Analysis: After months of campaigning, Quebec Liberals will elect their new leader on Saturday

Montreal Gazette

a day ago

Quebec Politics
By
QUEBEC — It has been a long process, often overshadowed by other events, but Quebec's Liberals will finally get their new leader on Saturday.
About 600 Liberals are expected to roll into the Quebec City convention centre this weekend to witness the election and the first moves of a successor to Dominique Anglade, who quit the leadership in November 2022.
She left politics after the Liberals obtained their worst electoral score ever in the Oct. 3, 2022 general election, which gave Premier François Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec a second mandate in office.
Many Liberals will arrive having already voted electronically or by phone for one of the five candidates in the leadership race. Others, who chose to wait, will cast their ballots on the site of the Centre des congrès, where the leadership convention is being held.
The candidates get one last time to make their pitch in speeches Saturday morning at 10 a.m.
The party has not provided an update on the percentage of votes cast to date, but sources said voting has been brisk. There have been no technical problems with the voting system.
The actual result of the vote will be announced around 4:15 p.m. Saturday followed by a speech by the winner.
For the party, the vote will mark the end of a long leadership process that kicked off officially in January but in reality started rolling informally long before that.
In June 2024, former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre was the first to say he wanted the job, followed in August by Charles Milliard, a pharmacist and former president of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec.
Other candidates followed, defying early predictions that few contenders would emerge to lead a party so apparently out of step with Quebecers. After Milliard, Marc Bélanger, a lawyer specializing in international taxation, hopped into the race followed by former federal Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez in September.
Beauce farmer and economist Mario Roy quietly entered the race in January by informing his local newspaper.
In March, the final candidate to step forward was former Roberval Liberal MNA Karl Blackburn, who had considered running earlier, then decided not to because of health reasons. Given a clean bill of health after the Christmas holidays, he entered the race March 30, rapidly collecting the necessary signatures and the $40,000 entry fee.
In theory, that would have meant six candidates in the race, but in February after the Liberal party's election committee said he did not fulfil all the requirements, Coderre dropped out of the race, leaving five people on the ballot for the June 14 vote. Coderre left complaining he was unfairly treated.
The official campaign, which included a total of six debates, kicked off Jan. 13 but was rapidly overshadowed by a series of events out of the control of the Liberals.
In delivering his end-of-session greetings June 6 in the legislature, interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay, in his last hours in the role before being replaced June 14, used humour to say some times even the best-laid plans do not always pan out.
'What extraordinary timing (for the race),' he joked. 'Trump is elected, Trump imposes tariffs, the federal Liberals have a leadership race, there is a federal election, the Canadiens make the series, the Pope dies, a Pope is elected.
'June 14? Habemus papam in the Quebec Liberal Party. We can't wait, we can't wait.'
The candidates, nevertheless, cranked up their campaign machinery. While there was less of a buzz in the general population, Liberals, including many veterans who had not been seen in years, showed up for the debates.
Over the campaign, Rodriguez picked up the support of the greatest number of Liberal caucus members with a total of 10 MNAs on his team. Milliard got five. The other candidates got none.
During the debates, it became apparent the five candidates had similar policy positions — with nuances — but where they differed was in their backgrounds and personalities.
Rodriguez, who was perceived as the front-runner in the race, was often the main punching bag of the other candidates during debates. Blackburn, in particular, questioned whether it was a good idea to have a former federal MP from the Trudeau years lead the party when it desperately needs to woo francophone nationalists back into the fold.
Rodriguez countered saying since he was the best known of the candidates, the one with the most real political experience and that he stood the best chance of beating Legault and the Parti Québécois in the 2026 election.
The race helped the Liberals another way. As of the cutoff date to buy a membership and be eligible to vote in the leadership election, party membership had grown to 20,495 from an all-time low of about 10,000.
So who will win? It is almost impossible to predict given the voting system in place.
The party has opted for a points system with each of Quebec's 125 ridings assigned 3,000 points. Of the 3,000 points, 1,000 are in the hands of youth members ages 25 and under. To win, a candidate has to obtain a majority of the 375,000 points.
If no candidates gets a majority on the first ballot, a second is held between the two candidates with the most votes. That's why candidates were working hard until the last minute in the hopes of wooing Liberals into making their candidate their second or third choice.
But even after winning over the party, the winner faces other challenges in the coming weeks, starting with rebuilding a party on the outs with voters.
There is also the matter of a seat in the legislature. None of the candidates are elected. While the new leader might decide to wait until 2026 to run for office, a seat in the National Assembly would give the person greater visibility because the Liberals form the official opposition.
There is currently one vacant seat, Arthabaska, but no date has been set for a byelection. The riding was won in 2022 by the CAQ. The PQ, Quebec Conservatives and Québec solidaire have named their candidates, but the CAQ and Liberals have not.
In theory, the new leader could run there, but the risk of losing is probably too high. The last time Arthabaska voted Liberal was 2008.
There is another option. The winner could appeal to a member of the Liberal caucus to step aside and spark a byelection in a riding with deeper Liberal roots.