The social conservative (1)
Name: Pierre Lemieux Age: 53 Current job: Former MP It wouldn’t be a true right-wing leadership race without a healthy dose of social conservatism. Pierre Lemieux is here to provide.
The 20-year military veteran can be counted among the religious right of the Conservative party. He’s endorsed by the anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition, supports the “traditional” definition of marriage and wants to make sure everyone dies a “natural death”— translation: only straight people should get married and assisted dying should be a no-go.
The 53-year-old grandfather — he has four daughters and one son — was a Conservative MP from the Ottawa area for three terms, from 2006 to 2015, when he was unseated by a Liberal. According to his leadership campaign, his father was in the air force for more than two decades, and Lemieux himself joined the military at 17.
He took engineering at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., and served for two decades in the Canadian Forces, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Through the campaign, Lemieux has repeatedly spoken about his concerns with Canada’s assisted dying legislation, which was passed last year. He calls the practice “euthanasia” and has said he believes in the “inherent dignity of human life from the moment of conception through to natural death.”
He also wants to openly debate abortion in Parliament, something former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper did not allow. In late January, Lemieux put out a campaign video vowing to restrict sex-selective abortion.
He has also lashed out against “chronic political correctness” that he argued was represented in a Liberal government bill that extends human rights protections to expressions of gender identity. In a campaign video on his website, he argued that the state shouldn’t punish anyone for failing to use a transgender person’s preferred pronoun.
“That is an encroachment of freedom of speech,” Lemieux said. “Political correctness is something that needs to be pushed back.”
Other policies Lemieux is proposing include giving Parliament the power to elect Supreme Court judges, increase face-to-face interviews of refugees from “areas with high risk of radical Islamic terrorism,” and the repeal of any carbon tax imposed by the Trudeau government.