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If you have pro-life values, you need to put them ahead in your policies

“(Charest) was coming back to the party to make it, I imagine, more of a Progressive Conservative party,” Décarie said. “I helped Stephen Harper in 2003 to unify the conservatives across Canada with the Conservative Party, including the West, and I think Mr. Charest would be a problem.”

Even with Charest deciding to stay out of the race, Décarie said he’s still going full-steam ahead since other candidates appear to be trying to sideline social conservatives. He pointed to Pierre Poilievre’s interview with Quebec newspaper La Presse last week in which Poilievre called same-sex marriage a “success” and said he would oppose any legislation that sought to restrict abortion rights.

Décarie said he knows there will be a big debate in this race over the party’s stance on social conservative issues, and in particular whether Scheer cost them the election in 2019 by giving vague answers on same-sex marriage.

“On the one side, some would say we lost because Scheer was a social conservative, so we have to get rid of it,” Décarie said. “On the other hand, you have all the so-cons who say yes, but he didn’t defend us, so that’s why we lost.”

He said his own takeaway is that you have to be clear about what you stand for. “If you have pro-life values, you need to put them ahead in your policies,” he said. On same-sex marriage, he said his own view is that it’s a religious concept and should be between a man and a woman, and anything else should be a civil union with the legal rights that entails.