Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet won a 97.25% vote of confidence at the party’s first general congress in five years.
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“It is my honor to serve you. “These are the most beautiful moments of my life,” the leader began emotionally in front of the crowd, who chanted his name.
Around 350 delegates voted, including the 32 members of the House of Commons. The results of the voting were announced at around 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Centrexpo Cogeco in Drummondville.
Bloc Québécois Dean Louis Plamondon believes Yves-François Blanchet “literally saved” the party in 2019 when the party was going through dark times and ran out of money.
He recalls that Blanchet’s arrival at the head of the Bloc Québécois made it possible to raise $300,000 in one week.
“You have shown that together we have rebuilt a machine worthy of the greatest years of the sovereign movement and the Bloc Québécois,” Mr Blanchet declared to the hundreds of activists gathered in the hemicycle.
Despite a rebound from the 2010s trough as the fourth official opposition group, the Bloc Québécois achieved the same result in 2021 as in 2019: 32 seats, two fewer than the Liberals.
The current figures from various surveys look good.
In the morning, Yves-François Blanchet gave a speech calling for sovereignty unity and defending everything that moves in Ottawa.
Delegates also elected Suzanne Proulx, who was elected PQ from 2012 to 2014, as President of the Bloc Québécois National Council, replacing Johanne Deschamps, who represented the bloc from 2004 to 2011.