A prominent Montreal lawyer known for her work on the notorious “Granby girl” case is running for the Liberals in the closely-watched Saint-Laurent riding, CTV News has confirmed. Liberal leader Charles Milliard will make it official at a Saint-Laurent reception hall on Wednesday afternoon. Valerie Assouline was responsible for filing a lawsuit against Quebec’s department of youth protection three years after a seven-year-old Granby, Que. girl died while in the care of her father and stepmother in April, 2019. Assouline represented the girl’s mother and grandmother. A University of Montreal graduate, she was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1998. Assouline is the founder of SOS-Avocats Inc., a boutique firm specialized in family and youth law. She has also been serving as bâtonnière for the Montreal Bar since May 2025. “I’m a person of action, and there were a lot of moments where I felt I couldn’t go further than what I was doing. If the people of Saint-Laurent give me their trust, I will make sure to make changes, and I will make sure that we speak about children in Quebec,” said Assouline in an exclusive interview with CTV News. Assouline came to Quebec from Morocco with her parents at the age of four, and the family settled in Saint-Laurent. “My law practice is in this riding, but I also grew up here in Saint-Laurent. I learned to read, to swim [here] – all my youth was in Saint-Laurent, so the connection is there,” said Assouline. Assouline has been serving as a city councillor for Dollard-des-Ormeaux since 2017. Before that, she ran for the federal Conservative Party, and also made an attempt to win a seat at the National Assembly, running for the CAQ in 2014. “I believed, like many Quebecers, in the CAQ. But I feel like they let us down, and this is why for me the only path is with the Liberal Party and Charles Milliard,” said Assouline. “We need to have an economy that works, and unfortunately the CAQ showed us that it’s not been working.” Safe Liberal seat The Saint Laurent riding is considered one of the safest seats in the province for the Liberal Party. “It’s a highly sought-after seat among Liberals because unless there’s a big scandal, the person who is nominated or appointed should be able to keep the seat for as long as they want it,” said Philippe J. Fournier, founder of the popular Qc125 website. The website provides electoral projections based on opinion polls, electoral history, and demographic data. Marwah Rizqy’s departure from politics The Saint-Laurent seat has been held by Marwah Rizqy since 2018. In October 2024, Rizqy, a mother of two young children, announced she would not be seeking re-election. Rizqy is married to the Liberal MNA for Jacques-Cartier, Greg Kelley, and has spoken of the difficulties of juggling their political life with raising a young family. “I have a lot of respect for Marwah as a politician. She has been a strong voice for the riding of Saint-Laurent and for Quebec, and I want to salute her work,” said Assouline. “Now I come with a different background, different experience, and a different way of working, so I guess it’s a new time.” ‘Brownies’ crisis Rizqy now sits as an independent MNA, after she was expelled from the Liberal caucus in the fallout from an internal crisis surrounding Pablo Rodriguez’s leadership campaign. Rodriguez won the leadership race in June 2025. The Liberals had been leaderless since November 2022, after Dominque Anglade resigned as leader following the party’s election loss. But Rodriguez’s time at the helm of the party didn’t last long. Last fall, Québecor media published text messages suggesting some party members who voted for Rodriguez during the leadership race were rewarded with cash – specifically $100 bills, referred to colloquially as “brownies.” The scandal over the allegations erupted shortly after Rizqy – who was acting as parliamentary leader – fired her chief of staff, Geneviève Hinse, without consulting Rodriguez. Rodriguez said Rizqy refused to explain her decision to him and did “a lot of damage” to the party, so he expelled her from the caucus. “She chose to turn her back on our team,” Rodriguez told reporters at the provincial legislature at the time. “Marwah Rizqy has made her choice. I made mine.” Responding with a written statement, Rizqy said she always represented her constituents with “dedication and rigour.” Rodriguez insisted he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing in his leadership race, and initially planned to stay on as leader despite the allegations of “fling flang” within the party, but as public pressure mounted, he ultimately decided to step down. On Tuesday, La Presse reported that investigations carried out by Elections Quebec and UPAC – the province’s anti-corruption unit – found no evidence of a cash-for-votes scheme to boost Rodriguez’s campaign. Speaking at a morning news conference on proposed Liberal emergency measures to deal with the trade war, leader Charles Milliard addressed the revelations in La Presse’s reporting and said there needs to be “a collective reflection in Quebec about what happened over the past year. - With files from The Canadian Press
