Cheers house, quebec liberals secured 65/125 seats, counting still going on, but majority gained by liberals, no more separatist orthodox party
VAL D’OR — In the final moments of a campaign that saw him catch his share of lucky breaks, Philippe Couillard left nothing to chance Sunday.
The Liberal leader packed his staff and media entourage into an 18-seat jet and took to the sky for one final blitz in Quebec’s faraway regions.
For most of the 33-day election, his opponents concentrated their efforts in the swath of ridings between Quebec City and Montreal.
Couillard, though, proved something of a grinder as the weeks wore on, hitting 28 districts — most held by his Parti Québécois rivals — in the final three days of the campaign.
A Liberal victory seemed improbable at the beginning of March. The party was poised to sit in opposition while polls predicted a PQ majority government.
But a series of gaffes by Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois paved the way for Couillard to emerge as the front-runner heading into Monday’s election.
At every turn, the Liberal leader has used an early slip by Marois’s pro-independence party to sow fears of another sovereignty vote, framing the election as a choice between another divisive referendum and his plan to create 250,000 jobs.
Couillard repeated that tactic at the Bonaventure airport in the Gaspé region Sunday, but also focused on a message of hope. People packed into the tiny building as Couillard promised to bring back the “dignity” that comes with jobs.
Unemployment rates in the Gaspé are twice the national average. Both the PQ and Liberals are promising to invest $350 million in public funds to build a cement factory that will bring an estimated 400 jobs to the area.
The factory isn’t without its detractors, as it will become the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in Quebec’s industrial sector.
“I come from a region just like this,” Couillard said, referring to his home in the Lac Saint-Jean region. “I know you don’t want us to just come here and tell you what’s happening in Quebec City. It’s our job to go to Quebec City and tell them what’s happening up here.”
Liberal candidate Damien Arsenault won a byelection in Bonaventure in 2012, but was ousted when the PQ came to power nine months later. Arsenault is a short, wiry man who drives a school bus in the Gaspé. He says he has a good feeling about his chances this time around.
After Couillard wandered through the crowd, he grabbed Arsenault, leaned into him and quietly said: “We’re going to win.”
The Liberal leader then walked across the tarmac and into the plane before heading across the Gulf of St-Lawrence to Sept-Îles and the Duplessis riding, a PQ fortress.
“All the PQ wants to do is talk about a referendum and a divisive charter,” he told a small crowd inside the airport’s terminal. “Last time I checked, there’s not one job a referendum or a charter will create.”
If Couillard has been able to campaign hard and stay on message, it’s at least in part because of the PQ’s gaffes.
Things began to unravel early for the PQ when Pierre Karl Péladeau, the party’s star candidate in St-Jérôme, exclaimed he wanted to make Quebec a country.
The mere thought of a referendum shook voter confidence in the PQ, who fell behind in the polls that week. The party never regained the lead it squandered that day.
Because the PQ stumbled out of the gate, it took much of the spotlight away from Couillard, who had struggled to find his footing in the election’s first days.
As Marois played defence, Couillard overcame his awkward demeanour and trimmed back the lengthy stump speeches of early March. Now, the Liberal leader seems to have settled into his role, exuding a quiet confidence that was missing only weeks ago.
In Sept-Îles, the Liberal leader said he’s going to bring a new kind of politics to Quebec City. It may have been a tough sell before the election, given that the Liberal government of Jean Charest was defeated on the heels of corruption scandals.
The road ahead won’t be an easy one for the Liberals. First, they have to win an election that could result in a Liberal minority. That would mean mending fences after a campaign marred by attacks and counterattacks between parties.
There’s also the matter of the still-simmering allegations of corruption dating back to the Charest years. Last week, a media consortium obtained court documents related to a 2013 police raid on Liberal party headquarters. The court filings outline the findings of a police investigation.
The contents of those documents were placed under publication ban, but they’ll be unsealed only days after the election.
On the plane, as the campaign rumbled along 20,000 feet above the ground, Couillard didn’t appear fazed by any of that. Next on the agenda was a stop in the mining town of Val d’Or, where the Liberals would pitch their Plan Nord mining strategy, before ending the campaign in the Roberval riding that Couillard hopes to take Monday.