Ouellet agrees to confidence vote on Bloc leadership
OTTAWA Martine Ouellet has agreed to have a confidence vote on her Bloc Québécois leadership brought forward.
“After consultation with my team, several members of the Bloc Québécois and the authorities, I will ask the national office to add a second question to the referendum, a second question on the vote of confidence,” Ouellet said in a press release on Monday.
The Bloc’s 20,000 members were already slated to vote on what the party’s vision should be. The confidence question will be submitted when the next general council is held on April 29 in Drummondville. The vote is expected to be held by telephone or internet in the following months.
Ouellet has come under fire since the resignation of seven of the Bloc’s 10 MPs from caucus late last month. They had questioned her leadership and criticized her for being uncompromising. The seven are Michel Boudrias, Rhéal Fortin, Simon Marcil, Monique Pauze, Louis Plamondon, Gabriel Ste-Marie and Luc Theriault.
Former party leader Gilles Duceppe, former deputies and county associations later called for Ouellet’s resignation. Other voices had suggested she submit to a vote of confidence, which she had refused until Monday. The next confidence vote had only been scheduled for May 2019.
The threshold set by Ouellet for the referendum on the party’s vision and the vote of confidence will be 50 per cent plus one vote.
“The base is 50 per cent plus one and we always want the highest possible result,” she said.