Weekly Writ 2/19: Is it the end for the last of the Orange Wave in Quebec?
As the NDP faces the potential loss of their only Quebec MP, the Liberals and Bloc are set to contest a tight race in Terrebonne with Carney's majority on the ballot.
Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.
As Matt Jeneroux’s floor-crossing puts a Liberal majority within Mark Carney’s grasp, the NDP’s last redoubt in Quebec might also be about to fall.
Le Journal de Montréal reported on Tuesday that Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP’s only MP in Quebec, is interested in jumping ship and running for Québec Solidaire in the next provincial election. Ruba Ghazal, the co-leader of QS, has only confirmed that the party will vote on an exception to its own rules to allow a man to run as their candidate in the Montreal riding of Gouin.
(As Québec Solidaire’s caucus is two-thirds male, the party has instituted rules to limit nominations in seats they hold to non-male candidates to try to correct the imbalance.)
Part of Boulerice’s riding of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie overlaps with the provincial riding of Gouin, which will be without a candidate in the next election as former co-leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is not running for re-election. One complicating factor for Boulerice is that QS is an officially sovereignist party, while the NDP is very much not, and he will have to make an expression of support for Quebec independence if he is going to run under the provincial party’s orange banner.
Boulerice first won Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie in the Orange Wave election of 2011. He was re-elected in 2015 and then was the lone survivor when the New Democrats were reduced to a single seat in Quebec in 2019. He won again in 2021 and 2025.
The last election was the tightest margin for Boulerice since he was first elected. He took 41% of the vote against 31.6% for the Liberals. The Bloc finished third with 18.3% of the vote.
Nevertheless, that 9.4-point margin would make this one of the safer seats the NDP currently holds — only Edmonton Strathcona was won by a wider margin. But Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie is more of a Boulerice seat than it is an NDP seat. He has consistently outperformed New Democratic candidates in neighbouring ridings.
Every time Boulerice has faced re-election, he has lost less or gained more support than NDP candidates did in the neighbouring (and somewhat similar) ridings of Papineau, Outremont, Laurier–Sainte-Marie and Hochelaga–Rosemont-Est (formerly just Hochelaga).
In the first pullback for the NDP in Quebec in 2015, Boulerice lost only 1.8 percentage points while his neighbours lost an average of 10.1 points. In 2019, he lost 6.7 points while his neighbours lost 13.3. A small bounce back in 2021 boosted his vote share by 6.1 points while his neighbours were up only four. And in the last election, Boulerice lost 7.6 points to his neighbours’ 10.8 points.
So, the New Democrats look likely to face a real challenge holding Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie without Boulerice as they could struggle to find a candidate with enough profile to hold enough of his vote to win. The Liberals haven’t won in this part of Montreal since the 1980s, but if the vote is divided enough (and if the Liberals find a high-profile candidate) Mark Carney’s party could pick up the seat — a chance to secure and/or pad the Liberals’ majority following Jeneroux’s floor-crossing. The Bloc Québécois, which held this riding from 1990 to 2011, would also be a contender to win it back.
If the speculation turns out to be true and if QS approves the change to its nomination rules, then the New Democrats will lose the last vestige of Jack Layton’s Orange Wave when Boulerice resigns. They would also face a high likelihood of losing the seat as well, with few prospects of winning it back in the future. For nearly 20 years since Tom Mulcair’s breakthrough byelection win in Outremont in 2007, the New Democrats have had some representation in Quebec — the culmination of a long-held dream for the party. Is the dream about to end?
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on the upcoming Terrebonne byelection, the third floor-crossing to the Liberals, the acclamation of Charles Milliard as PLQ leader and Conservative election preparations.
Polls show some disagreements, but the consensus points to a big Liberal advantage. Plus, some new polls out of Ontario, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
#EveryElectionProject: The B.C. Liberals hit rock-bottom in 1979.
Upcoming milestone for David Eby.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
After floor-crossing, Carney’s majority could hang on Terrebonne
Last week, Canada’s Supreme Court annulled the election in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, meaning a federal byelection will have to be held within the next six months. It’ll mark the first big electoral test for Mark Carney’s government since the April 2025 vote and could prove to be what clinches the Liberal majority.