Canada






Tories have their candidate in Jonquière

With an election expected to start in late March, I'm tracking candidate nominations. All parties have a long way to go. In the regions of Québec outside Montreal and her suburbs and outside the National Capital Region, there are 37 seats. The Conservatives, so far as i can tell, have just 10 candidates nominated so far -- four incumbents and six new candidates. (The Liberals have just six, all incumbents only. Still compiling the list of NPD and BQ candidates)

One of those new Conservative candidates is Fanny Boulanger, pictured here in this photo take by an OLO photographer, campaigning on Friday in the riding with Pierre Poilievre and Chicoutimi-Le Fjord incumbent Richard Martel. Boulanger is from the region but has been working in Ottawa as the director of parliamentary affairs in the OLO and, before that, as a political assistant for Richard Martel.

The ranks of political staffers are commonly drawn on to run in ridings where a party is unlikely to win and this may be the case here. Though the Conservatives finished a respectable second here in 2021, Bloc Québecois incumbent Mario Simard won by 14 points. He was first elected in 2019. My model, based on current polling averages for the province, has Simard holding his seat with a 12-point win.

This part of the province has voted either NDP or BQ since 1988 when the Mulroney PCs elected Jean-Pierre Blackburn (who would go on to serve in Stephen Harper's cabinet) in the riding of Jonquière and a guy named Lucien Bouchard won next door in Lac-Saint-Jean. -DA

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The headlines, excerpts, and photos here are generated by the publishers of the clipping. The publisher is at the bottom left of the clipping. If I've got a comment, you''ll see that in italics. But if I've generated the headline and the excerpt, you'll see me taking attribution by finishing with -DA in bold. The stamp stuff at the bottom are scans from my collection and, if there’s a stamp blurb, I’ve written that bit. -DA

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