Quebec Election Notebook: Parties jostle in bid to be CAQ’s main adversary

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Usually, events jockey for first place.

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However with François Legault and his Coalition Avenir Québec using excessive within the polls, different events are arguing over which one is his major opponent.

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Since final week’s debate, Legault has been zeroing in on Québec solidaire co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, at one level suggesting it’s a two-way race between the CAQ and QS.

Final week, Legault’s social gathering took the weird step of distributing leaflets (utilizing the orange and inexperienced marketing campaign colors of QS), that accused Nadeau-Dubois of “taking more cash from middle-class wallets” with an “orange tax.”

However Conservative Chief Éric Duhaime on Monday insisted he’s “the actual adversary of the CAQ.”

Chatting with reporters in Quebec Metropolis, Duhaime stated Legault is pretending QS is his major opponent as a result of “he is aware of that they’re the weakest, they might be the best for him to beat, as a result of they’re essentially the most radical, and it’s best to demolish their concepts.”

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He stated the CAQ is spooked by the large rally his social gathering held in Quebec Metropolis on Friday.

Legault “noticed the three,000 folks within the Centre Vidéotron. I can inform you that within the Quebec Metropolis area, the CAQ candidates aren’t very afraid of Québec solidaire opponents proper now.”

Duhaime famous Legault is spending lots of time campaigning in ridings the place the Conservatives and the CAQ are neck and neck.

In the meantime, Yves-François Blanchet, chief of the Bloc Québécois, the Parti Québécois’s federal cousins, says the PQ is the one actual menace to the CAQ.

“Gabriel (Nadeau-Dubois) and François (Legault), it’s beginning to develop into cute,” Blanchet stated Sunday as he campaigned for the PQ in Baie-Comeau. “Who’s the least harmful chief for François Legault? It’s Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.”

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Regardless of her social gathering’s low standing within the polls, Liberal Chief Dominique Anglade on Monday insisted she will be able to unseat Legault. “Don’t underestimate the Liberals,” she stated.

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Most aren’t sufficiently old to vote on Oct. 3, however on Tuesday afternoon, English Montreal Faculty Board college students may have a front-row seat.

The EMSB is organizing a bilingual “digital data session” that shall be streamed stay into elementary and highschool school rooms throughout the board, and webcast on the board’s YouTube channel starting at 1 p.m.

College students will have the ability to ask questions through a chat operate.

Candidates from seven events shall be there — Bloc Montréal, the Canadian Get together for Quebec, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Liberals, the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire. Amongst them: Bloc Montréal Chief Balarama Holness, and Colin Standish, chief of the Canadian Get together of Quebec.

The board stated the CAQ promised to reply however didn’t accomplish that, he added.

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The EMSB — with 37,000 college students, the biggest board serving Quebec’s English-speaking neighborhood — is urgent political events on a number of points, together with Invoice 96, Invoice 21, trainer shortages and college air high quality.

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Early within the marketing campaign, François Legault ordered the CAQ to erase most of English from the social gathering’s web site, saying it had been posted in error.

Québec solidaire goes in the other way — it’s including languages. Along with French and English, its web site now contains election guarantees in seven Indigenous languages, together with Abenaki, Inuktitut and Mohawk.

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We’ve all seen election indicators which were graffitied, slashed or torn down by vandals. On the weekend, a Montrealer got here throughout one thing fairly totally different.

Itsik Romano was driving down Fredmir St. in Dollard-des-Ormeaux when he noticed a Liberal election publish in flames. He known as 911 and firefighters extinguished the fireplace.

“I actually hope it’s one incident and never a pattern to come back,” Romano posted on Fb, together with a photograph of the burning poster, elements of which had fallen to the bottom however had been nonetheless alight.

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ariga@postmedia.com

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