Bloc Québécois holds on to one Montreal Island riding
Canadian Politics
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The Bloc Québécois captured the east-end La Pointe-de-l'Île riding early Tuesday morning, albeit with a smaller margin than in the two previous federal elections.
Incumbent Mario Beaulieu, who earned his fourth term as Member of Parliament for La Pointe-de-l'Île, acknowledged during the last days of the campaign that U.S. President Donald Trump's 51st state rhetoric and tariff threats against Canada were weighing on electors' minds.
'Certainly, we discuss the issue of Mr. Trump quite often,' Beaulieu said last week while talking about doing more door-to-door knocking in this campaign.
'I talk to people to reassure them and explain to them that it's important to defend Quebec's economic interests in the next trade agreement with the United States.'
Beaulieu had a 2,881-vote lead over the Liberal candidate Viviane Minko with 236 of 243 polling stations reporting.
Minko, who has a background working for non-profit community organizations, has been a member of the Liberal party's La Pointe-de-l'Île electoral district association since 2017. She served as its policy chair before the election. In her message to voters in this campaign, she emphasized her intention to support the middle class and small businesses and to protect the environment.
The Green party candidate in La Pointe-de-l'Île was Olivier Huard, who was sentenced to 90 days of house arrest on Monday for his role in blocking an east-end Montreal port terminal in 2022. He was also arrested for scaling the Jacques Cartier Bridge in October 2024.
Huard, whose sentence in the port terminal blockade also includes three years of probation and 240 hours of community service, had been juggling court dates during his election campaign.
The Bloc lost its only other seat on Montreal Island, in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. Liberal candidate Claude Guay handily beat incumbent Louis-Philippe Sauvé, who had won the riding for the Bloc in a close byelection in September.
La Pointe-de-l'Île includes the suburb of Montréal-Est, parts of the Montreal boroughs of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles and Mercier—Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
Over 80 per cent of the riding has French as a mother tongue, according to the 2016 census, while about 14 per cent has a non-French and non-English mother tongue. Spanish is the mother tongue of the second largest group in the riding, ahead of English.
La Pointe-de-l'Île was held by the Bloc Québécois from 1993 to 2011, but voters in the riding elected a New Democratic Party candidate in the 2011 'Orange Wave.' The Bloc took back the seat in 2015, electing Beaulieu.
Beaulieu won re-election in 2019 and 2021, with 46.8 per cent and 46.7 per cent of the vote, respectively. The Liberal opponent in those elections garnered 30.4 per cent and 32.3 per cent, respectively.
This time, Beaulieu had 43.2 per cent of the vote near the end of the night, compared to 37.4 per cent for Minko. Conservative Party of Canada candidate Violetta Potapova was running a distant third, with 13 per cent of the vote.
'At the beginning, we had more undecided voters than usual,' Beaulieu said last week.
'As the campaign progressed, some undecided voters returned to the Bloc Québécois. ...
'Our main message is that in the context of ... Mr. Trump's tariff threats, it's even more important to vote for the Bloc Québécois to protect our economic interests — electricity, aluminum, wood, aeronautics (and) everything that makes up the supply management for Quebec farmers. So, if we want to ensure that these sectors won't be weakened in the trade agreement that's will be signed, it's important that there be as many Bloc Québécois MPs as possible.'
Beaulieu said many of his volunteers hail from cultural communities, particularly immigrants who live and work in French. As MP, he holds a welcome ceremony in the riding for new Canadian citizens each year, he said.
'My argument, which works very well here, is that I ask them if the French question is important to them,' Beaulieu said of the voters in his riding.
'I explain to them that we are the only federal party that defends French in Quebec.'
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