Premier Christine Fréchette will meet with Quebec’s lieutenant-governor to trigger the start of the provincial election campaign Thursday morning.
According to her agenda, a cabinet meeting will be held in Quebec City at 10 a.m., followed by Fréchette’s meeting with Lieutenant-Governor Manon Jeannotte at 10:30 a.m.
Fréchette is set to hold a news conference at 11 a.m., after the meeting.
In order to launch an election campaign, the Quebec electoral system requires the head of its government to ask the lieutenant-governor — the representative of the King — to dissolve the National Assembly.
The campaign will run for 39 days — the 40th day being election day on Monday, Oct. 5.
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Following the campaign launch, party leaders will hit the road on their respective campaign buses.
This election, there are 127 ridings, not 125 — which will increase the number of seats needed to secure a majority by one to 64 seats.
For the first time since 2018, Quebecers will elect a government not headed by François Legault — who led his party to back-to-back majority governments in 2018 and 2022.
Christine Fréchette, who became an MNA in 2022 in the Sanguinet riding on Montreal’s South Shore, succeeded Legault as premier in April after winning the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) leadership race. She will run for the party in her hometown of Trois-Rivières, Que.
She faces off against the Parti Québécois’s (PQ) Paul St-Pierre Plamondon who will again run in the Camille-Laurin riding in eastern Montreal.
Charles Milliard, for the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), doesn’t have a seat and is running in Orford in the Eastern Townships.
Éric Duhaime, with the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), is also without a seat, and is running in Bellechasse in the Chaudière-Appalaches region south of Quebec City.
Québec Solidaire’s (QS) Ruba Ghazal is looking to win Montreal’s Mercier riding for a third consecutive election.
The sovereignist PQ is currently leading in the polls, despite the fact polling shows Quebecers have very little appetite for a referendum — something the party has promised to hold during its first term.
