Brome-Missisquoi Election Results

While Brome-Missisquoi Liberal Candidate Pierre Paradis was re-elected again in the Quebec elections much of the Liberal party was in a somber mood after they lost 24 seats throughout Quebec and Mario Dumont and the ADQ rocketed into the new official opposition.

ADQ candidates surprised many people except themselves when they walked away with 41 seats in one of the tightest election races in Quebec politics in history. The race was basically between the PQ, the ADQ and the Liberals and in the end almost 70% of the population of Quebec voted against Charest and his party who are now in the position of running a minority government.

Many political analysts and media seemed to underestimate the ADQ and Mario Dumont and his huge swelling of support seems to show how disconnected pollsters and the political spin doctors can be. The Liberals pre election cries that the ADQ was too immature to be in power was basically unheard as voters turned out in high numbers to give Charest and his Liberals a good old fashioned face rub!

The incumbent Liberals won 48 of the 125 seats in the national assembly, compared with the ADQ's 41 and the PQ's 36.

Some compare the Liberals to a team of overpaid veteran hockey players who have won the Stanley Cup so many times and are so overpaid that when it comes time to another playoff race they seem to feel they are invincible and re-run the same stick handling moves they’ve used for years…but then the young hungry skaters fresh out of the Junior Hockey League get the chance to play and they go out and win because they have heart and soul! The ADQ showed that hockey spirit!

While Charest may have squeaked by with a victory this time…it appears that there is a strong desire in Quebec to have a new team of young, fresh players to represent the home team!

Brome-Missisquoi 2007 Quebec Election Results
Pierre Paradis, Liberal Party, 39.8% with 13986 votes.
Jean L'Écuyer, ADQ, 31.4% with 11029 votes.
Richard Leclerc, Parti Quebecois, 20.3% with 7114 votes.
Vanessa Thibodeau, Green Party, 5.5% with 1946 votes.
Lorraine Lasnier, Quebec Solidaire, 3% with 1058 votes.

The historical trend in Brome Missisquoi
Liberal support in Brome-Missisquoi has been declining steadily since 1994 when they won the election with 61% of the popular vote. In that 1994 election the ADQ, still a fairly new commodity, won only 6% of the vote.

In the 1998 election the Liberals further dropped to 57% while the ADQ moved up to 11%.

In 2003 the Liberals stumbled again dropping to 55% of the vote while the ADQ moved up to 18% support in the riding.

Now, in 2007 the Liberals are below 40% and the ADQ is at 31% of the popular vote. For the first time the Liberals have seen opposing parties collectively have more of the popular vote.

The trend seems to be fairly solid and DestinationKnowlton.com predicts that the next election the ADQ will receive 55% of the vote in Brome-Missisquoi. Place your bets!!

Brome-Missisquoi contains the following municipalities: Abercorn, Austin, Bedford, Bolton-Est, Bolton-Ouest, Bonsecours, Brigham, Brome, Bromont, Cowansville, Dunham, East Farnham, Eastman, Farnham, Frelighsburg, Lac-Brome, Lawrenceville, Notre-Dame-de-Stanbridge, Potton, Saint-Alphonse, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Rochelle, Saint-Armand, Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Saint-étienne-de-Bolton, Saint-Ignace-de-Stanbridge, Saint-Pierre-de-Véronne-â-Pike-River, Sainte-Sabine, Stanbridge East, Stanbridge Station, Stukely-Sud and Sutton.

Spring Break Party On Brome Lake

The record cold temperatures of the last few weeks ended right on cue as the first winter "Beach Party" took place at Douglass Beach on Brome Lake. The weather was perfect! After weeks of minus 20 degrees the light rain felt almost tropical! The "Relache du Lac Brome" was a huge success and the beach was full of people who came out for one last day of activities to end off the school's spring break.

Hundreds of people descended to the beach to enjoy the activities. The kids kloved it and the warm weather obviousely made everyone feel great! There were smiles everywhere and we could all feel Spring was almost here!

There was food, music, sliding, dog sled rides, live music, kite flying and a lot of good old fashioned spring fever! Hundreds of people played in the snow, ate hot dogs, sang songs and had friendly snowball fights in what was the absolute best way to bring in Spring and shake off the cabin fever we've been feeling with all the cold.



A huge snow hill was built for the kids and they loved it! There was always a steady line of kids running up the hill and taking turns taking the course on their crazy carpets. There were also alot of skiers and snowmobiles on the site and the fact that everything took place on the shores of the lake meant there was room for everyone. There was kite flying, although the wind wasn't ideal for launching some of the kites it certainly didn't stop the kids from trying!

The dog sled rides were very popular and there was a long line-up of people who waited to have a chance at being pulled along the dog sled trail! The dogs were well behaved and only a couple of times did the sleds turn over spilling the passengers into the soft snow! It was a lot of fun and everyone loved the dog sled rides especially the kids!

There were DJ's from M105, the radio station who were celebrating their birthday, and they kept the music and fun going throughout the day.

As the evening settled in the lights from Bromont Ski Hill turned the beach into a lovely sight. A large bonfire was lit and everyone swayed in the warmth and visited with their friends and neighbours who were there. Live music entertained everyone from the music tent and it had a real homey hootenanny feel!

At seven o'clock the bag piper signalled for the crowds to make their way to the ice and hundreds of people flocked onto the snowbanks to watch the fireworks display.

The fireworks were awesome out on the ice with the cascading sparkles illuminating the snow and the rosy cheeks of everyone watching. The music choreography was excellent and the booming comets dazzled us all!

The dancing flares and large colorful circles of lights were much appreciated and the crowd cheered and clapped. The fireworks were the perfect way to end the day at the beach and everyone went home happy and likely very tired after a full day out in the snow. It was great that the weather co-operated and hopefully this event will become a regular happening as everyone really seems to have enjoyed it.

The event came about under the tireless efforts of Gerry and Sue Moar, The Town of Brome Lake, M105 Radio, and many many volunteers who gave their time and efforts to make the event so successful.

Congratulations to everyone and thanks for working so hard for our community spirit!

Liberals Sliding Down The "Poles"

This picture taken in the Brome-Missisquoi Liberal riding of Lac Brome shows that campaign posters from the incumbent and 26-year veteran Pierre Paradis have slid to the very bottom of the poles and this could be seen as ironic as the latest CROP polls seem to spell out what this picture in central Knowlton is showing…the Liberals may be dropping in popularity among voters potentially making the leadership race closer than most had anticipated.

While there will be five candidates on the ballot during the March 26, 2007 elections when Quebecers choose a new provincial government it is becoming clear that the race will be primarily between three political parties. The latest survey of voters put Liberal support at 33 per cent, Parti Québécois support at 29 per cent and Action Démocratique du Québec support at 26 per cent. This may come to a surprise to many Liberals who have seen the PQ’s popularity grow under the leadership of André Boisclair despite efforts by the current Liberal government to paint the PQ as inadequate and immature.

While Knowlton and Brome-Missisquoi have been politically aligned with the Liberal Party for over 25 years the recent Sponsorship scandals have raised questions as to the integrity of the entire Liberal party and the election of 2007 will surely be the chance for all of us to cast judgement on all of the candidates, their leaders, and the message their party is bringing forward.

In Knowlton voting takes place on March 26 from 9am to 9pm. Residents will be receiving a reminder card indicating the address of their polling station. Information can be had by calling the office of the Brome-Missisquoi Returning Officer (Directeur de Scrutin) at 450-538-1114. The official website of Elections Quebec is www.electionsquebec.qc.ca.

The Candidates in Brome-Missisquoi
Liberal - Pierre Paradis
PQ – Richard Leclerc
ADQ – Jean L’Ecuyer
QS (Quebec Solidaire) – Larraine Lasnier
Green Party – Vanessa Thibodeau

CANDIDATES WEBSITES OF THE 2007 QUEBEC ELECTIONS
Since we are in 2007 and the Internet, blogs, tags, forums, myspaces and wapsites are the newest form of political propaganda DestinationKnowlton.com decided to look at the websites of the candidates parties and give a quick synopsis of their websites and how they rated in terms of presentation. Not scientific in any means but just an observation based on looking at trends and target markets:

Liberal - Pierre Paradis
www.plq.org : Features a campy music video in the style of Youtube. Making fun of other parties using animation and cartoon voices on the main page that could be a turn-off as the first thing we see is negative campaigning against another party. Try and find the link to the English page …it’s halfway down the page and when you get to the English page the menu is in French. Website shows candidates listed alphabetically but by first name! PDF files not marked lead to sighs. Glossy videos and hype rule this site. The election platform page is so generic it could have been cut and pasted from a Wikepdia article on “typical election promisis”.

PQ – Richard Leclerc
http://campagne.pq.org/ Hard to find information on local candidates and not possible to have the website in English. Doesn’t recruiting youth militants on a website and associating with a band called Kain sound a bit too much like devil talk? The Richard Leclerc team seems to have a good website at http://pqbm.org/index.php but again there is no English…most of us are smart enough to know both languages but still it is surprising the lack of English availability on the major party and candidate websites considering the region they wish to represent is a high English speaking population. Best overall presentation except for the automatic re-directs which prevents us from reading the entire page. Automatically re-directing users is a no-no but overall on this website the information is presented clearest.

ADQ – Jean L’Ecuyer
http://adqaction.com/main.php What’s worse than a website that plays audio and video when you arrive! Again, in the style of a myspace.com teen site the noise starts right away! This site has the English pages well marked, the best of the bunch but the website has strange test message symbols that are distracting. The candidates page has off colored smilies reminiscent of a teenage messenger chatroom. The candidated bios were quite empty of information. Overall the ADQ website distracted from their message due to the loud colours and cryptic symbols.



QS (Quebec Solidaire) – Larraine Lasnier
http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/ A very simple site that, when compared to the over-wrought websites of the main parties, seems almost too low-key and indiscreet. Only a small number of English pages on the site but they at least show the party platform which is to raise government revenues, reform taxes and raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour. The use of free video hosting looks a bit like they were paying web designers under their promised minimum wage.



Green Party – Vanessa Thibodeau http://www.pvq.qc.ca/ A website that overwhelms in the under-whelmishness of it all? Maybe not… at least the English information is clearly marked and easy to find. Kudos to the Greens! They seem to have at least tried to make it easy to find both official languages on their websiteThe website looks like it is powered by a free content management system like blogger which may be the attempt at reaching the younger crowd? Finding info on the local candidates wasn’t easy and there were often no pictures of the candidates which seems major drawback. In our view it is possibly the blandest website of the five parties but sometimes the ugliest sites reach the most people…just look at myspace.com!

One last strange phenomenon we noticed is the actual campaign posters being served up by the Liberals…has anyone else noticed other posters in Granby, Lac Brome, Sherbrooke…they have the Liberal Candidates all holding their chins against a fist much like Rodins “The Thinker” statue…all the candidates in the same pose!

PLEASE VOTE!
MARCH 26th 2007 IN YOUR TOWN IN QUEBEC.