debate in\u00a0Moncton<\/a>\u00a0in December struggled in their second language.<\/p>\nThose struggles continued in Quebec City.<\/p>\n
Bernier\u00a0and\u00a0Blaney\u00a0stood out from their rivals during the debate, taking full advantage of their fluency in French. Chris Alexander, Rick Peterson and Pierre Lemieux\u00a0also spoke comfortably throughout the night, while\u00a0Chong,\u00a0Scheer\u00a0and Andrew\u00a0Saxton\u00a0had little trouble being understood.<\/p>\n
But other candidates had greater difficulties.\u00a0Deepak\u00a0Obhrai\u00a0was nearly incomprehensible, reading notes phonetically and once admitting that his pronunciation was\u00a0“horrible.”<\/p>\n
Leitch, Brad\u00a0Trost, and Erin\u00a0O’Toole\u00a0also stumbled.<\/p>\n
Raitt\u00a0relied primarily on notes, but seemed to have improved her French somewhat since the December debate in\u00a0Moncton, N.B., though she struggled in the post-debate scrums with reporters.<\/p>\n
Bernier\u00a0the early target of attacks<\/h2>\n
Many of the candidates used their 30-second rebuttals early, with\u00a0Leitch\u00a0and\u00a0Blaney\u00a0both going after\u00a0Bernier\u00a0for his position on ending corporate welfare, something they argued\u00a0Bernier\u00a0had given out when he was a cabinet minister.<\/p>\n
Leitch\u00a0called\u00a0Bernier\u00a0a “liar and an impostor.”<\/p>\n
Both\u00a0Blaney\u00a0and Lemieux\u00a0also went after\u00a0Bernier\u00a0on his pledge to end supply management.\u00a0Bernier\u00a0riposted by saying supply management was defended by a powerful interest group, but that he was looking out for the interests of Canadians.<\/p>\n
![\"CONSERVATIVE](\"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/1eee4_conservative-french-debate-20170117.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Leadership candidate Maxime Bernier was the subject of several attacks at the outset of the debate. (Jacques Boissinot\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
O’Toole\u00a0then deplored the attacks happening among Conservatives \u2014 as he has already done in this campaign \u2014 a position that was\u00a0seconded by\u00a0Chong.<\/p>\n
Supply management re-emerged as a topic of controversy when a question about it was posed to every contestant. Though\u00a0Bernier\u00a0was alone in arguing for the end of supply management,\u00a0Blaney\u00a0used the opportunity to attack\u00a0Scheer, saying that the Saskatchewan MP had not defended supply management in the past.<\/p>\n
Scheer\u00a0called\u00a0Blaney\u00a0“dishonest” and said that he had voted to protect supply management in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n
Candidates address immigration, security, First Nations<\/h2>\n
A few of the questions in the debate touched on\u00a0immigration and national security.<\/p>\n
Trost\u00a0suggested that all immigration from “pro-radical Islam” regions should be halted, while\u00a0Leitch\u00a0spoke again of her plan to impose screening of immigrants for “Canadian values.”<\/p>\n
Some of the candidates also defended the law brought in under the Conservatives giving the government the power to remove Canadian citizenship from dual citizenship holders found guilty of terrorism.<\/p>\n
Obhrai\u00a0was not a defender of the law, saying that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” In response,\u00a0Blaney, the former minister for public safety, said that he supported this law and that a “terrorist found guilty is a terrorist is a terrorist.”<\/p>\n
The candidates were asked what they would do to help Indigenous Canadians.\u00a0Chong\u00a0proposed investing in education while\u00a0Blaney\u00a0suggested that the reserve system should be dismantled, a proposal that was dismissed by Chris Alexander and Rick Peterson.<\/p>\n
Bernier\u00a0suggested that the federal government should respect treaties and\u00a0ensure that Indigenous Canadians have access to resources that give them equal services to other Canadians, but that they also have responsibility for their own destiny and that the government “can’t always send billions to solve problems.”<\/p>\n
The debate was\u00a0moderated by\u00a0Pascale\u00a0D\u00e9ry, a former journalist and news anchor who\u00a0ran unsuccessfully under the Conservative banner in the last election.<\/p>\n
The fourth debate is scheduled for Feb. 28 in Edmonton. The winner of the Conservative leadership vote will be announced on May 27.<\/p>\n
\n\nArticle source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/french-debate-conservative-leadership-1.3939492?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The third debate of\u00a0the Conservative leadership campaign held in Quebec City on Tuesday,\u00a0the only official debate to be held entirely in French,\u00a0featured some sharp exchanges between candidates, with much of the fire being directed at Quebec MP\u00a0Maxime\u00a0Bernier. The debate also\u00a0proved\u00a0to be a serious challenge to the French-language skills of some of the 13 contestants taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-63693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}