(OTTAWA) Close aides to new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre are urging party members to flood MP Alain Rayes’ constituency office with calls to force him to resign, less than 24 hours after Rayes was left the party.
Updated yesterday at 5:01 p.m.
The campaign to party members in the riding of Richmond-Arthabaska took the form of a text message sent at noon on Wednesday.
“ALERT: Your MP Alain Rayes has just left the Conservative Party. He decided not to fight Trudeau inflation with the united team of Pierre Poilievre. Alain, call his office now and tell him to step down as MP,” reads the text, which includes the phone number for Mr. Rayes’ constituency office.
“It’s disgusting,” exclaimed Alain Rayes on the phone, joined by The Press.
“It’s just amazing. I can not believe it. Pierre Poilievre has just confirmed once again that I made the right decision by leaving the party. I don’t want politics like that anymore. I just can’t believe what they are doing. I invite my colleagues from Quebec to stand up and denounce this type of thing, ”said Mr. Rayes, who himself received the text message.
Employees in Mr. Rayes’ office received numerous calls, and almost everyone supported the independent MP, his office said.
“They take money from party members to launch such a campaign and bury my voicemail. They want to prevent my employees from doing their job to support the citizens of my constituency,” Mr. Rayes added.
Pierre Poilievre practices a scorched earth policy. It’s clear.
Alain Rayes, Independent MNA for Richmond-Arthabaska
“The next step that they will use as a tactic, will it be to tell the party members to come and demonstrate in front of my office or in front of my house? Where is this going to stop? “, he said again.
At the time of this writing, The Press could not get comments from Pierre Poilievre’s new political lieutenant in Quebec, Pierre Paul-Hus, or from the Conservative leader’s office. In the evening, the party wrote a message on Twitter to apologize to the members of the Richmond-Arthabaska riding.
The other Conservative members from Quebec did not respond to calls from The Press. The party has, at the end of the evening
On Radio-Canada, on the show Noon Info hosted by Alec Castonguay, Mr. Paul-Hus, however, said that the leadership race had caused “sparks”. He refrained from criticizing the maneuver.
PHOTO PASCAL RATTHÉ, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVES
Pierre Paul-Hus, Quebec political lieutenant for the Federal Conservative Party, in September 2021
Without compromise
On Tuesday, Mr. Rayes slammed the door of the Conservative Party and announced that he would sit as an independent MP for Richmond-Arthabaska in the House of Commons after being elected under the Conservative banner for the first time in 2015.
I no longer find myself within my own political formation, in which I have invested myself for seven years now.
Alain Rayes, in a video addressed to his constituents and published on social networks
“There are issues, there are values, there are convictions on which for me I cannot compromise,” added Mr. Rayes, who had set his sights on former Quebec Premier Jean Charest during the leadership race.
Among these issues, he noted respect for law and order, the protection of Canadian institutions, the fight against climate change and the sound management of public finances, among other things.
Poilievre also attacks the media in a fundraising appeal
In a message to party members, Mr. Poilievre also fired red balls at the media after a verbal altercation between him and a Global News reporter, David Akin, which occurred Tuesday on Parliament Hill, when he was preparing react to the measures to help families announced by the Trudeau government in the face of the rising cost of living.
“It’s not just the Liberals who have all the benefits and resources of the federal government at their disposal. It’s the media, which isn’t even interested in pretending to be neutral anymore. They want us to lose,” he said in his message.
“We cannot rely on the media to deliver our messages to Canadians. We must circumvent them and their biased coverage. We have to do it directly with advertisements, letters, phone calls and by knocking on millions of doors. To do all of this, we need your help. »