Dominique Anglade’s Liberals re-elected as official Opposition

In what was not as tight a race for second place in the Quebec election as initially billed, the Liberal Party remained the official Opposition at the National Assembly.

François Legault was re-elected premier of Quebec, with Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) forming a majority government for the second time.

It was expected to be a neck-and-neck finish for second place.

But the Liberals were projected to form the official Opposition within 45 minutes of the polls closing at 8 p.m.

They were projected to win 21 seats.

“The message tonight is clear: Quebecers are asking us to be the official Opposition in Quebec,” Anglade told her supporters.

But just before 11 p.m. on Monday evening, the Liberals were sitting in fourth place in the popular vote, at just over 14 per cent, trailing both Quebec solidaire and the Parti Quebecois.

Anglade won her on-island riding of Saint-Henri—Sainte-Anne. Anglade has held the Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne riding in Montreal since 2015, and the Liberals have never lost the seat since its creation in the 1990s.

The 48-year-old engineer and former economy minister, a daughter of Haitian academics who immigrated to Montreal, became leader of the party in May 2020.

Though Anglade steered Liberals to a disappointing result Monday, she said ahead of the vote that she planned to continue on as leader regardless of the outcome.

WATCH: Dominique Anglade election night speech

It was a tough campaign for Anglade and the Liberals. It kicked off with a candidate whose registration was denied by Elections Quebec, and another who pulled out of the race in the early going.

What followed was a perceived lack of traction, with the other main parties – and some upstart ones – vying to threaten Liberal strongholds, especially on the island of Montreal.

The party seemed to change its tone leading up to Election Day, choosing to put Anglade’s personality more at the forefront as the campaign went one.

Liberal promises to Quebecers

In the final days of the election campaign, Anglade called on voters to “bloc Legault.” She promised to unite Quebecers and be the voice for all, no matter their background.

Angalde directly referenced the CAQ’s passing of two controversial laws during its mandate: strengthening the province’s French-language law with Bill 96, and banning certain public servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols on the job with Bill 21.

Anglade promised to repeal Bill 96 if elected. The Liberals did vote against it but were accused of flip-flopping, after first proposing amendments to Bill 96 that took it further than what the CAQ was proposing. Anglade later backtracked on those amendments.

The party also voted against Bill 21 and said, if elected, it would adjust the law to remove teachers from the list of public servants who cannot wear religious symbols while on the job.

Québec solidaire campaigned largely on “making Quebec the greenest country in the world.” They want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent.

Both the Liberals and Qéebec solidaire were proposing to raise the cap of immigrants accepted in Quebec to 70,000 and 80,000, respectively. The CAQ’s campaign promise was to reduce the number of immigrants to 50,000 a year.

The PQ promised it was the only party not proposing tax cuts that would lead to more austerity.

The Conservative Party of Quebec promised to cut taxes and be the party to maintain rights and freedoms, trying to capitalize on the popularity the party gained during the COVID-19 pandemic, positioning itself against vaccine mandates and other measures.

—With files from The Canadian Press