Monday marks by election day in the provincial electoral riding of Marie-Victorin, on the South Shore of Montreal.
The riding encompasses the Vieux-Longueuil borough of the City of Longueuil.
The seat at the National Assembly has been vacant since the departure of independent MNA Catherine Fournier.
She was first elected under the Parti Québécois (PQ) banner before becoming an independent MNA.
She then gave up her seat to run successfully for mayor of Longueuil last fall.
Elections Quebec has authorized twelve candidates for the election in Marie-Victorin.
The main players are Shirley Dorismond with the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), Émilie Nollet with the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), Pierre Nantel with the Parti Québécois (PQ), Shophika Vaithyanathasarma with Québec Solidaire (QS), Anne Casabonne with the Quebec Conservative Party and Martine Ouellet with Climat Québec.
The Parti pour l’indépendance du Québec, the Parti vert du Québec, the Union nationale, the Parti accès propriété et équité and the Équipe autonomiste are also running candidates; there is one independent candidate.
A total of 45,558 electors have been invited to exercise their right to vote in this byelection.
According to Statistics Canada, 83.4 per cent of the riding’s population reports that French is the language most often spoken at home.
Visible minorities account for 19.5 per cent of Marie-Victorin’s population, of which 43.8 per cent are Black, 16.2 per cent are Latin American and 16 per cent are of Arab origin.
The average income in Marie-Victorin is lower than the Quebec standard.
Marie-Victorin, a riding of just over 14 square kilometers, has been a PQ stronghold since its inception in 1980.
The Liberals have only managed to take it once, in 1984, in an election that lasted one year.
The vote in Marie-Victorin is also, in a way, a plebiscite for François Legault’s government, as there are just under six months to go before the provincial election in Quebec.
— This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 11, 2022.