Liberals lose a seat to the Bloc Québécois in byelection

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suffered another devastating byelection blow with the loss of a second Liberal stronghold, this one to the Bloc Québécois in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun.

Voters went to the polls Monday in the Montreal riding as well as in Winnipeg's Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP retained its long-held seat after a tough race against the Conservatives.

Trudeau already faced calls from party faithful to resign as leader after unexpectedly losing Toronto—St. Paul’s to the Conservatives in a byelection this past June.

Longtime Liberal supporter and strategist Andrew Perez called this new loss "yet another nail in Justin Trudeau’s coffin."

While byelections aren't usually credited with much significance on Parliament Hill, the votes in Winnipeg and Montreal were viewed as bellwethers of the political shifts happening in Canada.

"If Trudeau’s Liberals can’t hold this safe seat, it will spell even bigger trouble for the party’s prospects in Quebec and across Canada in a critical election year," Perez said in a statement before the final vote. 

Bloc Québécois supporters in Montreal shouted and jumped up and down so hard the floor shook at news of their victory, some with Quebec flags draped around their shoulders.

The Bloc was locked in a tight three-way race with the Liberals and the NDP right up until the final poll was reported.

"We are here and we work hard because we believe in the interests of Quebec and we believe in independence," the Bloc candidate Louis-Philippe Sauvé said before the final votes were counted.

Elections Canada reported all 187 polls early Tuesday, showing the Bloc won the seat just 248 votes ahead of the Liberals. 

The Montreal seat opened up when former justice minister David Lametti left politics.

Liberal ministers visited the area several times as the party worked hard to keep the riding it has held for decades.

The Bloc's deputy House leader Christine Normandin said no one would have expected the Bloc to do well in the longtime Liberal stronghold at the start of the campaign.

"Any way the campaign would have gone, we could only win, we had nothing to lose," she said before the results were in.

"Seeing tonight that it is a tight race, in itself for us, it’s a win. And it shows that there is support for what the Bloc does and the issues that we’re bringing to the House of Commons."

The NDP also took heart from the tight race. The New Democrats are not usually a contender in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but their candidate, Craig Sauvé, jockeyed back and forth for first place with the Liberals and Bloc all night.

"If the NDP is competitive in Montreal we're going to win seats in Montreal, we're going to have great candidates in Montreal, and Montrealers are going to see more NDP MPs at the next election," Sauvé told his supporters earlier in the night. 

Montrealer Graham Juneau said that despite all the campaigning, he and many of his friends are "relatively disengaged."

He opted to vote for no one, to make a point about “a lack of confidence in the political establishment in Canada."

"At least amongst my peers, there hasn’t been a groundswell of enthusiasm for any of the particular parties," he said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is keen to leapfrog the Liberals and position himself as the only viable, progressive alternative to Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives.

He and his candidate, Leila Dance, managed to fend off the Conservatives' aggressive campaign in Winnipeg.

Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditional NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.

The NDP won the night with 48.1 per cent of the vote. But Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds managed to grow the Tories' share of the vote from 28 per cent in the 2021 general election to 44 per cent in Monday's byelection. 

With several polls still to be counted, Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.

Singh took a political gamble on signing a pact with Trudeau in 2022 to prevent an early election in exchange for progress on NDP priorities.

While that deal has yielded a national dental care program, legislation to ban replacement workers and a bill that would underpin a future pharmacare program, the results haven't translated to gains in the national polls.

Singh pulled out of that deal just weeks ago in a bid to distance his party from the Liberals and try to make the next election a two-way race between himself and Poilievre.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.