Québec Solidaire's youngest MNA credits grasp of region for unseating Liberal minister

When Guy Leclerc, the Québec Solidaire candidate for Rouyn-Noranda-Témiscamingue, called up Émilise Lessard-Therrien last spring to ask if she'd consider taking his place, at first, she rejected the idea.

The 26-year-old organic farmer was hard at work establishing a vegetable and grain operation on land she and her husband bought two years ago.

And, oh yes — she'd given birth to a daughter just a few months before.

"I thought with a newborn, under the circumstances, it just wasn't possible," said Lessard-Therrien, a municipal councillor in her hometown of Duhamel-Ouest.

Then, after discussing the offer with her husband and other family members, she concluded the best way to defend the people in the region was to take the plunge.

"We said, 'We have nothing to lose, everything to win,'" she told host Susan Campbell on CBC's Quebec AM. "And it happened."

Indeed it did: Lessard-Therrien unseated a Liberal cabinet minister, outpolling Luc Blanchette by 4,557 votes.

A tight race

While well ahead of the incumbent forestry, parks and wildlife minister, Lessard-Therrien's victory was not ensured until the final ballots were counted.

The lead seesawed back and forth all night between left-leaning Québec Solidaire and the right-of-centre Coalition Avenir Québec.

Lessard-Therrien was the last candidate in the province to be declared a winner by Élections Québec, beating the CAQ's Jérémy Bélanger by 506 votes.

"I'm always happy when life surprises us, so I'm very proud," said Lessard-Therrien.

'Mining and environment can work together'

In the end, the youngest MNA in the Québec Solidaire 10-person caucus credits her victory to this: Lessard-Therrien knows the region she grew up in and knows what it needs to move forward.

Having her ear to the ground and being involved in municipal politics and local issues served her well, she says.

"Here it's a small community — and I was very involved — so I think people trust me." 

Mining and forestry are the main employers in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, so for a candidate who campaigned on the need to address climate change to prove popular may seem counterintuitive.

But Lessard-Therrien said the fact that the region depends on natural resources makes it all the more important to promote clean energy and other environmental values.

"We say it's not incompatible. Mining and environment can work together."

Lessard-Therrien said the economy will continue to be driven by extraction industries, which is why she will push to increase royalties.

"We don't want the moon — it's just to have a little bit of what the region gives to the mining [companies]," she says.

Those funds could be used to invest in other economic projects, Lessard-Therrien argues, for example, supporting small businesses.

"Mining is not forever. It will last 15 to 20 years, and then it's gone," she says.  As a new parent, she wants to see lasting projects in the region for her children.

No slaughter house for local beef

Most products leave the region and are transformed elsewhere, sometimes south of the border, she says: a lost opportunity for workers in the region.

''We raise beef here, but we don't have a slaughter house,'' she points out.

Shipping cattle away to be butchered, then trucking back cuts of meat increases the environmental footprint.

''It's also true for the wood: we don't have a lot of transformation here, and it's all shipped to the U.S.,'' says Lessard-Therrien, who is wary of the instability of Canada's trade partnerships.

But adding more jobs means finding workers to fill them, and the labour shortage in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region is acute.

"We have lots of jobs here, but nobody to take them," she laments.

Lessard-Therrien said as the QS MNA, she'll try to attract people to the region by improving the overall quality of life, offering more cultural activities and finding other ways to retain young families.

"People are moving away because we don't have a pool anymore," she said.

As for her own future, she said it's still "a strange thought" to think she'll be commuting back and forth between her home and the National Assembly in Quebec City, some 900 kilometres away.

"But it will become a reality very soon," she said. She's ready for the challenge.