(Laval) The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, hopes to make “the voice of reason” heard by Americans. He plans to go to Washington in March with MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, the party’s spokesperson for international trade, to promote Quebec’s interests.
Posted at 2:55 p.m.
“It’s maximizing the number of actors in American economic circles, lobbies, what they call think tanks (think groups) which will bring up to the White House or Mar-a-Lago, the legitimate concerns are not only from Quebec, but also from the interlocutors,” he explained Thursday during the press briefing to close the Bloc caucus meeting.
A few hours later, US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to impose tariffs during a speech at the Davos Economic Forum.
“You can still become a state and if you become a state we won’t have a deficit [commercial] and we won’t need to impose tariffs on you, but Canada has been very difficult to deal with over the years,” he said.
He then falsely claimed that the trade deficit between the United States and Canada was $250 billion when it was actually $100 billion on an annual basis, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada.
The new president added that the United States does not need Canadian cars, lumber and oil.
“When we do business with one actor or another, it is because it is the most profitable way,” argued Mr. Blanchet. This means that a radical change for the American partners as well as for us will be less profitable and more difficult and that is also true for the Americans. »
So, beyond Mr. Trump’s pre-election diatribe, which he obviously did not shy away from, there is the need to hear the voice of reason.
Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois
He intends to recall “the importance of Quebec ore, of Quebec’s clean energy, of wood, aluminum and aeronautics,” he said the day before during a speech to his supporters.
-He even reached out to voters in Beauce, a region dominated by the Conservative Party of Canada. “Do people realize, in Beauce, that the first victims of Donald Trump’s policies will be the sectors and industrial zones of Quebec closest to the border,” he asked.
He then criticized the “toxic policies for the entrepreneurial economy” of the Conservatives who wanted to develop the oil industry elsewhere in Canada, “will have a harmful effect on the value of the dollar” which will subsequently harm the industrial sector “of the Ontario, Quebec and particularly Beauce. »
The Bloc Québécois does not expect to make gains in this region during the next federal elections, but in the neighboring region of Centre-du-Québec, yes. They hope to win the riding of Richmond-Arthabaska where they will face conservative candidate Éric Lefebvre, currently an independent member of the National Assembly. He was elected under the CAQ banner for the first time in 2016.
“We seem enthusiastic, but this enthusiasm is rooted in reality. It comes from somewhere,” argued a source within the Bloc leader’s entourage.
A Léger poll recently commissioned by the Bloc Québécois gives it 37% of voting intentions in Quebec compared to 26% for the Conservative Party and 21% for the Liberal Party. The New Democratic Party is far behind with 7%.
Among French speakers, support for the sovereignist party rises to 45%, compared to 24% for the conservatives and 17% for the liberals. This indicator is used to measure the party’s popularity in regions outside of Montreal and Quebec.
The battle could be more difficult in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun where Bloc member Louis-Philippe Sauvé caused a surprise by winning the by-election in September after a real three-way race. Only 269 votes separated him from the liberal Laura Palestini and 653 votes from the new Democrat Craig Sauvé.
This survey was carried out from January 17 to 19, after the announcement of the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which seems to have had little impact on the voting intentions of Quebec voters. 1
1 The Léger firm questioned 1,003 Quebec residents who could speak French or English, selected randomly from a panel of Internet users representative of the population. This type of survey does not have a margin of error, but it would be plus or minus 3% 19 times out of 20 in the case of a probability sample.
