The yellow walls of the Auberge de jeunesse de Tadoussac speak. “Yes, 66.32%; No, 33.68%,” they say here.
The last referendum on Quebec sovereignty may have taken place nearly 27 years ago, but the North Shore — and Tadoussac in particular — still has independence fever… and PQ, assures retired forest engineer Daniel Tout pointing to the wall behind him. “The CAQ will not pass here,” he said confidently.
The independence party has represented René-Lévesque and Duplessis for 19 years (2003) and 46 years (1976) respectively.
However, the statistical electoral projection model Qc125 predicts that the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) will smash the Parti Québécois (PQ) monopoly on the North Shore in the next election.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s team took time to recruit its candidates in the region. Jeff Dufour Tremblay (René-Lévesque) and Marilou Vanier (Duplessis) will have the heavy task of preventing the two North Shore castles from falling to the benefit of the CAQ — Martin Ouellet (René-Lévesque) and Lorraine Richard (Duplessis) having both agreed not to seek another term.
Their main opponents: the caquists Yves Montigny (René-Lévesque) and Kateri Champagne Jourdain (Duplessis).
“The whole of the North Shore, there, it’s going to stay PQ,” repeats Daniel, under his NYC cap, while crossing the lobby of the inn at a rapid pace. Of course, that’s not everyone’s opinion.
At a table in a Tim Hortons in Baie-Comeau, Gemma Lévesque says she is convinced that the days of the PQ on the North Shore are numbered. “René Lévesque, I voted for him once,” she admits, a “Saint-Jean-Baptiste blue” cup in her hand. Strangely, “nobody says” in the region that he supports the PQ, she points out, alongside two retirees from Resolute Forest Products, Gabriel “Gaby” Chouinard (her husband) and Richard Gendron (her friend). “I say to myself: how is it [que les péquistes sont] passed all these years? »
Gaby Chouinard looks favorably on Yves Montigny’s candidacy in René-Lévesque, but it is the work of Premier François Legault that encourages him to support the CAQ on October 3. “Legault, he scored good points with the way he conducted himself during the pandemic. He earned my respect,” he says. “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for him. »
It’s almost 9 p.m. A young waitress approaches the trio of coffee drinkers shyly. “Monsieur Gaby, do you want free donuts?” she asks, before turning off the lights of the fast food giant. “I’m really sorry,” she adds, escorting the retirees to the exit.
“The PQ have changed”
” I think the timing is perfect for me,” says Yves Montigny, a former PQ player recycled as a CAQ candidate, in an interview with The duty in the heart of Baie-Comeau. “The PQ have changed. The world tells me: “We are no longer there”. […] The paper mill is closed. There, the leader of the PQ will come here, then he will talk about independence all day, “predicts the one who, in 2015, had participated in the race for the nomination of the PQ in René-Lévesque… against a certain Martin Ouellet , now an outgoing PQ MP.
Martin Ouellet remembers having, at the time, welcomed the candidacy of Mr. Montigny, former founding member of the Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ), as a “surprise”. “We never thought he was a PQ,” he says.
Yves Montigny may have won his municipal elections with 68% of the vote in 2017, then having been elected by acclamation last fall, he remains less popular than the PQ in the region, insists the outgoing MP for René-Lévesque. “The power, the opposition, people don’t pay much attention to that here. What they want is someone who carries their voice. […] The election campaign will be used to take stock, and I don’t have a lot of gains at home on the CAQ side, ”he said.
In Rivière-Pentecôte, in the neighboring riding of Duplessis, Mario Hanley does not cut corners: regardless of the government, it’s all the same. “We are always left out on the North Shore,” he breathes in front of his truck, in the shade of a white wooden church erected a few feet from a rocky escarpment.
Marcel Bourque, 87, has lived his entire life in the small village of Baie-Johan-Beetz, located halfway between Havre-Saint-Pierre and Natashquan, which is celebrating its 150e birthday this summer. He only saw one prime minister. “Mr. Lévesque came here, then I was mayor at the time,” he says. Since then, no head of Quebec government has made the trip, says Mr. Bourque.
And Marjolain Dufour is the last deputy from the area to have defended the interests of the Côte-Nord in the Council of Ministers. He did so during the 18 months of the Marois government (2012-2014).
“Everyone votes [Parti] quebecois, tabarnak. But it’s the CAQ that has the power, “says impatient Claude Gravel on the porch of his house, a few steps from Route 138.