Quebec Liberals to elect new leader at convention in provincial capital

Quebec Liberal Party leadership candidates, from left, Marc Bélanger, Mario Roy, Charles Milliard, Pablo Rodriguez and Karl Blackburn pose for a photograph following the Quebec Liberal Party French-language leadership debate in Laval, Que., Saturday, May 3, 2025. (The Canadian Press/Christopher Katsarov)

The Quebec Liberals will choose their new leader Saturday afternoon at a convention in the provincial capital.

Five candidates are vying to take the helm of the party, which is hoping to make a comeback after suffering crushing defeats in the last two provincial elections.

The campaign has had to compete for the public’s attention with a federal election and a trade war with the United States. Still, party president Rafael Primeau-Ferraro said he’s pleased with the level of interest the leadership race has generated.

“If we go back two years ago, the party wasn’t in the same position that we are today,” he said in an interview. “We were able to attract quality candidates that are surrounded by very competent people in their teams. The membership of the party has doubled.”

The front-runners in the race are Pablo Rodriguez, a former federal minister, Karl Blackburn, former president of a Quebec employers group, and Charles Milliard, former head of the federation of Quebec chambers of commerce.

None of the three currently holds a seat in the provincial legislature. But they have all said they will run in the next election, set for October 2026, regardless of the leadership results.

Marc Bélanger, an international trade lawyer, and Mario Roy, an economist and farmer, are also running for the top job.

The new leader will have to rebuild the party in the coming months if it is to have a chance of forming government. The Liberals have for years been polling badly among francophone voters outside Montreal.

Primeau-Ferraro said the leader will have to reach out to voters across Quebec’s regions to keep building momentum ahead of the next election.

The Liberals lost more than half their seats when the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec, led by François Legault, swept to power in 2018.

In 2022, the party suffered its worst-ever defeat based on its share of the popular vote. It managed to hang onto Official Opposition status thanks to the concentration of Liberal voters in Montreal.

But Legault’s government has since declined in popularity, while the Parti Québécois has been leading in the polls for months. The Liberals are hoping to offer a credible alternative to the sovereigntist party, which has promised to hold a referendum on independence by 2030.

A recent Léger poll found that with Rodriguez as leader, the Liberals would win 31 per cent of the vote in a provincial election, one point ahead of the Parti Québécois. With Blackburn or Milliard at the helm, the Parti Québécois would come out ahead.

Still, it’s hard to predict who the Liberals’ roughly 20,000 members will choose, in part because of a complex voting system that gives considerable weight to the votes of young members.

Voting will end at 3 p.m., and the winner is expected to be announced by 5 p.m.

— By Maura Forrest in Montreal with files from Thomas Laberge in Quebec City

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2025.