policies to help families and federalism that respects provincial jurisdictions.
His first campaign stop in Alberta aims to reassure the Conservatives who could blame him for having created the Quebec carbon exchange or for having led a province that has rejected energy projects. Mr. Charest was to reach out to them in the evening, assure them that he understood their feeling of alienation and that he too would make room for them in the party. He was also expected to speak to them about national unity and conservative values, according to a source from his team who announced the candidate’s intentions since he was to speak late in the evening after these lines were written. .
The rally was only expected to bring together about 150 people at a Calgary brewery. Camp Charest claimed that the hall did not accommodate a greater number of guests.
Jean Charest will have to make himself known to the Conservatives and recruit a very large number of members if he wants to be elected leader on September 10. MP Pierre Poilievre – who launched his campaign a month ago – garnered 41% support from Conservative voters and Jean Charest, 10%, according to a Léger poll conducted this weekend before he confirmed his candidacy . Another 33% of respondents, however, were undecided.
Jean Charest intends to insist on the fact that he can win not only the chiefdom, but also a general election, unlike his rivals.
Pierre Poilievre’s camp, however, repeated its attacks on him, calling him a “liberal” who created a carbon tax. “It’s a bit cynical that he dresses in blue to try to say he’s a Conservative,” said the president of the Poilievre campaign in Quebec, Senator Claude Carignan.
Mr. Charest said in his interviews Thursday that he had also always been in favor of pipeline projects in the country. Mr. Carignan drew a parallel with former leader Erin O’Toole, who was sacked by part of his caucus who accused him of having changed position too often to get elected to the leadership and then by the Canadian electorate.
Pipelines, but no replicas
Before taking the plane to Calgary, Jean Charest posed as a defender of the energy industry in the West, notably telling the TVA network that he had “always been favorable to pipeline projects”. And the context of the war in Ukraine makes Canadian production all the more relevant, he argued, to ending Europe’s dependence on regimes like Russia’s. An argument brandished by several conservatives, in particular Pierre Poilievre.
But Mr. Charest assures that the approval of new projects would not be “all-out”, since he would nevertheless require “environmental and social acceptability” – which had notably slowed down the Energy East project.
However, he did not specify where these pipelines could cross Quebec. He also did not reveal what he would do with the federal carbon tax put in place by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. Pierre Poilievre has already decided that he would abolish it. The Conservatives have always opposed it (except in the last election, when Erin O’Toole proposed a different carbon pricing model that was immediately rejected by the caucus once he was sacked).
Mr. Charest had also pleaded Globe and Mail, last week that in order to bring together a broad coalition of conservatives, he would not campaign against social conservatives — who oppose abortion, medical assistance in dying and who define marriage as the union between a man and a woman. He did not detail, there again, how this outstretched hand would translate to these thousands of very influential conservatives during leadership races.
Although hostilities against him have already been well underway, Jean Charest’s camp says he will not retaliate. “I’m going to take the blame as the compliment it represents, which is that they spend their time and energy criticizing me. That says more about them than it does about me,” the aspiring chef quipped at the National Post.
After his time in Alberta, Jean Charest will go to Vancouver this Friday before returning to Quebec.