While Jean Charest is seriously considering entering the leadership race of the Conservative Party of Canada, a big name in the party in Quebec gives him his support.
• Read also: Charest, man of yesterday or of tomorrow?
“I fervently hope that Jean Charest will be a candidate for the leadership race. [du PCC] and I intend to support it,” says Gérard Deltell.
The Conservative MP for Louis-Saint-Laurent believes that the former premier of Quebec is the best person to beat Justin Trudeau in the next election.
“I have confidence that Jean Charest is the man to rally the party, to win over Canada, and that’s exactly what our party and especially the country needs: an experienced leader,” he said in an interview with VAT News.
“His experience is needed more than ever for our party, but especially for our country.”
Jean Charest has not yet officially announced that he will be in the running to succeed Erin O’Toole, but several sources say he is actively preparing to jump into the fray.
Last Tuesday, four MPs and a Tory senator issued a statement asking him to become a candidate, saying he was appealing to his “sense of duty”.
“Canada needs you, Mr. Charest,” reads the document, which counts MPs Alain Rayes and Dominique Vien among the signatories.
If Gérard Deltell has known Jean Charest since the 1980s, he has not always been complimentary to him.
While he was head of the Action Démocratique du Québec in 2010, Mr. Deltell made a virulent outburst against the premier of Quebec at the time.
“Jean Charest is the good godfather of the Liberal Party,” he said at an ADQ convention.
“If there’s one mistake I’ve made in my career, that’s it. And I regretted it and apologized,” he says today, highlighting his 2012 apology speech to the National Assembly.
“Anyone who has worked closely with Mr. Charest will tell you that he is able to rally people and he is a chef with exceptional qualities. Even the adversaries and I am living proof of that,” he added.
Since his election as a Member of Parliament in 2015, Gérard Deltell’s support has been coveted in the Conservative Party leadership races.
If he supported Erin O’Toole in 2017, he remained neutral in the 2020 race.
Only one candidate
For now, Pierre Poilievre remains the only officially declared candidate in this race. The member for Carleton already has a lot of support in caucus.
Political columnist Tasha Kheiriddin is seriously considering running for office.
The mayor of Brampton and former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, Patrick Brown, was also contacted.
The race’s organizing committee is due to announce the rules soon as well as when the Tories will elect a successor to Erin O’Toole, who was forced to resign on February 2.
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Reference-www.journaldequebec.com