Voters head to the polls for Terrebonne byelection northeast of Montreal
Posted March 17, 2025 9:05 am.
Last Updated March 17, 2025 6:17 pm.
It’s byelection day in the riding of Terrebonne on Montreal’s North Shore.
Voters are invited to the polls to fill the seat left vacant in the National Assembly since the departure of former “super minister” Pierre Fitzgibbon last September.
Polling stations are open until 8 p.m. Approximately a quarter of registered voters have already cast their ballots, according to data available late Monday afternoon on the Élections Québec website.
This includes the turnout for advance polling days. During this period, just over 13 per cent of the 61,450 people registered on the electoral list for this byelection voted.
The race has a total of nine candidates. To keep this Lanaudière riding in its fold, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is counting on Alex Gagné.
He faces Catherine Gentilcore of the Parti Québécois (PQ), Virginie Bouchard of the Quebec Liberal Party, Nadia Poirier of Québec Solidaire, and Ange Claude Bigilimana of the Conservative Party of Quebec.
Candidates from smaller parties are also running. These include Benoit Beauchamp of Climat Québec, Eric Bernier of the Union Nationale, Shawn Lalande McLean of the Access Property and Equity Party, and Jean-Louis Thémis of the Culinary Party of Quebec.
Before Fitzgibbon’s election in 2018, Terrebonne was known as a stronghold of the PQ, with successive PQ representatives elected there between 1976 and 2018, except for a brief interlude from 2007 to 2008, when the riding was represented by Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec.
In the 2022 general election, the CAQ received 49.44 per cent of the vote in Terrebonne, far ahead of the PQ, which received 18.88 per cent.
The current race took place in the shadow of trade tensions between Canada and the United States. The byelection was called while Premier François Legault was in Washington to dissuade President Donald Trump from imposing tariffs on Canadian products.
The PQ is seen as the clear favourite in this race. The electoral projection website Qc125 puts the sovereignist party’s victory probability at 98 per cent.
When the byelection was called, Legault said that it is “always difficult for a government to win a byelection.”
The CAQ leader visited Terrebonne only once during this race. Accompanied by his candidate, Legault visited a steel structure factory in the region last Monday.
Élections Québec plans to release the first results between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The estimated cost of such an election is $725,000.
––This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
