Party leader Lisée steps down After loss in Rosemont

Reality set in early at Parti Québécois headquarters Monday night.

And when it did, a prolonged silence washed over the Montreal crowd. Few believed a PQ victory was possible, but the depth of their disappointment was clear just a half-hour after polls closed.

That’s when the TV networks called a Coalition Avenir Québec majority. Party members fought back tears as they watched footage of CAQ Leader François Legault doing his victory lap. Legault was once a proud PQ cabinet minister. Now he helped hand the PQ a crushing defeat.

“I need a drink,” one member muttered to another.

PQ president Gabrielle Lemieux tried to lift spirits at the downtown rally.

“We can be proud of this campaign,” she said. “You all have my admiration.”

Lemieux’s voice shook and her words were met with polite but sparse applause.

When leader Jean-François Lisée spoke at the last PQ rally just a few nights earlier, he asked the faithful to dream with him — to dream of Quebec as an independent, progressive utopia in North America. Even with polls clearly showing a PQ defeat, Lisée wanted his people to keep the faith.

By Monday, they weren’t dreaming anymore; they were just holding out hope that they could win 12 seats in the National Assembly — enough to preserve official party status. After analysts predicted Lisée would lose his Rosemont seat to Québec solidaire’s Vincent Marissal, people began to whisper about his successor.

Lisée made it official when he finally took the stage Monday night. “The verdict in Rosemont puts an end to the greatest job I’ve ever had: the job of leader of the Parti Québécois,” he said.

And with that, the audience gasped.

Lisée spoke of his plan years ago to unite with QS under one sovereignist banner. Talks ultimately fell apart, and by Monday night — as the two parties battled for seats in the National Assembly — it felt like the torch was being passed to the young, radically ambitious party.

“I had hoped that our two parties would have united strengths. … I have to think that, had it happened, tonight could have been different,” Lisée said. “We can’t rewrite history, but we can draw lessons from it.”

The lesson, he said, is that there’s still a thirst within Quebec to fight for independence.

At the beginning of the campaign, Lisée looked like he was born to run.

Polling well behind the CAQ and Liberals, he campaigned at a furious clip, hitting a halfdozen ridings in a day and capping it off each night with a rally where he would preach to the party faithful.

He took the PQ back to its progressive roots, vowing to fight for workers’ rights and the environment, and to slowly march toward an independent Quebec.

Without the pressure of expectations, Lisée cruised his way through the first two debates. Even so, his party was stalled in the polls. And so, going into the final televised debate, he rolled the dice.

Lisée opened the Sept. 20 debate with an awkward attack on QS co-spokesperson Manon Massé, accusing her party of being controlled by a secret puppet master. But in trying to swat them away, Lisée only energized their campaign.

By the following day, the mood in his campaign had soured and the PQ tumbled further in the polls.