By-election | Québec solidaire brings down the liberal bastion of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne

Québec solidaire will have a twelfth deputy: the lawyer Guillaume Cliche-Rivard wins his bet and brings down the strong Liberal castle of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne.

“Tonight, the people of the South West have chosen hope, tonight they have chosen change. For the first time in 35 years, Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne is changing color,” launched the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, in a room heated to the limit by this unequivocal victory.

Mr. Cliche-Rivard obtained 44.5% of the vote, against 29% for his Liberal opponent. He will succeed the former leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Dominique Anglade, who resigned in November 2022. The party’s co-spokesperson, Manon Massé, speaks of a “crushing” victory. “I can’t wait for Guillaume Cliche-Rivard to get up in the room and question the Minister of Immigration,” she added. To see such a convincing victory in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, you have to go back to 2014, when Marguerite Blais won the riding for the Liberals.

From 8 p.m., cries of joy and applause were heard at the solidarity rally while the first results already hinted at a victory for the lawyer specializing in immigration, while many believed that the fight would be close.

Mr. Cliche-Rivard was then welcomed in the middle of the evening to the shouts and applause of his supporters. “We won, we won,” chanted the crowd. In front of the public, the newly elected let out a sigh of relief and affirmed his desire to “continue to be a strong voice for inclusion and for social justice”.

The end of a castle

For the Liberal Party, it’s a shock. The reds had won all the elections in this riding since its creation in 1994. Despite the PLQ’s electoral thaw in 2022, former leader Dominique Anglade had retained it with a comfortable lead of 2,736 votes against Québec solidaire, but his resignation provoked a rematch between the two political parties.

Mr. Cliche-Rivard took advantage of this breach to defeat his Liberal opponent Christopher Baenninger, and this time it was he who obtained a comfortable lead of 2,758 votes. However, the PLQ could count on a fairly solid Anglophone base: 32.3% of voters in the Montreal riding say they speak English, compared to 13% in Quebec. But the disaffection of the French speakers was too strong.

Former minister and Liberal MP Gaétan Barrette described the situation as a “dismal failure”. “It will hurt the Liberal Party,” he said on TVA as he commented on election night.

The Liberal interim leader Marc Tanguay reacted to this defeat by extolling the “values ​​of the Liberal Party”, whose “relevance” was, according to him, confirmed with the electoral results. “Our DNA will not change,” he said. However, he recognizes that a way will have to be found to embody these values ​​in 2023 and “translate them into concrete proposals” for citizens. “This work will continue at the PLQ,” he said at a press briefing.

QS had done all it could to dislodge the Liberals from the riding. Parliamentary Leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois made multiple appearances there. The candidate Guillaume Cliche-Rivard had a run-in machine since he had presented himself against the ex-chief Dominique Anglade.

A resident of the riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne for seven years, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard is a lawyer and has been defending the rights of immigrants with precarious status for ten years. The National Assembly is not totally unknown to him. In 2019, he had engaged in a few passes of arms against the caquiste Simon Jolin-Barrette, who was then Minister of Immigration. Mr. Cliche-Rivard, he held the position of president of the Quebec Association of Lawyers in Immigration Law, and denounced the reform of CAQ immigration.

As for the other political parties, the Parti Québécois (Andréanne Fiola – 11.4%) slipped into third place ahead of the Coalition avenir Québec (Victor Pelletier – 9.36%). The Conservative Party of Quebec (Lucien Koty) obtained only 2.7%.