Premier François Legault is reconsidering his decision to backtrack on a major campaign promise following the CAQ’s defeat in a byelection Monday night.
The party lost its seat in the Quebec City riding of Jean-Talon to the Parti Québécois, with the former getting just over 21 per cent of the vote.
At the heart of the issue, Legault believes, is his government’s decision last spring to remove the highway portion of the long-anticipated Third Link tunnel connecting Quebec City to its South Shore, making it exclusive to public transit.
“I think that a government has to respect and listen to the population so maybe we didn’t do that enough in Quebec City,” Legault told reporters at the national assembly Tuesday. “I want to put everything on the table to make sure we do a better job for them.”
Legault says his government will be consulting with Quebec City-area residents to see where they stand on the Third Link tunnel decision. He says he’s open to potentially reviving the project, despite environmental concerns and studies that suggested there was no longer a need for it.
Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, says this latest decision could do the premier more harm than good.
“I’m not sure that another flip-flop in that file will actually help them that much,” Béland said. “I suppose they want to show they want to listen to the people, but in that specific riding, the Third Link was not that big an issue, actually. So, it’s more about the trust people have in the government in general.”
Béland said reopening the door to the Third Link could actually draw more criticism from voters outside the Quebec City region instead.
Still, he adds, there are still a few years to go before the next provincial election, so all parties will have plenty of time to recover before then.
The CAQ was not the only party to suffer a major loss on Monday. Québec Solidaire, which came in a close second in Jean-Talon last fall, came in third this time with around 17.5 per cent of the vote.
Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois believes low voter turnout among younger voters is to blame.
“Young people voted half as much as voters from 65 years old and over, and we knew it was going to be our main challenge,” Nadeau-Dubois said. “One of the goals of Québec Solidaire is to build those bridges towards other generations.”
The riding was a Liberal stronghold for decades until the CAQ won the seat in another byelection in 2019. This time, the party received less than nine per cent of the vote — a major defeat following the party’s loss in Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne last March.
Interim leader Marc Tanguay insists Monday night’s results are not a “fatal blow.”
“It’s a defeat. A defeat is a defeat,” Tanguay said.
He says he still has hope his party will rebuild by the time the next provincial election comes, but says it will take a permanent leader to do that — and the party’s leadership race has not yet started.
As for the Parti Québécois, Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is hoping having Pascal Paradis as the party’s fourth MNA will allow them to get more allotted time in question period. They are in negotiations to obtain one question daily.
“We’re building something solid right now with Pascal Paradis,” St-Pierre Plamondon said. “And we have time ahead of us to keep on building with solidity.”