Liberals Flip Poilievre's Quebec Seat in Byelection Sweep

A Conservative stronghold in Quebec just turned red

Liberal Cheers, Conservative Tears

Voters in three federal ridings delivered a clean sweep for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals Monday night, turning by-elections in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec into an early referendum on his handling of the trade standoff with Washington. The party held two ridings widely considered safe and, more strikingly, took a Conservative stronghold in Quebec’s Saguenay region, pushing the Liberal caucus back to 173 seats and restoring a working majority in the House of Commons.

The marquee result came out of Chicoutimi–Le Fjord, where Liberal candidate Daniel Gobeil, a dairy farmer and president of Producteurs de lait du Québec, took more than 50 percent of the vote to defeat Bloc Québécois candidate Caroline Dubé, who finished just under 33 percent. Conservative Régis Gaudreault placed a distant third at 12 percent. The seat had belonged to Conservative Richard Martel since 2018, and Martel held it by fewer than three points as recently as April 2025. Its loss is the sharpest setback yet for Pierre Poilievre’s effort to build a lasting Conservative base in Quebec.

The other two results reinforced the story rather than complicated it. In North Vancouver–Capilano, Braeden Caley, who stepped down as Carney’s deputy chief of staff to run, held the riding with roughly 59 percent of the vote, more than double his Conservative rival. In Beaches–East York, Tanveer Shahnawaz, the longtime constituency manager for outgoing MP Nate Erskine-Smith, kept the Toronto seat Liberal with 55 percent, fending off a surging NDP challenge. Carney’s first electoral test since forming government came back decisive on every front.

Gobeil told supporters gathered at a microbrewery in La Baie that the win carried a message beyond his own riding, framing it as a vote for Canadian unity from a region directly exposed to American tariffs on aluminum, forestry and dairy. Carney congratulated him within the hour, calling him a strong voice for rural Quebec and the agri-food sector. For Poilievre, the loss lands as a public embarrassment in the one province where his party has struggled to expand its footprint, at a moment when his caucus badly needed a win to quiet questions about his leadership.

By-elections rarely rewrite a government’s fortunes on their own. But Monday’s results say something Poilievre cannot easily spin away. Voters in a riding built on tariff-exposed industries had every reason to punish the governing party for trade pain, yet they rewarded it. Carney enters the fall with a majority back in hand and a mandate that looks sturdier tonight than it did a week ago.