“I have a competitor by the name of Mr. Poilievre who supported, as you know, the blockade, and if you want to be a leader in this country and a legislator, you can’t make laws and break laws,” he said.
“Laws are not a buffet table, if you’re a legislator, from which you choose what you want or not to apply. Because what you’re really saying to people is I’m above the law,” he said.
“You can’t be a leader of a party and the chief legislator of the country, as prime minister, and support people breaking the laws. That disqualifies you.”
The tweet also included a political ad, claiming that Charest is “a Liberal.”
“Jean Charest is a Liberal. As liberal premier, he raised the sales tax by 2 percent. He brought in a carbon tax, and supported the billion dollar long-gun registry. He even said the Liberal party was ‘our party.’ And while the Chinese government detained kidnapped Canadians, Charest was paid a consultant for Huawei on the Meng Wanzhou case, and helping it participate in Canada’s 5G wireless networks,” the ad claimed.
Charest said if elected, he would introduce legislation that would make it a criminal offence to block critical infrastructure “across the land and includes border crossings.”
“That includes, whether energy infrastructure or otherwise, that says that if you block and you try to stop our economy from functioning, that the police will have the powers that they need to be able to fix the situation and to reestablish [the] border, and that’s a very clear Conservative value.”
“I’m proud of the truckers and I stand with them. They have reached a breaking point after two years of massive government overreach of a prime minister who insults and degrades anyone who disagrees with his heavy-handed approach,” he said.
“Let’s be honest, if Canadians are being inconvenienced, or in any way suffering from these protests, it is because Justin Trudeau made these protests happen and his intransigence is keeping the protests going.”
Asked if the convoy had set precedence for anyone in the future to set up a “blockade” in Ottawa to “get what they want,” Poilievre said the critics were taking aim at the protesters instead of looking at what they were trying to convey.
“Are those people really saying we should keep in place an unscientific and nonsensical mandate just out of spite against protesters?” he asked. “Why don’t we do the right thing, and at the same time put an end to the protests?”
Poilievre said he doesn’t believe in infringing the freedom of one group for the benefit of another group.
“I encourage the truckers to follow the law, behave responsibly, don’t inhibit the freedom of movement of other people,” he said. “But at the same time, the vast majority of truckers and their supporters have been peaceful, law-abiding, joyful, decent, patriotic people, despite the dishonest propaganda of the liberal press gallery on Parliament Hill.”
