Quebec Liberals look to revive party as leadership race begins

The Quebec Liberal leadership race kicked off on Monday with candidates picking up endorsements, as the provincial party tries to broaden its appeal.

The Quebec Liberal leadership race kicked off on Monday with candidates picking up endorsements, as the provincial party tries to broaden its appeal after years in the political wilderness.

Four candidates have officially entered the race, including former federal Liberal cabinet minister Pablo Rodriguez; ex-Liberal MP and former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre; Charles Milliard, the former head of the federation of Quebec chambers of commerce; and tax lawyer Marc Bélanger.

On Monday, a potential fifth candidate, sitting Quebec Liberal member Frédéric Beauchemin, announced he was withdrawing from the race to support Rodriguez, whom he said is the one candidate who can unite Quebecers.

Rodriguez, 57, is the likely front-runner, but he carries the baggage of spending nine years in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. In September he resigned as transport minister and from the Liberal caucus to sit as an Independent in Parliament until the start of the provincial leadership campaign.

Milliard was first out of the gate on Monday, receiving a major endorsement from former Quebec Liberal finance minister Raymond Bachand. At a news conference at Liberal headquarters in Montreal, Milliard said he wants to offer a “breath of fresh air” in the race, adding that at age 45, he can bring together young and older party members to create an “intergenerational alliance.”

Bachand told reporters at the news conference that Milliard, whom he said embodies both youth and experience, has the benefit of not being a career politician — a thinly veiled reference to Rodriguez.

“The Quebec Liberal party, in the regions, does not exist or exists very little — it is very weak,” Bachand said, lamenting how the provincial Liberals are polling in single digits with francophone voters, especially outside major cities. Rodriguez, he added, is tied to a federal political party whose fortunes aren’t that much better in the province.

Quebecers in the regions are preparing to vote massively for the Bloc Québécois or the Conservatives in the upcoming federal election, Bachand said, a vote that could come as soon as the spring. “And the (Quebec) Liberal Party would appoint as leader someone who has been the right-hand man of the government of Canada for 10 years?”