Concerned about the risk of a low turnout in Monday’s poll, the Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet called on his activists on Wednesday to convince voters to vote.
In the parking lot of a Chateauguay shopping center, he spoke to dozens of activists who had come to meet him.
“You have a job when you are activists: ‘bring the world out’. You must convince our people, whom you have identified, in our relatives, your families, you have a duty to convince everyone, in particular those who support us, to go and vote. ”
According to him, we should especially not count on the demobilization of the opposing parties, liberal and conservative, at the end of the campaign.
At the very beginning of the electoral campaign, Mr. Blanchet had already expressed his fears concerning this poll in times of pandemic. He was concerned that older or health-conscious voters would be reluctant to go to a polling station, due to the risk of the spread of the coronavirus.
Meeting with the chefs
Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Blanchet reached out to the other party leaders: he is requesting a meeting with each of them after the elections.
He intends to start the legislature on a “fresh and serene basis,” he explained at a press conference Wednesday morning in a park in Longueuil.
The possibility of a minority government is looming, as polls suggest a tight race. The Bloc could thus hold the balance of power, or at least in part, if it makes gains or retains its current deputation of 32 elected officials.
But whatever the composition of the House next Monday night, whether the government is a majority or a minority, Mr. Blanchet already has plans.
“We will have to move on, at some point, all the party leaders”, after the elections, to be able to start “on a fresh, calm basis, because we have responsibilities”.
Being a Quebecer, a “risky choice”
The Bloc leader also spoke about what he said will be the question of the ballot box, that is to say the stake according to which voters will choose their party in the election of September 20: “the right to be Quebecer ”.
“The last few days have revealed that being a Quebecer inside Canada is at best a risky choice,” he explained.
Being a Quebecer is different from being a Canadian, he continued, and the controversial issue of the debate in English has been “revealing” to him.
This question suggested that the Bloc, on the one hand, supports discriminatory Quebec laws, and on the other hand, denies that Quebec has a problem with racism.
Canada does not let Quebec make its choices freely and suggests that French has no place in this country, he continued.
“Anger” and “narrow-mindedness”
Mr. Blanchet said he wanted Quebeckers and other Canadians “to be friends and behave like friends”, but that the current context lends itself little to it.
At the start of his term in 2019, he said he wanted to tour Canada, like his predecessor Gilles Duceppe, to explain what the Bloc Quebecois, but that he gave up because of the current polarization.
“The level of discussion, the anger, the narrow-mindedness, it’s not good for anyone. ”
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