ST. BRIEUX — Joseph Bourgault, president and CEO of St. Brieux’s Bourgault Tillage Tools, and advocate against COVID-19 regulations, has announced his bid for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Son of Frank Bourgault, the inventor of the Bourgault Cultivator in 1973, the Bourgault family represents companies including Bourgault Industries, Bourgault Tillage Tools, Dry Air, Highline and Freeform.
Bourgault describes himself as an “honest, truth seeking, principled fiscal and social Conservative.”
“To me it’s always ‘what’s the truth?’” he said. “I do my homework to discern the truth and then I’m principled as whatever the truth is, that’s what I’ll act on.”
COVID-19 regulations, Lifewise Health Centre and the Freedom Convoy
In 2020, Bourgault co-founded a non-profit organization called Canadians for Truth, Freedom, and Justice which opposed federal and provincial COVID-19 mandates.
In pamphlets distributed throughout Humboldt and area, Canadians for Truth, Freedom, and Justice said variants of COVID-19 are from leaky experimental gene therapy to treat the virus, instead promoting buying anti-viral substitutes from Lifewise Health Centre, a health food store Bourgault founded.
In 2022, he took part in the Freedom Convoy to Ottawa to protest COVID-19 mandates, which resulted in the federal government declaring a nine-day state of emergency as the government worked to unobstruct border crossings and ensure commerce across the U.S.-Canada border.
Bourgault said one of his first policies is to completely remove all COVID-19 mandates, which he referred to as a “medical experiment.”
“Mandates are really another word for making forced medical decisions, mandates are extortion. When you fire people because they refused to participate in a medical experiment, that’s extortion,” he said.
“I have never seen a politician trample on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms like this Prime Minister has. I was in Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy and I was there the whole time and what he said when declared martial law, basically declared war on these people was just outrageous.”
Instead of current Health Canada recommendations, Bourgault promotes the use of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, Vitamin D, and Zinc for treating COVID-19.
“To me there are natural solutions both herbal remedies and nutritional supplements that can help and treat COVID. I know because I helped 29 people to recover [and] have speedy recoveries with these supplements.”
Policies
Fiscally, Bourgault seeks a balanced budget. Some of his initiatives include eliminating the carbon tax and providing private sector tax incentives for projects that will reduce or eliminate pollution of air, water and soil.
He also seeks to reduce personal and business income taxes, which he said will create investment in the economy while keeping citizens healthy, happy and prosperous. Individually, he aims to adjust the tax system for individual Canadians to not tax anyone below $50,000, as well as lowering taxes for the middle class worker.
“I would never have locked the economy down and send CERB cheques out to everybody. We want everybody to be working, so to me locking the economy down, having these lockdowns make no sense, and the reason they had the lockdown was because they did not allow doctors to prescribe the therapeutics that were available to prevent and treat.”
Bourgault said he wants to create “a true healthcare culture,” creating a distinction between healthcare and medical care.
Healthcare would be defined as the means to keep “citizens out of the medical care system by empowering them to make healthy diet and lifestyle choices.”
To this result, he said he intends to increase the standard deduction of federal income tax to the poverty line, in order to proactively reduce addiction and abuse.
“I want us to increase the basic deduction both provincially and federally to the true poverty line so that all Canadians can afford a healthy diet and lifestyle to be healthy, happy and productive to stay out of the medical care system. What that will do is it will reduce medical costs and put the horse in front of the cart. That’s one way I see reducing the cost of government.”
For immigration, Bourgault said his goal is to attract future citizens who align with “Canadian core values and principles” by tightening immigration restrictions. He said those values include recognizing freedom and democracy, recognizing gender equality between men and women, willingness to learn both English and French if necessary, tolerance, and respect.
Bourgault states he is pro-life, but wants to lower abortion numbers through fiscal policies to allow for more Canadians to be able to afford to raise a child.
“I would allow married partners or partnered couples to split income up to $100,000 and I’d want a $20,000 basic child tax deduction so that parents could afford to have children and could afford to raise healthy, happy children that are engaged in sports and art,” he said. “It costs money to raise a child.”
To support his run for leadership, Bourgault encourages people visit his website josephbourgault.ca, join the Conservative Party of Canada as a member, and include their name on his nomination petition. Individuals are required to be members for at least 21 days before nominating.
Bourgault is required to obtain 500 signatures to be able to qualify for the candidacy.
“The other thing is I would appreciate what people can afford to give, my fee to enter the race is $300,000 and I have to raise that by April 25.”
