Couillard focuses on PQ’s backyard
Liberal leader visits five Montreal-area ridings
ST-HYACINTHE — Philippe Couillard went knocking on the Parti Québécois’s door Friday, visiting five PQheld ridings in and around Montreal.
The Liberal leader said he is poised to take back seats f rom the PQ, something that may have seemed impossible at the outset of the election, when polls showed the PQ had a solid lead over Couillard’s party.
But a month of campaigning seems to have turned the tide for the Liberals. Polls suggest they may be within reach of a majority government days away from Monday’s vote.
“We feel politics are changing in Quebec, the tectonic plates of our political scene are shifting,” Couillard said, while speaking in the north Montreal riding of Crémazie, which has been held by the PQ since 2003. “My program from now until Sunday is to visit ridings that don’t belong to the Liberals.”
His speech was interrupted by two protesters, who ran at the Liberal leader and came within inches of him before being tackled into the snow and arrested by police. Both protesters were topless women adorned in red body paint — a symbol associated with Quebec’s student movement.
“I guess freedom of speech sometimes produces unexpected consequences,” Couillard said, smiling.
Crémazie is held by the PQ’s Diane De Courcy, who defeated the Liberal candidate by more than 2,000 votes in 2012. Because the PQ won previous elections by a much smaller margin and since there’s a large, Liberal-leaning, ethnic population in the riding, Couillard believes his party can take it back.
Couillard was in Saint-Jérôme riding Thursday morning, the district where things began to unravel for the PQ weeks ago. During an event to launch Pierre Karl Péladeau’s candidacy in the riding, the media baron infamously punched toward the sky and declared he wanted to “make Quebec a country.” The statement brought the spectre of another referendum to the forefront of the campaign and cost the PQ in the polls.
The riding hasn’t elected a Liberal since 1989 and a strong Coalition Avenir Québec presence, combined with Péladeau’s star power, could hurt the Liberals’ chances of winning it. But Couillard persisted, telling Liberal volunteers to warn voters “a vote for the PQ, is a vote for the referendum.”
Though Péladeau’s fist-pump proved to be a turning point in the election, Couillard said Friday the conversation about Quebec’s future in Canada isn’t dead yet.
“The debate is not over, an idea is never over,” he told reporters. “What I can tell you is in Quebecers’ minds, in the minds of everyone I saw during my visits across the province, it’s far from being a subject they’re concerned with. It doesn’t even rank in the top five.”
The Liberal bus tour began in the west-Quebec Argenteuil district, which swung to the PQ in 2012. The area, mostly located in the mainly English-speaking community of Lachute, was previously a Liberal stronghold. Couillard has visited it twice this week. During Friday’s appearance, Couillard intertwined English and French, reinforcing his case as a new breed of politician.
In what has been an especially bitter campaign, Couillard has painted himself as the victim of slanderous attacks on his character.
“I will not answer mud with mud,” he repeated, again and again Friday. “You can’t insult someone for 33 days and then expect to be the premier of all Quebecers.”
While his opponents have raised questions about his past use of a tax haven, his former association with alleged fraudster Arthur Porter and even insinuated that he supports Shariah law, the Liberal leader has unleashed his share of attacks. Couillard called Marois’s charter of values law an “unprecedented act of discrimination” and he has questioned possible links to 20-year-old corruption investigations into the PQ. As for the CAQ, whose recent resurgence in the polls came at the expense of Liberal and PQ support, Couillard’s line is pretty simple: a vote for the CAQ will only bring back the PQ.