The Coalition avenir Québec has made its nest in the Des Oiseaux district, in Saguenay, obtaining its best scores there in the elections of October 3, 2022. The duty has paid for a trip to the land of caquists.
Friday November 18. A deafening silence reigns over Chicoutimi. Between rue des Jaseurs, rue des Cigognes and rue des Albatros, rare signs of life: the passage of a van, the sound of a snowblower in motion… The Quartier des Oiseaux, bordered to the east by the Rivière du Moulin, is freshly covered in its first white coat of the cold season.
A month and a half earlier, a light blue wave flooded the area. In one polling division in particular, no less than 80% of voters gave their confidence to the CAQ candidate Andrée Laforest on polling day. This is more than anywhere else in Quebec, and this is no exception. The CAQ received strong support from all four corners of the district: 62%, 71%, 76%…
Crossed in the Rivière-du-Moulin park, Lise, André, Lisette and their walking companions venture under the snow-covered pines for a health excursion. The duty is invited and questions the eight hikers in turn. Who did you vote for last month? The answer is unanimous: the CAQ. It is the natural choice, they point out.
“I was once a Liberal, but the party was in quite a decline this year,” says Lise Gagnon, a resident of the Des Oiseaux district. She will not be the only one to hold a speech like this that day. ” The program [de la CAQ] is interesting. [François] Legault is very, very active and sensible. And also, the age of the people who live here… There are a lot of people aged 55 and over in the neighborhood”, analyzes Mme Gagnon when asked about the electoral habits of his neighbours.
Hegemony
The Des Oiseaux district is a microcosm of the Chicoutimi riding, which, had it not been for a polling division in the city center that gave its approval to Québec solidaire, would have been entirely blue CAQ on October 3. With 62.3% of the vote, Minister Andrée Laforest secured the largest majority of her party’s 90 MNAs. This is more than its leader, François Legault (58.6%).
” [Mais] Mme Laforest, did she have to force herself to do what she did? I wouldn’t think so. She was well supported by the people of the region, ”underlines the Chicoutimian Gontran Allard at the microphone of the To have to.
Volunteer in charge of the exit of vote for the CAQ, Dominique Girard notes that the district of the Birds was the subject of a door-to-door blitz throughout the campaign. “We had volunteers really on the mark. They knocked, they spoke to the world. Especially in the neighborhood,” she says. Among the fifteen voters encountered along the rows of almost identical houses in the sector on Friday, only two had not supported the CAQ in the last elections. One of them gave his vote to the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ). Another, in Quebec solidaire.
Sébastien Guérard “hesitated a lot” before giving his support to Éric Duhaime’s PCQ. “The CAQ, personally, I was not completely satisfied with their management of COVID-19. If it hadn’t been for that, I would probably have voted for them,” he explains, sitting on the steps of his home, a Rio Tinto sweater on his back.
“For the economy of the region, I don’t think the parties are very different. The only thing that comes to mind is GNL Quebec. There, you could have said that the conservatives would have helped on that side, ”adds the resident of the Des Oiseaux district.
In July 2021, the CAQ government relied on a report from the Bureau of Public Hearings on the Environment to reject the Énergie Saguenay project, from GNL Québec. This natural gas liquefaction plant was to be built in the middle of the Saguenay port complex and would create 300 jobs in the region.
Legault, we trust him. […] We’re going to give the runner a chance.
During the election campaign, the Conservative candidate in Chicoutimi, Éric Girard – not to be confused with the minister of the same name – repeatedly pleaded for the resurrection of the project canceled by the CAQ. He came fourth in the constituency, with 8.4% of the vote.
“In favour” of GNL Québec, voter André Bouchard still voted for the CAQ this year. “The Conservative Party is for the project, but, on the other hand, there are things that I like less about them. They don’t have a good leader. They were too opposed to sanitary measures, to vaccines. The government did not do this for fun, ”says the pensioner.
The PQ disappears from the map
Before the arrival on the political scene of Andrée Laforest, the residents of Chicoutimi had PQ fever. The Parti québécois (PQ) elected four deputies in a row between 1973 and 2018. Among them, former minister Marc-André Bédard and his son, Stéphane.
However, the role of political education in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean is shrinking. The PQ candidate in Chicoutimi this year, Alice Villeneuve, won 14.2% of the vote in the last ballot. In the riding next door, Jonquière, considered the last PQ stronghold in the region, caquiste Yannick Gagnon razed everything on October 3.
Before 2018, Lisette St-Pierre voted for the PQ for a long time. “I believed in that a lot. But there, they spoke less and less of it, of the independence of Quebec. Looks like it wasn’t in their primary term anymore. […] Quietly, I settled down, then the CAQ appeared, ”she says.
Maurice Gagné and Rita Tremblay, them, “were red” until 2018. “We are not ‘dyed’ as before”, says Mme Tremblay, sitting on a sofa in her home located in the heart of the Des Oiseaux district.
“Legault, we trust him. […] We’re going to give the runner a chance,” added Mr. Gagné, his voice partly buried by the sound of his television connected to LCN.
In 2018, it was the village of Saint-Jules, in Beauce, which had been crowned capital of the caquisme, with 85% of support for the party of François Legault. Four years later, the village almost fell into the hands of the PCQ: the formation obtained a percentage point less than the CAQ (46% against 47%).
Like what a mandate can change everything.