Liberal gains in Quebec help clinch federal election victory
The Liberals were elected or leading in 43 seats in the province
With some seats still too close to call as of early Tuesday morning, the Liberals appeared poised to win 43 seats in Quebec. In 2015, when the party won a sweeping majority under leader Justin Trudeau, they won 40.
It was a significant gain for the party, which won 35 seats in the 2021 federal election. The seats helped the Liberals secure a government in Ottawa. As of 7:00 a.m., it was still unclear if the Liberals will form a minority or majority government.
In his victory speech, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government would work toward uniting Canadians, and he mentioned Quebec specifically.
"We will ensure that Quebec will continue to prosper in a strong Canada," Carney said in French.
Many of the Liberals' Quebec seat gains came in the greater Montreal area, which turned a deep shade of red as election results began to pour in Monday evening.
It's a region that normally favours the Liberals; many Montreal ridings consistently support the party, but Monday's federal election brought a more significant wave of support in the formerly Bloc Québécois ridings on the South Shore, among other areas.
La Prairie-Atateken, formerly held by the Bloc, swung Liberal, while Longueuil-Saint-Hubert was also projected to flip. The Liberals also held onto their other South Shore ridings, Châteauguay-Les Jardins-de-Napierville and Longueuil-Charles-LeMoyne.
On the island of Montreal, the electoral map looked largely unchanged from the 2021 election: a sea of Liberal seats punctuated by one orange NDP seat belonging to the party's sole Quebec representative, Alexandre Boulerice, and one light-blue Bloc seat on the eastern tip of the island in the La Pointe-de-l'Île riding.
There was one change: LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, a riding in Montreal's Sud-Ouest borough that swung Bloc in a recent byelection, oscillated decisively the other direction. Claude Guay, the Liberal candidate, won the riding with more than 50 per cent of the vote.
And the Mount-Royal riding, traditionally a Liberal stronghold, broke for incumbent Anthony Housefather after initial results showed Conservative challenger Neil Oberman ahead.
Elsewhere in the greater Montreal area, in Laval, Que., all four ridings stayed Liberal. Just north of that, the Thérèse-De Blainville riding, which had previously gone Bloc, was another Liberal flip.
The Liberals also picked up the seat in Trois-Rivières, which had previously been held by the Bloc.
They also picked up the Les Pays-d'en-Haut seat, which was created as part of redistribution of ridings in 2023, and Mandy Gull-Masty, former grand chief of the Cree Nation Government in Quebec, won in her riding of Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, a Bloc stronghold, though some people in the riding had reported voting problems.
In 2021, electors in Quebec sent 35 Liberal MPs, 32 Bloc Québécois MPs, 10 Conservative MPs and one NDP MP to Ottawa.
As of 7:00 a.m., the Conservatives were holding serve in the ridings that have recently voted Tory, including in the Beauce riding and ridings on the outskirts of Quebec City and in the southeastern corner of the province.
One riding, however, was too close to call as of early Tuesday morning. Conservative candidate Gabriel Hardy held a narrow lead over Bloc incumbent Caroline Desbiens in the riding of Montmorency-Charlevoix.
But elsewhere in the province, it was not all positive for the Liberals. The Bloc managed to unseat former Liberal minister Diane Lebouthillier in Gaspésie-Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine-Listuguj.
How will Ottawa work with Quebec?
Speaking a little after midnight to supporters at Le National, an event venue in downtown Montreal, Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said his party ran its campaign with "heart" and "passion."
He said his party constantly highlighted issues that matter to Quebecers, like supply management for dairy farmers and the province's aluminum industry.
And he alluded to the Bloc playing a major role in how the next Parliament will function.
"It's possible that in Quebec and Canada's near future, the issues that we have identified become resolutely unavoidable," he said.
There were a lot of big issues that were put aside this election with so much focus being on US President Donald Trump, according to Stéphanie Chouinard, an associate professor in the department of political science at Royal Military College.
During the campaign, Carney proved to be fluent in economics, but when it came to other topics, he was a lot less comfortable, she said.
"He is not going to govern on Trump tariffs forever. There will be other issues. And culture is definitely going to be one of them. Language as well," she said.
Carney will face significant challenges in day-to-day government from these other topics and that's going to come sooner than he'd like, she said.
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