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Guy Nantel’s team isn’t laughing after the comedian’s profile was removed from the Parti Québecois website for two days due to the violation of the rules governing the party’s leadership.
Presse Canadienne reported that an internal source confirmed that Nantel was sanctioned for having sent an email directly to a large number of members to request funding.
Candidates must go through the party if they wish to communicate with members, in order to prevent them from being inundated with candidate emails.
Representatives of all the candidates were reminded of the rule in a teleconference call Thursday, but Nantel’s team was accused of violating the ruling shortly after the call.
Nantel’s team hasn’t questioned the regulation but does have a problem with the interpretation of the rule. They claim nothing prevents them from communicating with supporters of the candidate, including members.
“If I write to my former university colleagues and send 300 emails and there are 25 of them who are members, it is not prohibited and that is what we are doing now,” said Martin Beaudry, a spokesperson for the candidate’s team. He noted an identical situation occurred before the COVID-19 pandemic and that the electoral officer at the time, Agnès Maltais, who “is not a beginner,” gave them the OK.
The Nantel team maintains that the list of members provided by the PQ does not include email addresses and, therefore, they are unable to identify the names to be removed from their own list.
They claim to have taken several steps to comply with the interpretation of the rules made by the party, in particular by proposing that the party remove from their email list people who are members and even hire an external firm at their own expense to do this work in a neutral fashion.
“That was of no interest to them,” noted Beaudry.
While the sanction appears to be largely symbolic, Beaudry told Presse Canadienne that it sends a message about the integrity of the candidate.
“This is to tell the world that Guy Nantel does not respect the rules,” he said.
The PQ has been without a leader since the resignation of Jeanfrançois Lisée on the evening of the general elections of Oct. 1, 2018, when the party suffered a historic defeat. Pascal Bérubé, the MNA from Matane, is the interim leader.