PM credits economic agenda for byelection victory

A triumphant Justin Trudeau contends the Liberals’ stunning byelection victory in Quebec’s nationalist heartland is a vote of confidence in his government’s economic agenda.

The prime minister says Monday’s upset in Lac-Saint-Jean demonstrates that voters are satisfied with the Liberal recipe for economic growth: putting more money in the pockets of middle-class Canadians and making massive investments in infrastructure.

Liberal candidate Richard Hebert snatched the riding away from the Conservatives, winning 38.6 per cent of the vote — more than double the Liberal vote share in the riding during the 2015 election and some 14 points ahead of his Conservative rival.

The Bloc Québécois came in a close third but the NDP candidate, who’d run a close second to Tory veteran Denis Lebel in 2015, finished a distant fourth with less than 12 per cent.

The Lac-Saint-Jean contest and a second byelection Monday in traditional Tory turf in Alberta — where the Conservatives scored a predictably massive win — were the first electoral tests of leadership for a trio of new party leaders: Conservative Andrew Scheer, New Democrat Jagmeet Singh and Bloquiste Martine Ouellet.

The opposition parties’ MPs acknowledge they were disappointed with the Quebec result but maintain the surprise mid-mandate Liberal win can’t be interpreted as an indictment of their newly minted leaders.