Double digit gains in Quebec help Liberals win minority government at expense of the Bloc

The Liberals picked up 10 more seats in Quebec at the expense of the Bloc Québécois.

The Liberals held onto power after Monday night’s federal election and the gains it made in Quebec helped the party secure a minority government.

However, the Liberal victory came at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, which lost several seats, mainly in the regions.

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In the early morning hours Tuesday, the Bloc was defeated in eight Quebec ridings and was poised to lose another three in the province.

The biggest upset for the Bloc was in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, where Liberal candidate Claude Guay won more than twice as many votes as the Bloc incumbent Louis-Philippe Sauvé, who flipped the Liberal stronghold in a stunning byelection victory last year.

Guay secured more than 25,000 votes (50 per cent support) compared to the Bloc’s 10,000 votes (21 per cent support).

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Another Bloc defeat happened in Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville in Quebec’s Montérégie region, where Nathalie Provost had a 15 per cent lead for the Liberals.

Provost, a survivor of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre and a high-profile gun-control advocate, was a star Liberal candidate in a riding that saw voter turnout at 65 per cent — six per cent higher than the national average in the 2025 federal election.

At dissolution of parliament, the Liberals and the Bloc each had 33 seats in Quebec.

The Liberal Party won or was leading in 43 ridings in the province, while the Bloc dropped to 23.

The Liberals made gains across the province, including in the Laurentians, the North Shore, the South Shore and the regions between Montreal and Quebec City.

In a province where the French language is traditionally a key ballot box issue, it appears that Liberal leader Mark Carney’s imperfect French skills did not take centre stage in this election.

In Quebec, the Liberal Party made up for the lack of new seats it had hoped for in the 2021 election that saw former Justin Trudeau win a minority government with a seat count that remained unchanged heading into that election.

Monday, the Liberals were leading in the overnight hours in Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, which has been primarily Bloc since 1990, and bounced between Liberal (1953-1958 and 1963-1984) and Progressive Conservatives (1958-1963 and 1984-1990) candidates before that. The race was too close to call.

Early Tuesday morning, Liberal candidate Natilien Joseph was in a tight race with the Bloc’s Denis Trudel, elected in 2019, who was leading by fewer than 500 votes.

In Thérèse-De Blainville, north of Montreal, there was another upset for the party when Madeleine Chenette, Liberal candidate and Canadian Ambassador to the OECD, defeated incumbent Marie-Noëlle Closson by more than 6,400 votes.

In Mont-Saint-Bruno--L’Acadie, Liberal candidate Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba beat Bloc candidate Noémie Rouillard.

This new riding was represented by Bloc member Stéphane Bergeron when it was known as Montarville.

Liberal Candidate Linda Lapointe took Rivière-de-Mille-îles from Bloc candidate Luc Desilets; Pays-d’en-Haut, a riding in the Laurentians created by the latest electoral redistribution, was won by Liberal Timothy Watchorn.

It was also a tight race to keep Mount Royal, a Liberal stronghold.

In the end, longtime Liberal MP Anthony Housefather defeated the Conservative candidate, lawyer Neil Oberman, by 3,700 votes with 176 out of 204 poll reporting.

It wasn’t all wins for the Liberals, though, in the Liberal-Bloc rivalries.

In an upset for the Liberals, Diane Lebouthillier lost her seat to the Bloc by a difference of about 4,300 votes.

Former journalist and lawyer Alex Deschênes won with 45 per cent of the vote (21,503 votes), compared to the Liberals’ 38 per cent.

The Conservatives came in third with just under 7,000 votes.

The Liberals also lost to the NDP, which managed to hold onto its only seat in Quebec in Montreal’s Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

Alexandre Boulerice won a fifth mandate after getting more than 20,000 votes (40.5 per cent support), while the Liberals’ Jean-Sébastien Vallée won 15,778 votes (31 per cent support).

Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet was reelected in Beloeil—Chambly.

At a speech late Monday evening, Blanchet said despite his party’s losses in Quebec, the Bloc could hold the balance of power after the devastating outcome for the NDP across Canada.

“It’s possible that in the future history of Quebec and Canada, the issues we’ve identified could become resolutely unavoidable for the government of Canada,” Blanchet told supporters at Le National theatre in Montreal.

Blanchet, in his speech, said the night was one of mixed emotions.

“There were colleagues, candidates, people that I appreciated, who went to the front, and didn’t win their ridings,” he said.

With files from The Canadian Press.