Poilievre DESTROYS Charest in first Conservative Party leadership debate

Candidates took to the stage in Ottawa Thursday night for the first Conservative Party leadership debate.

In just a few months, Conservative Party members will take to the polls to elect a new leader.

During Thursday night's debate, Pierre Poilievre mopped the floor with his fellow candidate Jean Charest, serving up one smackdown after another.

The debate took place at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa as the headliner for the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, and featured Pierre Poilievre, Jean Charest, Scott Aitchison, Leslyn Lewis, and Roman Baber.

Candidates covered a number of issues, including culture wars, pipelines, civil liberties, and how the party can win again after three consecutive losses at the federal level.

What really got the audience going, however, was the drama that unfolded between Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest.

Throughout the debate, Poilievre attacked Charest for his liberal past, and his lack of support for the trucker protest that took place earlier this year.

"Now Mr. Charest learned about the trucker convoy on CBC like other Liberals," Poilievre began. "He believes I should be cancelled from this leadership race, and disqualified, his words, because I don't share his Liberal viewpoint."

"That is the kind of cancel culture and censorship that you would expect from Justin Trudeau, but instead we're getting it from this liberal on this stage."

He then slammed Charest on his party's alleged acceptance of illegal donations, saying "the average trucker has more integrity in his pinky finger than you had in your entire scandal-plagued Liberal cabinet."

Poilievre doubled down on his accusation that Charest was not a conservative. After listing a number of policies Charest enacted while serving as Liberal premier of Quebec, Poilievre said, "It’s not your name as a party that was Liberal, it was your track record of more debt, higher taxes, and more expensive government.”

"I could go down the list of all the Liberal policies that you brought in that you're trying to hide from today," he continued, "but we don't have enough time to go through them all."

"I'm a true conservative," Poilievre concluded. "I've stood for the same things my entire life. I'm not just putting on, temporarily, a blue shirt to cover up a red shirt underneath it in order to take over the party."

Poilievre wasn't the only one questioning whether Charest was who he purported to be. The moderators asked him point blank, "Are you a conservative?"

Poilievre did not go unopposed, however, as Leslyn Lewis sparred with him over whether he had done enough to support the truckers.