But both candidates have been shamefully silent on Quebec\u0027s disastrous new language law
With that said, the principal Conservative leadership candidates have emerged clearly. Jean Charest, the youngest cabinet minister in Canadian history in the Mulroney government, a former leader of the old federal Progressive Conservatives and a three-term Liberal premier of Quebec , has shown himself to be experienced, amiable, witty and well-informed. His policies are centrist and pragmatic.
Pierre Poilievre has emerged as an authentic and thoughtful conservative who’s devoted to reducing authoritarian interference in the lives of Canadians, lowering taxes and promoting individual choice. He is a bilingual English-Canadian with a partially francophone background, and he would be only the second altogether authentic conservative who has led his party since the retirement of George Drew in 1956.
I would support either of these men and have already expressed in this space the reasons for my preference for Poilievre. I should add that Patrick Brown seems to me to have once again been shabbily treated by the Conservative party apparatus, but he was unlikely to place higher than third. What has been principally missing in this campaign, especially given that Charest was premier of Quebec and Poilievre is a French-speaking Ottawa MP, is the failure of both men to comment on Quebec’s repressive Bill 96.
The cowardly abdication of the federal government from criticism of this bigoted Quebec language policy, which will be a total failure anyway since even the most rabid Quebec nationalists would benefit from speaking the language of the vast majority of people on this continent north of Mexico, is not diminished by the fact that the federal Conservatives, under their former leader, cravenly abdicated with no discussion of the subject in lock-step with the Trudeau Liberals.