Jean Charest would spell the political death of the Conservative Party

 

The Liberal Party controlled mainstream Canadian media have been floating the idea of   Jean Charest as the new Conservative party leader.  If the Conservative Party is suicidal enough to choose him as their leader it may well signal the end of the Party as a political force in Canada.  Aside from the blatant stupidity of electing a globalist Quebecois leader given the current political mood in Canada, his record in Quebec would hand the Trudeau junta another four years.

Jean Charest presided over massive economic failure in Quebec. His dismal economic record of failed economic projects include the much vaunted Plan Nord. His government used millions in public money the destruction of thousands of hectares of forest and managed to severely impinge on Indigenous land rights, so that his corporate partners could sell electricity to the US market cheaper than they sold it to the taxpayers that funded the project.

    For this and many other reasons his Quebec Liberal Party suffered humiliating defeat at the polls to the PQ in? only to be reelected in ? after they dumped him as leader. He is literally unelectable as a dog catcher in the province of Québec, any party he leads would suffer the same fate. This is an absolute political fact because besides his dismal economic record Jean Charest ordered and presided over the most brutally violent government repression of civil dissent in Canada since the Winnipeg general strike.

What Jean Charest Québec looked like in 2012 with appropriate theme music

  The brutal demonstaors they were faced with, students demonstarting against tution hikes.

 

Many of you reading this in Canada will find the images in the videos below shocking. The scale and violence associated to the Quebec student strike was heavily suppressed by the English Canadian media. I filmed most of what you will see personally.  I lived in  Quebec between 2001 and 2018. In 2012 I was a Journalist associated with Concordia University television during the entirety of the strike. I am a 10 year veteran of the combat regiments of the Canadian Armed Forces so posses actual training in riot control and a solid professional understanding of the use of force from Peacekeeping tours.The response of Jean Charet’s goverment was nothing less than the unconstitutional use of extreme violence to silence his citizens.

Jean Charets Liberal party convention in Victoriaville Quebec in May 2012

In February 2012 students in Universities, the children of the middle class, walked out of their classes to protest a tuition hike that would have seen tuition rise by 75% over 5 years.   Thousands of students voted to strike from classes until the government renegotiated the hike. They staged massive yet absolutely peaceful protests. Mr Charest’s government used a compliant press to portray the demonstrators  as violent anarchists. This was never true. I witnessed repeatedly these students force anyone who became violent in any way out of their demonstrations. These were in no way the masked thugs of antifa and other foreign funded groups we have become familiar with. These were the children f the middle class peacefully and steadfastly fighting for their right to the sort of accessible education that made this country an economic powerhouse.

The massively violent response to what were absolutely peaceful protests is a testament to Mr Charest’s actual belief in democracy, and his base view of his role as a political leader.

Video of the first  protests of the student strike, notice the lack of aggression from the students contrasted with the immediate armored and agressive police presence. The videos in order are the first three demos of the student strike

Peaceful student protesters suffered brutal repression and even severe physical injuries. with 2 young people loosing eyes, a 23 year old put in a coma, and hundreds of other injuries. Despite this these young citizens continued their protests in an unwavering peaceful fashion.

23 year old Alexandre Allard was shot in the back of the head from 20 feet by an Arwen gun while standing peacefully with his friends at the Victoriaville demo. I witnessed the incident and filmed the result

Another young man lost an eye to the same Arwen Gun the same day

A June protest coinciding with the Montréal grand prix. Half the protestors are in their underwear to show they are non violent. It was the first of many “nude manifs” called for by students to bring attention to the violence against them by the Charest Government

Mr Cahrest’s government used a compliant press to portray the demonstrators  as violent anarchists. This was never true. I witnessed repeatedly the students force anyone who became violent out of their demonstrations. These were in no way the masked thugs of Antifa and other foreign funded violent groups we have become familiar with. These were the children of the middle class peacefully and steadfastly fighting for their right to the sort of accessible education that made this country an economic powerhouse.

When the students would not be cowed by outrageous state violence Jean Charest doubled down on repression.  On the 18th of May 2012 the Charest Government passed Loi 78 or as it became known la loi special”. This piece of legislation would make any dictator smile warmly. Among its unconstitutional provisions it declared illegal any demonstration of more than 50 people at any location in Quebec, unless the dates, times, starting point, and routes of those locations and also the duration of the venue and the means of transportation that will be used by participants, if applicable, have been submitted to and approved by Quebec police. In an initial version of the bill it was any 5 people. This prompted Quebec citizens to report dinner parties and pickup baseball games. According to the provisions of the bill, any infraction against its prohibitions require offenders to pay fines, which are paid for each day of infraction. Those fines amount to $1,000–$5,000 for individuals, $7,000–$35,000 for student or union leaders, and $25,000–$125,000 per day for student or labor organizations. Fines doubled for second and subsequent offenses.

The passing of this legislation led to one of the most amazing shows of citizen power I have ever witnessed. The night the legislation passed student groups put out a call for a citizen “pots and pans” demo reminiscent of Iceland at the time. At the appointed hour i sallied forth and banged my soup pots together as did most of my neighbors. I had actually gone back inside and sat down when i noticed that instead of lessening the concanthopy was actually getting louder. Upon emerging from my apartment i saw that almost all of my neighbours on this highly crowded city block had descended onto the street with their pots and pans and began moving toward downtown. I joined this group of at least 1000 people and as we walked down a main boulevard our neighborhood group ran into another march fo around a thousand people from the next neighborhood. So while it seems Jean Charest indeed has an amazing ability to unite people, its generally in calling for his head.

Children bang their pots on a balconey the night Loi 78 passed

 

In response to this show of absolute public rejection of this totalitarian policy Charest doubled down yet again on violent repression when he directed Surete Quebec officers to for the forst time since the ill fated policing of the G20 in Toronto ordered the mass arrest technique know as “Kettling”

I was “kettled” many times during the strike. In essence large groups of heavily armored police charge you from all sides. Your group is compressed into as small a group as they can make it. You are then held until you are individually processed. In one “Kettle” I and my clearly marked media team were held on the street for 5 hours, handcuffed put on city buses and transported to an isolated police station on the outskirts of the city and held another 4 hours. At no time during any of this were we provided with water or the use of bathrooms. As a Canadian soldier taking a prisoner on a battlefield I would be legally bound to provide these things to my prisoner.

This was Jean Charet’s Quebec. Lets not give him any chance to try this out on the rest of the country.

William Ray