'Huge change' as CAQ stakes claim to Outaouais
Liberals lose in Gatineau for 1st time since 1962
The Outaouais, for decades a virtual lock for Liberal candidates running in Quebec elections, has shown it's not immune from changing political tides by electing three MNAs from the Coalition Avenir Qubec.
The CAQ won a majority government, marking the first time in decades that neither the Liberals nor the Parti Qubcois will be the province's government.
The five ridings in the Outaouais had all been solidly Liberal for decades prior to Monday's vote, but three changed hands moving to the CAQ.
The riding of Chapleau is now represented by Mathieu Lvesque from theCAQ.
The party also won Gatineau with former La Pche mayor Robert Bussire taking the seat the Liberals have held since 1962.
The party's candidateMathieu Lacombe won the seat in Papineau.
The Liberals held two seats in the region:Maryse Gaudreault in Hull and Andr Fortin in Pontiac.
Lacombe took 47.3 per cent of the vote up against Liberal incumbent Alexandre Irac, who had just 23.1 per cent of the vote. The Liberals had held Papineau since 1981.
Lacombe said his party offered change that simply was never available until now.
"For the last 40 years there was no choice, there was only the Liberals and the PQ," he said.
He said the Outaouais would have a strong voice in the national assembly.
"People feel like they were taken for granted for a lot of years, so now it is time for change."
Lvesquesaid health care, education and making Highway 50 more safe were the top issues he heard from voters in his east Gatineau riding.
New opposition
Fortin said the Liberals will hold the CAQ to account for the next four years, while also renewing their party.
"It is time to have some new faces in the Liberal party, a new message, a new way of connecting with voters and we will have four years to work on that," he said.
The CAQ ran on a platform that included a pledge to cut immigration levels and force new immigrants to pass values and language tests or face removal from the province.
Fortin said his party would stand strongly opposed to that measure.
"We will fight to ensure always that a Quebecer is a Quebecer is a Quebecer," he said.
Qubec Solidaire moved into third place across the region in all five ridings.
What it could mean
"It's a huge change," said Gatineau Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin on CBCRadio'sOttawa Morning.
"We felt there was a will for change, but very rarely that will for change reaches us in western Quebec,. But it did spectacularly."
Pedneaud-Jobin said he can work with Legault to improve health care in the region, which he said even business leaders acknowledge is the area's number one need.
He said the region now has two strong opposition MNAs now in Fortin and Gaudreault.
"It's an interesting guarantee we'll be heard," he said.
The mayor of Chelsea, Que., in the Gatineau riding, said she'd been hearing concerns over health care and education leading up to the election.
"We're going to have a very strong voice [with Bussire] for our concerns," CarylGreen said. "He really knows the needs of the municipalities."
That knowledge includes anglophone rights, she said, with some western Quebec communities splitevenly between French and English speakers.
Linton Garner,executive director of the Regional Association of West Quebecers, said his group worries about access to English language education and health-care services under a CAQgovernment.
"There's a certain amount of uneaseamongst the English speaking community, particularly in terms of what it means for the future of school boards," Garner said.
The CAQhadpromised to abolish school boards and replace them with what it calls "service centres," a change the party said would both save money and grant schools greater autonomy.
But Garner said he wants assurances the change won't infringe on the constitutional rights of Quebec's English speakers.
"We're going to ask what provisions are there going to be for the English-speaking communityin order for it to be able to maintain its management and control of its educational system," Garner said.
The CAQ had promised $6 billion over five years to renovate, expand and build schools.
Another of the new governing party's promises was to build a new hospital in an unspecified location in the Outaouais.
Gilles Aub, a former Parti Qubcoiscandidate in Hull and current spokesperson for local advocacy groupquit Outaouais, wants it to be clustered with an existing hospital like the new CHUM hospital complex in Montreal.
He's also hoping theCAQwill addressresearch showing the Outaouais is funded less than other similarly-sized regions of the province.
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