(Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce and Lac-Beauport) At the bar La Différence, it’s a Wednesday night not very different.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
There is Denis, who is in town for 21 days, after which he will return to Fermont to work at the iron mine for 21 days. There is Chris, an engineer from Verdun who comes to visit a factory. And there’s the bartender, Sandra Jacques, who serves them big Molsons.
“What about you? Chris asks me.
‘I’m looking for people who vote Conservative. »
Denis does not vote, does not want “to know anything about that”. Chris explains to me that his family has lived in Verdun for five generations. “I’m an Anglo from Verdun, I vote liberal,” he told me with a fatalistic smile.
At the back of the bar, in front of a video poker, a girl shouts: “I vote for Duhaime! »
Megan just put $400 in the machine, which won’t give away. “But I’ve only been here twice in two months. »
“With Duhaime, we will have a better life. Legault, he had no business closing everything, ”tells me the 23-year-old bartender, who comes to play in this bar, because she is not allowed to play in hers. “We see the machines that have not given…”
Her boyfriend listens to Radio X, “it’s more him who knows that”, but she is convinced.
She ends up telling me that her grandfather died during confinement. She has tears in her eyes. “He died on his own, we couldn’t see him…”
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Our columnist stopped at the bar La Différence, in Sainte-Marie, to chat with voters in Beauce.
At the bar, Sandra, 29, does not know who she is going to vote for, but there is no question of voting Legault. Never.
“I voted for him, it’s true that he helped families, it costs me less daycare. She has four young children.
“But when he shut everything down, it killed me. I was making a clear $1000 a week. I lived by it. I remember, we had the party for three days, I said to myself: No big deal, the big week is coming. At midnight, everything closed.
“It will come back, right?
“It will never be the same again. There are fewer people. Less money. Everything went down. Apart from the prices!
— Yes, but it’s not Legault’s fault, the pandemic…
— No, but what I didn’t take was the abuse of power. We lost our social life. It separated the families. He made curfews, you never knew why. You will try to do kindergarten at home with four children. It was hell. I had severe anxiety. »
Sainte-Marie is a small industrial town of 15,000 people, the largest in Beauce-Nord, one of the three ridings (along with Beauce-Sud and Chauveau) where the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) has the best chance of winning. take away, if we rely on poll aggregators — see the Qc125 site.
We are here in an industrial center surrounded by agricultural areas, as suggested by these scents mixed with recently spread manure and Vachon cakes, still produced in their place of origin for 100 years. We are also in the distant suburbs of Quebec, only 40 km from the highway.
As everywhere, there is a shortage of manpower. The farms, but also the many factories, hire Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans.
Maria Razo, a Mexican who fell in love with a Beauceron, opened a Mexican restaurant in Sainte-Marie. She was giving away free tequila this week for Mexico’s National Day. But when she opened in this unknown village two years ago, she had no idea that Latino workers would fill it…
On several lots, you can see PCQ signs planted in the lawns – an election advertising technique widespread outside Quebec, but curiously used here only by the Conservatives.
I rang at Dominique Parent, who lined his floor and his balcony in the colors of Duhaime and the local candidate, the very athletic 42-year-old mayor of Saint-Lambert-de-Lauzon, Olivier Dumais.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Dominique Parent clearly shows which party he supports.
Dominique is a young father, a telephone technician. He is not a new convert, he has already voted Conservative. Even though he gave Legault a chance in 2018, he returned to the PCQ.
“I especially want a government that is as little present as possible. It looks like we work for the government, but the roads are bad, the school is ordinary… I thought to myself: at least Legault could remove the QST on gasoline, give us a hand… Well no! Hospitals are like an eternal restart. We have plenty of natural resources, but it’s as if we couldn’t exploit them. »
I tell him that he is kidding when he talks about the “Legault dictatorship” about health measures.
“It’s in the sense that he doesn’t listen, even if Public Health says the opposite. »
He listens to CHOI Radio X, yes, and if he is not a “complete fan” of Duhaime, he sees in him a politician who wants to “serve the population”.
A little further, on row Saint-Étienne, Richard Beaudoin, 55, caquist in 2018, is also proudly conservative. “Arruda, who said: “Don’t do this, don’t do that, wash your hands, don’t put on a mask, put on a mask…” Heille, that will do. I work alone in my truck. »
The curfews did not pass.
“I work at night, I deliver propane. I got arrested three times! »
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Richard Beaudoin
He is not vaccinated and “Legault will have to come and stick the needle in my arm himself”.
He asks me if I am vaccinated. Yes, four times. He shrugs. He catches his passing cat.
“But between you and me, who we vote for, will that change anything, huh? »
The Conservative Party, led by Adrien Pouliot, won 1.46% of the vote in 2018. Less than the discreet Green Party (1.68%).
Éric Duhaime took over this party in ruins in the midst of a pandemic, in April 2021. He was not given any more chances than the People’s Party of Maxime Bernier, at the federal level, which did not make 5% in Canada, and only 2, 7% in Quebec last year.
A year and a half later, this party, widely ridiculed in the media, is statistically tied with the Liberals and Québec solidaire, with whom it is competing for second place in Quebec, far ahead of the Parti Québécois.
What happened ?
The Duhaime supporters I have met have two things in common. First, they have not digested the sanitary measures, without being antivax – although I have met several of them. Maxime Bernier is also surfing on this anger, but Duhaime “benefited” from six more months of restrictive measures, including the curfew of December 31, which almost everyone told me about.
Then, we cannot dissociate the success of Duhaime from the influence of certain radio stations in Quebec, in the first place Radio X, which has criticized health measures extensively, in addition to giving voice to disinformants. Duhaime, a former columnist at the station, was interviewed there regularly. We can say that he built his base on the radio.
It is no coincidence that in the greater Quebec City region, the Conservatives are second, far ahead of any other pursuer.
What strikes while going towards the Beauport lake, it is the number of placards of the deputy caquiste Sylvain Lévesque cut out as with the exacto. He may have won Chauveau with nearly 10,000 votes, but he is now facing the leader of the Conservative Party. And it will be tight in this northern suburb of Quebec.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Behind a sign of Éric Duhaime in Chauveau, one of outgoing MP Sylvain Lévesque, vandalized
I ring at a door where I see posters of Duhaime. The woman is not very enthusiastic when I tell her that I am a journalist. “Oh no, no, no. »
She doesn’t open the door fully, but doesn’t close it either, and finally gives me an interview in the crack. She does not name herself, but tells me that she works “in insurance”.
“We were born to be free, don’t you think? Duhaime, everyone pats him on the head. I listen to them The game, I find that appalling. Why all of this ? We’re not idiots, you know. They call us conspirators, toothless, just because they don’t think like us. We are not against vaccines, but we do not want them. We did our research. »
Legault, I voted for him, but he became arrogant.
A voter in the riding of Chauveau
A little further, on the edge of Charlesbourg, I meet Lucien Fournier, a 70-year-old retiree, who places his construction helmet in the trunk of his car. “I still do jobs,” he says proudly.
He is vaccinated four times, soon to be five. Didn’t really suffer from sanitary measures. He voted CAQ, but this time it will be Duhaime. “I’m not really that, politics. I don’t have time, I’m taking care of my grandchildren, I’m going to take them to hockey… But I listen to CHOI FM all the time. From what I hear, I think Legault has had its day. »
It is not yet known how many seats the PCQ will win, or even if it will win a single one.
But we have rarely seen a party rise so quickly.
Must say that we have rarely seen so much skill to channel public anger so effectively, sadness too.