Quebec Liberal leadership race: Charles Milliard shares his ‘big ideas'

CTV News

7 days ago

Virtual medicine, paying interns and prioritizing small businesses are some of the 'big ideas' Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) leadership hopeful Charles Milliard says he wants to focus on.
The pharmacist, former head of Quebec's Chamber of Commerce (QCC) and political neophyte, sat down with CJAD 800 Radio host Elias Makos to make his case about wanting to lead the oldest political party in Quebec.
Some answers have been edited for clarity.
ELIAS MAKOS: We've invited the candidates to sit down with us, and we've asked them to do one thing: bring us their boldest ideas, their vision for rebuilding the party and reconnecting with Quebecers.
We want to shy away from cliches as we introduce these candidates to you.
Charles Milliard is in studio. Thank you so much, Mr. Milliard, for coming into studio.
Give me the bold idea that when Liberal Party members vote, they're going to check off your name.
CHARLES MILLIARD: Well, I'm going to start by saying that my candidacy is, in a way, the boldest idea in this campaign because I'm not a politician.
I'm 45 years old. I'm a pharmacist by trade.
I used to be CEO of the QCC, as you mentioned, so I'm coming with a new tone, a new type of resume to lead the Liberal Party, the longest-serving party in the history of Quebec.
So that, in a nutshell, is the basic line.
I would say there are many challenges in Quebec, as you know, I'm going to talk about health care and education.
One bold idea that I'm bringing in this campaign is to have access, from a public service perspective, to virtual health care services, telemedicine, 24/7.
It has worked for the past years in the private sector.
It's time that the public system goes virtual as well, and you know what? It's going to be very helpful for mental health care, precisely.
Charles Milliard
Quebec Liberal Party leadership candidate Charles Milliard gives remarks during the Quebec Liberal Party French-language leadership debate in Laval, Que., on Saturday, May 3, 2025. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)
MAKOS: Give me your vision for that. How does it work? Is it every Quebecer has a Quebec health care app?
MILLIARD: I want a hybrid system, like the assurance medicaments, you know, for the medication we take.
We're going to let the private do what it does, what it's doing best right now, but I want the public system to have access.
I want people to have access to doctors, 24/7, virtually, and it's going to be very helpful in the different regions and rural areas of Quebec, where access to first-line health care professionals is a dire need.
MAKOS: This is because you're looking at access to family doctors and how clogged the emergency rooms are. You think that's a benefit here?
MILLIARD: I'm a pharmacist, so I know when you're sick, you need to look someone in the eyes and feel that you're being taken care of, whether it's physical or virtual.
This is something that I want to implement, and I think there's a lot of interest from doctors as well because they can do that at home.
They can do that at any time of the day, and you know what? All the candidates in this race have been agreeing with me, so it's looking good.
MAKOS: Let me ask you one thing, though, because it's a great, big, bold idea, but it involves an app.
It involves technology, and then my worry is, you're going to get the boys from SAAQclic to come on down and design it, and then it's going to cost billions of dollars with no results.
How do you make sure it's not $1.1 billion later, [and it] doesn't work?
MILLIARD: What we need to do more is to have, I'm going to say tech geeks, or IT guys and girls, in the Salon Bleu.
We need that expertise to be represented in our parliament because obviously, times are changing.
We're going to need the help of the private on that area.
MAKOS: You have another bold idea here. Hit me with your next bold idea.
MILLIARD: It's a long-time request of the different student federations. It's about paying our interns.
When it comes to future nurses, future teachers, both from the public and private sectors, I think we need to put our students and future adults in a less precarious financial situation.
This has been asked for, for 10 years, and again three weeks ago, [Higher Education] Minister [Pascale] Déry said she's not going to go forward with the idea.
We want to pay future nurses, future teachers, and if students are doing internships in the private sector, it's going to be a 50/50 repartition between the employer and the public system.
MAKOS: All of these measures would cost money. You compare Quebec to a lot of other jurisdictions; the amount that you pay to go to school in Quebec versus other places, seems like students have it OK in this province.
I wonder why that's such a priority for you to lessen that burden, when some would argue the burden is already lower than others.
MILLIARD: The cost of living is getting higher and higher in Quebec.
The different food banks have new clients right now, and they're called students throughout Quebec.
We've seen that pretty much in every region that I visited in the past 10 months on this race.
I just want to accept this request from the student federations.
I think it's going to cost between $300 and $400 million, but this is money that we're not going to put in helping the students in other situations, whether it's housing, whether it's financial aid for tuition fees and stuff.
This is something that I've been very clear about from the get-go.
MAKOS: If you can increase the wealth of Quebec and bring in revenues, you can pay for any program. So, give me a bold idea here when it comes to the economy.
MILLIARD: It's about going back to prioritize our SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises].
We've been talking a lot about big companies in the past six years, with Northvolt, with Lion Electric, and so on and so forth.
I think [Premier] Mr. [François] Legault and [former economy minister] Mr. [Pierre] Fitzgibbon played the lottery with our money.
We need to go back to what we're good at, which is SMEs, which are small and medium-sized businesses, which are companies with 25, 50, 100 employees.
They're the ones who are vitalizing our different regions in Quebec.
The economic plan that I put out with former minister [Raymond] Bachand in this campaign, he's been with me since day one, is about rolling out the red carpet for SMEs, decreasing taxes for SMEs.
We're going to have a look also at the wage taxes that entrepreneurs are paying right now, so we can send a strong signal that if you want to open a business in Quebec and bring fiscal revenue, so that we can pay for our social net, we're more than hoping to welcome your cases.
MAKO: You said before, 'I want to bring in the tech bros and the tech gals,' and when you said that, I'm thinking, 'Oh, United States. Elon Musk. DOGE.'
It's on the same vein that the government has too many regulations, they're getting in the way too often.
Do you feel that Quebec gets in the way of doing business?
MILLIARD: There is way too much regulation in Quebec. To me, it's obvious, and I've heard some of my opponents saying that they want a ministry of regulation.
I would rather have a bill put into place that is going to force the different public servants to work towards more deregulation than having a ministry.
This is something we need to do, both from an economic perspective, but also from a linguistic perspective, especially with the [Office québécois de la langue française] OQLF.
MAKOS: Do you have a bold idea on refocusing the OQLF?
MILLIARD: I'll be more precise as to what I want the OQLF to do, and it's not to get in the way of businesses in Quebec.
We can say that and still be strong and fierce promoters of French and Quebec without impeding on what the businesses have to do.
MAKOS: I'll give you some time here to wrap up with one more bold idea, if you've got it for us.
MILLIARD: I'm going to say that on identity, this is a field that we need to play.
We don't have to leave the [Coalition Avenir Québec] CAQ and the [Parti Québécois] PQ alone.
I'm the only one who has been courageous enough with proposing a bill on interculturalism, which is a way to recognize that Quebec is like a tree, and the tree trunk is the French language, of course, and we have branches, which is the English-speaking community, our First Nations and Inuit, the different cultural communities we have, but we want them to bear fruit.
We want them to grow with our tree trunk, which is the French language, and this is my answer to the divisive politics of the CAQ and the PQ, who want to bring a customs [office] to Gatineau instead of uniting Canadians.
MAKOS: It seems to me that you also really do believe that integration is key.
MILLIARD: I want us to be a liberal society, which means that we have to respect and defend all the minorities, and this is what the Liberal Party has been all about for 157 years, and hopefully for the next 10 years, with me leading it.