PM visits former Tory riding in Quebec

Conservatives lost seat by nine votes to NDP in 2011

OTTAWA— Among the seats the NDP captured in Quebec during the last election was a riding won by only nine votes — and the Conservatives want it back.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper headed to the community of Berthier-sur-Mer on Friday, a small town of roughly 1,400 people best known for the nearby Grosse Île National Historic Site.

But politically, the town’s electoral district of Montmagny—L’Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup is famous for being the final Tory seat to fall to the NDP during the 2011federal election.

The vote count on election night put NDP candidate François Lapointe up by just five votes, forcing a recount. Ten days later he was declared the winner by nine votes.

Lapointe is running again in this October’s campaign and so is the Conservative he beat — Bernard Généreux, who was spotted at Harper’s event Friday.

The riding is part of the so-called Blue Arrow, a swath of seats running from around Quebec City down to the southern shore of the St. Lawrence River, which the Conservatives see as fertile ground to expand their existing crop of only five MPs from the province.

The Conservatives won Montmagny—L’Islet—Kamouraska—Rivièredu-Loup in a 2009 byelection prompted by the resignation of the Bloc Québécois MP who had held it since 1993.

But the New Democrats pushed the Tories out again in 2011, thanks to the surge of support in that province that catapulted their party to official Opposition status.

Recent polls suggest the New Democrats still hold a lead in support in Quebec, with the Liberals in second place, though Conservatives continue to see gains as well.

Harper said he sees the two big issues as the economy and security, both files he has addressed on this Quebec swing.

On Friday he laid out the details for a tourism program aimed at getting more U.S. visitors to Canada, while in Montreal on Thursday he fleshed out a commitment from the federal budget to provide more resources for the RCMP and for border guards.

“Quebecers have four years of NDP MPs to ask themselves what that got them,” Harper said Thursday at the announcement in Montreal. “And I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.”