LA BAIE \u2014 Liberal Daniel Gobeil has won the federal byelection in the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi\u2014Le Fjord, flipping a Conservative-held seat and adding to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s narrow majority in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n
With nearly all polls reporting late Monday, Gobeil had more than 50 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois candidate Caroline Dub\u00e9, who was hovering just under 33 per cent.<\/p>\n
Conservative R\u00e9gis Gaudreault was in third place with just 12.3 per cent.<\/p>\n
Liberal supporters at a microbrewery in La Baie, in the Saguenay region about 200 kilometres north of Quebec City, were in a celebratory mood Monday.<\/p>\n
Cheers and shouts of excitement, mixed with the clinking of beer glasses, rang out as they gathered to watch the results come in.<\/p>\n
And they didn’t need to wait long. Gobeil grabbed an early lead when the first poll was counted.<\/p>\n
The result gave the Liberals a more decisive victory than polls during the campaign suggested. The final campaign poll, published Aug. 25, had put Gobeil and Dub\u00e9 neck-and-neck.<\/p>\n
It marks the first time the Liberals have won the riding since 2015, when Denis Lemieux was elected as part of the Liberal wave that brought Justin Trudeau to power.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Mark Carney congratulated Gobeil on social media.<\/p>\n
“He will be a strong voice for rural Qu\u00e9bec and the entire agri-food sector across the country,” Carney wrote Monday.<\/p>\n
In his victory speech, Gobeil cast the result as a message that extended beyond Chicoutimi\u2014Le Fjord to Quebec and the rest of Canada.<\/p>\n
“You are sending a strong message this evening,” he told supporters. “This victory helps to maintain Canadian unity.”<\/p>\n
He added the victory would bring the voice of Saguenay\u2014Lac-Saint-Jean to the decision-making table, pointing to the region’s exposure to the trade war through its forestry, aluminum and agricultural sectors.<\/p>\n
“Our region is the most affected by the tariff war,” Gobeil said.<\/p>\n
The byelection was called after Richard Martel, the Conservative who had represented the Saguenay-area riding since 2018, left the House of Commons to accept an appointment to the Senate by Prime Minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n
The Liberals argued that voters in Chicoutimi\u2014Le Fjord would benefit from having an MP on the government benches, particularly as Canada continues to deal with the trade war with the United States.<\/p>\n
Throughout his campaign, Gobeil argued the region would be better served by having a member of Carney’s government representing it in the House of Commons. He said voters were receptive to that message amid escalating trade tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.<\/p>\n
They also fielded a candidate with strong ties to one of the region’s key industries. Gobeil is a former president of Les Producteurs de lait du Qu\u00e9bec, an organization representing Quebec dairy farmers.<\/p>\n
Carney pointed to Gobeil’s candidacy as a guarantee that Canada’s supply-management system for dairy, poultry and eggs would not be sacrificed in an effort to ease tensions with the United States.<\/p>\n
Chicoutimi\u2014Le Fjord, situated in Quebec’s Saguenay\u2014Lac-St-Jean region, includes dairy producers as well as forestry workers affected by U.S. tariffs and workers in the aluminum industry, which plays a major role in the regional economy.<\/p>\n
Trade tensions with the United States intensified during the final days of the campaign, putting the tariff war back in the headlines, though the Bloc and Conservatives said they had heard less about the dispute while campaigning this time around than during the 2025 federal election.<\/p>\n
Conservatives said voters were more likely to raise concerns about the cost of living and immigration. The Bloc said it heard about the financial difficulties facing seniors.<\/p>\n
The Bloc had devoted significant resources to trying to capture the seat, with volunteers from across Quebec joining Dub\u00e9’s campaign.<\/p>\n
Before the results came in, Bloc MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe told supporters gathered at a Saguenay microbrewery that he was “nervous, but confident.” Dub\u00e9 previously worked for neighbouring Bloc MP Mario Simard and ran provincially for the sovereigntist Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois in Jonqui\u00e8re in 2022.<\/p>\n
Conservative candidate R\u00e9gis Gaudreault, a longtime lawyer and teacher at C\u00e9gep de Chicoutimi, previously worked with Jean-Pierre Blackburn, a former Conservative cabinet minister who represented the former federal riding of Jonqui\u00e8re\u2014Alma.<\/p>\n
Two other federal byelections were also held Monday, in the east Toronto riding of Beaches-East York and the British Columbia riding of North Vancouver\u2014Capilano. The Liberals won both of them.<\/p>\n
Carney’s former deputy chief of staff, Braeden Caley, captured the seat for the Liberals in B.C., while former constituency aide Tanveer Shahnawaz won the Toronto seat.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
\u2014 With files from Charlotte Glorieux in Montreal<\/p>\n
\u00c9milie Bergeron, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA BAIE \u2014 Liberal Daniel Gobeil has won the federal byelection in the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi\u2014Le Fjord,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[336,59877,351,735,60028,47251,145,60025,60026,60024,60029,45565,122,111,25608,59318,241,6618,60027,989],"class_list":["post-190593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-336","tag-aug-31","tag-canadian","tag-carney","tag-chicoutimi","tag-chicoutimi-le-fjord","tag-conservative","tag-daniel-gobeil","tag-dube","tag-gobeil","tag-jean-pierre-blackburn","tag-joel-lightbound","tag-liberals","tag-mark-carney","tag-monday","tag-que","tag-quebec","tag-quebec-city","tag-saguenay","tag-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}