Quebec Premier François Legault pulled no punches when he reposted a tweet bashing the Bloc Québécois for supporting the Trudeau government in an upcoming vote of no confidence.
The Coalition Avenir Québec leader shared a post on X which compared the Bloc Québécois’ support for the Trudeau Liberals to their 2008 support for Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. He claims that the Bloc is selling Quebec out for a centralizing and Trudeauist party.
“In 2008, the Bloc preferred to be an accomplice to a centralizing and Trudeauist party rather than defend the interests of Quebec,” said Desmarais in the post later shared by Premier Legault.
After the 2008 election in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party won a minority government, the NDP and Bloc Québécois decided to support Dion and attempted to make him the Prime Minister, though the plot failed.
The tweet was originally posted by Vincent Desmarais – Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s Quebec advisor who served as a senior staffer in the Legault government from 2021 to May 2024.
Last week, Legault called on the Parti Québécois to tell the Bloc Québécois to vote with the Conservative party on the vote of non-confidence to bring the Trudeau Liberal government down and force an early election.
“I’m asking Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon to have the courage to ask his Bloc Québécois comrade to back down, not to support the Trudeau government next week, to defend the interests of Quebecers and the Quebec nation,” said Legault originally in French.
The confidence motion will fail if Bloc Québécois MPs vote in favour of the Liberals.
Both Legault and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet have demanded that the federal government give Quebec greater authority to manage immigration into the province. However, Blanchet has opted to attempt to work with the Trudeau government to extract those concessions while Legault urges for a change in government.
Blanchet told reporters that he would consider voting non-confidence in the Trudeau government if the Liberals fail to make concessions to the Bloc over the next few weeks.
“Part of what we both want is the same. We want more powers for Quebec and immigration because only Quebec should manage and administrate this issue for Quebecers,” Blanchet said.
“If [Legault] is patient a few weeks, maybe Santa Claus will come and give him an election.”
