Quebec separatists ponder a Conservative rendezvous

Article content

JONQUIÈRE, QUE – “Tell your leader to stop hitting Mark Carney. He doesn’t have to do it. He is not the target, Trump is.”

At the 4 Chemins restaurant in Jonquière, Alain’s words fall heavier than the rain outside as he gives a piece of his mind to Fanny Boulanger, the Conservative candidate in his riding.

Alain falls squarely in a voter category being targeted by the Conservatives. A hardworking senior, he embodies the pro-worker anti-corporate slogan “boots before suits” repeated by Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Article content

“Nationally, I am undecided… Fanny, I’ll vote for you in Jonquière because I don’t want the Bloc to win, and the Liberals have nobody here. But tell your leader he needs to change,” Alain tells Boulanger.

“I will,” replies Boulanger. It was Monday, lunchtime. Fanny was eating her soup and lathering mayonnaise — lots of it — onto her club sandwich.

Alain (who didn’t give his last name) isn’t the only one with this opinion. The Conservatives have been facing criticism, even from their allies, for several days that they need to focus more on Trump instead of the Liberal leader. But Boulanger is confident in Poilievre’s approach.

“I think my party’s strategy is the right strategy. I don’t think we should change it,” she said.

She happens to know Poilievre very well. The 25-year-old has been a parliamentary assistant in his office for two years. She describes herself as a “progressive conservative,” a feminist who grew up with a single mother and who has fought her whole life to get where she is. Now she wants to be an MP.

Article content

“I am a fan of Fanny!” Poilievre once said at a rally. As a younger MP himself, Poilievre learned to speak French in Chicoutimi, 20 minutes from Jonquière. He has family living in the area, spent several days here snowmobiling earlier this winter, and has said he feels a special attachment to the region.

As she eats her lunch, the owner of the 4 Chemins approaches Boulanger’s table and hands her a copy of the local newspaper. “Look, it’s you and Mr. Poilievre,” he says proudly. The photo shows her at the Conservatives’ “Canada First” rally in Ottawa weeks before the election campaign kicked off. She and Conservative MP Michael Barrett were the ones who introduced Poilievre onstage that day.

“We are very close,” she says of Poilievre. “And he really wants to win ridings in this region.”

Conservatives say their Quebec platform specifically targets the kinds of voters in ridings here in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, like Jonquière and nearby Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. It emphasizes the importance of the French language, Radio-Canada, the need to tighten immigration, granting more freedom to the provincial government, and putting an end to woke identity politics.

Article content

Article content

“The Bloc MP here is a woke. And we need to oust him,” Boulanger said of the incumbent candidate Mario Simard.

“Dehors Simard!” she adds — “get out Simard!” in English — has become a rallying cry in her speeches. The Bloc candidate has represented this riding for nearly six years, but she accuses him of being a Montrealer who is mostly absent and is against pipelines and major projects.

Simard denies that he’s an outsider. “Fanny doesn’t tell the truth. I am from here and I’ve been living here for 49 years. These are my people and this is my region,” he said. “Really, these are personal attacks and a tone that doesn’t fit with the people here.”

“Here in Saguenay, she repeats everything Pierre Poilievre says. It’s a caricature,” said Simard, with a smile.

Quebec nationalism, and even separatism, are deeply rooted around here, about two hours north of Quebec City, where about 283,000 people are spread across three federal ridings.

Lucien Bouchard, former Bloc leader and Parti Québécois premier of Quebec, is from here.

But these days, the Bloc seems to be falling out of fashion.

Article content

“I’ve been a separatist for 51 years and I always voted for a separatist option. Not this time. This time, I’m voting for Poilievre,” a man tells Boulanger at a shopping mall.

And the separatists can feel the heat as more and more voters both in Chicoutimi and Jonquière are shifting their vote. The incumbent Conservative candidate for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord Richard Martel said he has noticed the change.

Martel is a star here. He used to be the head coach of the Chicoutimi Saguenéens in the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League.

He’s been a member of the House of Commons since 2018 and said he has rarely seen so many undecided voters.

“We need to convince them, for sure,” Martel said.

But they could just as easily opt for another option: the Liberals. Although the party isn’t well established in Chicoutimi, Jonquière and Lac-Saint-Jean, the region had previously elected Liberal candidates.

Yvon Bouchard, a leading Liberal organizer since the Pierre Trudeau era, doesn’t see the region as particularly fertile ground for his party.

“The nationalists are usually very strong here,” he said.

Article content

In Jonquière, the three Bloc Québécois candidates held a press conference earlier this week to present their “regional platform.” They’re organized. They’re everywhere with their teams. They have money and they want to win.

A few months ago, everything indicated they were going to sweep the region by adding former local journalist Marc St-Hilaire as a candidate in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord.

However, this time, the Liberal candidate could take advantage of Mark Carney’s popularity and Trump’s threats to position himself between the Bloc and the Conservatives in a vote-splitting race.

That candidate is Stéphane Proulx, an actuary who has lived in Chicoutimi for 25 years. Proulx isn’t well known here. He isn’t even a longtime Liberal. But he says he was drawn to Carney’s message.

“It got to me, and I had to act,” he said. He was nominated on the first day of the election campaign, has no signs, no leaflets, no volunteers and barely a couple of hundred dollars in funds.

“But you know, I’ve been door-knocking, and the reception is tremendous. I really want to be the voice of this community. And I think anything is possible in the context we are in,” he said.

Article content

Anything is possible in the context we are in

According to polling aggregator 338Canada, two ridings are leaning towards the Bloc, and the other, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, is expected to elect Martel. But the Liberals have gained support in all three ridings.

Still, the real battle in the region seems to be between the two blue parties, the Bloc and the Tories.

“Pierre Poilievre is considered to be indigestible, and people do not like this kind of politics where you attack all the time,” said St-Hilaire, the Bloc’s candidate in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. “Pierre Poilievre isn’t gaining traction here. Maybe people will vote for Richard Martel, the candidate. But the (Conservatives’) chance for power is disintegrating, and that speaks volumes, too.”

At his enormous campaign headquarters, Martel is calm, confident and hopeful that voters will send him to Ottawa, to bring economic development to the region, where aluminum, forestry and agriculture are key industries.

“We lost 10 years with the Liberals and the Bloc. It’s time to take care of our people,” he said.

“The Bloc … their only way to assert themselves is to appear in the media… The Bloc MPs will all end up as political pundits in the media,” he added.

Article content

Boulanger agrees.

But to send the bloquistes packed off to punditry, she’ll have to win first.

“I want to represent the people, and bring a change to the region. I know Pierre Poilievre wants this region and I really want to make him proud of me. I really do,” she said.

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com 

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. 

Article content