It was almost 30 years ago that we referred to Jean Charest as the boy wonder of the conservative party. It was in 1998 that Charest, the then leader of the federal conservative party, became leader of the Quebec liberal party. Which proved to me, what I had known all along, that Quebec liberals were neither progressive nor particularly liberal or democratic.
Now some of the federal conservatives want Charest back in Ottawa—in his former disguise as a conservative. They liked what he did as a liberal in Quebec and want him to do the same for the country.
As premier of Quebec, Charest was noted for his fights with unions and his sharply increased costs of government. He paid the government’s bills by increasing charges for electricity, increased fees for government services and increasing fees for automobile insurance. He was no populist.
He was everything a conservative is expected to be. He was narrow in his focus and mean in his actions. As premier of Quebec, Charest survived three elections—one with a minority government. His nemesis was in 2012 when he took on the youth vote and raised university fees. His government actually passed a law outlawing the student protests, that was quickly abolished by the succeeding Parti Québécois government of Pauline Marois.
Defeated in his own electoral district, Charest left politics in 2012 to return to the more profitable field of law. He has not mellowed much in the past decade.
While he might want to restore his credentials as a conservative, there is only MP Pierre Poilievre in the field at this time. It would be hard to decide between the two of them. Neither would satisfy the libertarians nor the social conservatives on the fringes of the conservative party of Canada.
No matter which of the two might be chosen by the rank and file of the conservatives, it is just going to add to the votes for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party in the next federal election.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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