The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) may have found the antidote to appease its federalist activists, worried after the appearance on the scene of Bernard Drainville and Caroline St-Hilaire, two candidates with a clearly sovereignist past. François Legault must announce today the candidacy of Pascale Déry, an unconditional federalist, in the riding of Repentigny.
Posted at 12:00 a.m.
Mme Déry, until recently spokesperson for Air Canada, had been a candidate for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the 2015 general election. She had initially failed to obtain the Conservative nomination in Mount Royal, where she lived, defeated by Robert Libman, former member of the Equality Party in the National Assembly, then member of the executive committee of the City of Montreal until 2005.
Mme Déry was then parachuted as a Conservative candidate in Drummond, where she finished fourth. Then, in early 2017, she served as a debate moderator for the candidates for the succession of Stephen Harper.
Before making the leap with the Conservatives, Mme Déry had been, for fifteen years, a journalist at TVA, then a newscaster at LCN. We find her later as head of communications for the Montreal Economic Institute (IEDM). During her visit, she spoke out against business subsidies, “which only displace jobs that would have been created anyway”.
For her, the government should eliminate “ineffective and perverse” subsidies and channel the money saved into tax cuts for all businesses. She had also taken a stand against the Quebec model of early childhood centers (CPE), unnecessarily expensive compared to private or family daycares, she wrote in the publications of the MEI.
In Repentigny, Mr.me Déry hardly runs any risks. The CAQ had won the riding in 2018 with Lise Lavallée, who will announce her decision not to seek a new mandate.
Christine Fréchette in place of Danielle McCann
Another safe riding will go to a candidate who enjoys a certain notoriety on the municipal scene. Christine Fréchette will replace Danielle McCann to wear the colors of the CAQ in Sanguinet. Mme McCann was chosen at the last minute in the 2018 election – François Legault had to find a credible healthy candidate, after Gertrude Bourdon failed him to make the leap with the Liberals.
At the start of the pandemic, Mr.me McCann had been moved to Higher Education and replaced in Health by Christian Dubé. Another minister thinks about her future: Nadine Girault has not made her decision for the next election campaign. Elected in Bertrand, Minister of International Relations, she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019. A woman with an economic profile is expected for this constituency, it seems.
Christine Fréchette had been CEO of the East Montreal Chamber of Commerce for four years, until May 2021. She then resigned because she was considering supporting Denis Coderre in his campaign against Valérie Plante for mayor of Montreal. Mme Fréchette would have become the president of the executive, but she had finally decided not to make the leap into municipal politics.
In the Marois government, she had been Jean-François Lisée’s press secretary, a position she abandoned by letting it be known publicly that she could not endorse the charter of values sponsored by Minister Bernard Drainville.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The mayor of the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Jonathan Lapierre, during a press conference with Minister Geneviève Guilbault, in Cap-aux-Meules, in 2018
Another known candidate will announce himself for the CAQ in the coming weeks. Mayor of the Magdalen Islands, Jonathan Lapierre will run against PQ MP Joël Arseneau. It’s a “fight to the end” for these two politicians; Lapierre had beaten Arseneau as mayor of the Islands in 2013. He is vice-president of the Quebec Federation of Municipalities and a member of the board of directors of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Another departure, the deputy of Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, Marc Picard, will announce that he will not seek another mandate. He was elected in 2003 for the Democratic Action of Quebec, with Mario Dumont. Strategically, the CAQ intended to wait as long as possible to make this announcement; this is potentially fertile territory for the Conservative Party. The CAQ strategists did not want to give Éric Duhaime time to identify a candidate.