Four of the five seats in the Outaouais region went to the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) as the party won a landslide victory in the provincial election on Monday.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault was re-elected with the CAQ winning or leading in 90 of the province’s 125 ridings.
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The CAQ had 76 seats when the legislature was dissolved before the campaign.
In the Outaouais, only one of two incumbent Liberal MNAs held on to their seat: André Fortin in Pontiac, who won a third term. Fortin was elected with 43.8 per cent of the vote, compared to 24.9 per cent for CAQ rival Corinne Canuel-Jolicoeur, according to Elections Quebec.
Liberal Maryse Gaudreault, who had held the riding of Hull since winning the seat in a 2008 by-election, was defeated by the CAQ’s Suzanne Tremblay. Tremblay garnered 34.7 per cent of the vote compared to 25.9 per cent for Gaudreault, according to Elections Quebec.
Tremblay is the former president of an education union — Syndicat de l’enseignement de l’Outaouais.
Residents in the Hull riding have voted Liberal in provincial elections since 1956, with the exception of 1976 to 1981, when the riding was represented by the Parti Québécois’s Jocelyne Ouellette.
The three CAQ incumbent MNAs in the Outaouais were re-elected by considerable margins: Robert Bussière in Gatineau, Mathieu Lacombe in Papineau and Mathieu Lévesque in Chapleau. All three were first elected in 2018, snatching their ridings from the Liberals.
Bussière is a former mayor of the municipality of La Pêche and was warden at MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais. His Gatineau riding had been Liberal since 1962 until he won the seat.
Lacombe is a former journalist and news anchor who served as the minister of families in the previous Quebec government. Levesque is a lawyer. Both of their ridings had been held by the Liberals from 1981 to 2018.
In his victory speech, Premier Legault beamed as he spoke of a “historic” victory that saw his party elect a record number of women to the legislature, and outlined priorities for a second term that include education, tackling inflation and rebuilding a health system shattered by COVID-19. But he also acknowledged the divisiveness of a five-week campaign that saw heated debates over the economy, the environment and, especially, the number of immigrants the province should accept.
Despite a decline in both seats and popular vote, the Liberal party will retain official Opposition status. Leader Dominique Anglade appeared all smiles as she addressed supporters.
Monday’s results are likely to raise further questions about the first-past-the-post electoral system. The Liberal party managed to snag second-place status with fewer votes than either Quebec solidaire or the Parti Quebecois and with only about a percentage point more than the Conservatives, who failed to win a single seat.
with a file from the Canadian Press