Bloc leader laughs off running ‘fake’ byelection candidates outside of Quebec

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is laughing at the idea of fielding “fake” candidates in Toronto — even if it means ceding a financial advantage to the Liberals in a tight Montreal-area byelection.

“We at the Bloc Québécois are funded by citizens, out of pure conviction. That fuel is worth all the money in the world. We know that in purely financial terms, we will never be competitive with the Liberals or the Conservatives, and we have always done very well anyway,” Blanchet said in a French-language interview with Radio-Canada last month.

Prime Minister Mark Carney called three byelections on Sunday and a victory in all three would give the Liberals 172 seats in the House — a one-seat majority.

Two of those byelections are all but guaranteed to be Liberal wins. They’re filling vacancies in Toronto left by former cabinet ministers Bill Blair and Chrystia Freeland — ridings considered to be party strongholds.

WATCH | Carney calls byelection in riding that could give Liberals a majority:

Carney calls byelection in riding that could give Liberals a majority

Prime Minister Mark Carney has called byelections in three ridings, including Terrebonne, where a razor-thin result was overturned by the courts. A victory in all three ridings would give the Liberals a majority government.

The race will be much tighter in Terrebonne, where the Liberals won by one vote over the Bloc Québécois. Last month, the Supreme Court tossed the April result out and ordered a redo over a misprint on mail-in ballot envelopes.

The Bloc has never run a candidate outside of Quebec — but theoretically the sovereignist party could run candidates in the two Toronto ridings if it wanted to match the Liberals’ spending cap.

Running all three byelections at the same time gives the Liberals a spending edge over the Bloc, as first noted by former Conservative campaign manager Fred Delorey on his Substack.

According to Elections Canada’s rules, all parties have caps on how much they can spend promoting candidates during byelections. But the cap for a party increases if they’re running candidates in multiple byelections.

“A party with candidates in more than one electoral district may distribute its election expenses limit among the electoral districts as it sees fit,” Elections Canada’s website says.

With two safe ridings in Toronto, the Liberals will likely focus their efforts on Terrebonne.

That byelection is a rematch, with Tatiana Auguste running for the Liberals and Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné running for the Bloc.

Although the Liberals edged out the win in the now-annulled election, Sinclair-Desgagné had been the MP for Terrebonne since 2021 — and the riding has largely been held by the Bloc since the early 90s.

Sinclair-Desgagné challenged the results of last spring’s election after a voter came forward saying their mail-in ballot had been returned to them because Elections Canada had written the wrong address on the return envelope.

All three byelections are being held on April 14, with advance polls open April 3 to April 6.