The office of new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre sent a text message to party members in the Richmond-Arthabaska riding urging them to call the constituency office and demand the resignation of Alain Rayes, the MP slammed Wednesday. the door of the political training the day before.
“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. […] Call his office now and tell him to resign from his job as an MP, ”says the message, of which The Canadian Press was able to consult a copy and which specifies the telephone number to call.
“I fell out of my chair,” said Mr. Rayes in an interview, who himself received the text message, as did his children, his wife, his parents and friends.
Since noon Wednesday, the three employees in his office “paid with taxpayers’ money” have been inundated with calls, preventing them from helping citizens with their passport, immigration, tax and pensions, he said.
According to Mr. Rayes, this “smear operation” paid for by funds contributed by activists is simply intended to “intimidate” his colleagues by implying: “this is what happens if you decide to leave the Conservative Party”.
Alain Rayes, who supported Jean Charest in the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, announced on Tuesday that he will now sit as an independent in the House of Commons since he “no longer finds himself within my own political formation.
Asked about this departure during a press briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Poilievre criticized Alain Rayes for having “decided not to fight Mr. Trudeau’s inflation”, unlike his team. Mr. Poilievre even boasted that “the citizens” of the riding of Richmond-Arthabaska voted for him during the party leadership race.
MP, who incidentally has “no intention” of resigning, says Poilievre is making “an intellectual shortcut” as “about 300” Conservative members of the constituency voted for the new leader . And “do we agree” that they are not representative of his voters.
On this subject, Mr. Rayes said that when he goes out on the street he receives “nothing but congratulations” for his decision. “I’m buried in requests,” he said. We are not talking in hundreds, we are talking in thousands of messages that I have received since yesterday from across the country, from Quebec, then from my riding. »
The office of Pierre Poilievre and his Quebec lieutenant Pierre-Paul Hus had not responded to a request for comment from The Canadian Press at the time of publication.