ST-ANTOINE-DE-TILLY — The apple orchard the Liberal campaign bus has pulled into on this fine late summer afternoon advertises itself as “much more than an orchard.”
Sure enough, a few steps out back from where the Verger de Tilly sells apples and cider sits a popular biergarten with German fare and microbrasserie beer on tap.
It’s happy hour on a Friday and the locals have gathered for a pint when Liberal Leader Charles Milliard arrives on the scene, shaking hands and chatting along the way.
“Fan of the Blue Jays,” a smiling Milliard asks one young client wearing a Toronto baseball cap. “I guess while we wait for the Expos to come back. Or the Nordiques before, right?
“That’s not a promise. We can talk when the cameras are off.”
Everyone laughs. The ice is broken. The group seems thrilled to have one of the five party leaders in the Oct. 5 election in their midst.
“We didn’t expect to see him,” Zya Pettigrew tells a reporter. “It’s kind of nice.”
“It’s nice to see him somewhere other than on television,” adds her friend, Jean-Nicholas Thériault, 21, who will be voting for the first time in this election. “He’s funny.”
“To be very honest, he’s not my first choice,” adds Étienne. “But coming here is a nice gesture.”
By the end of the encounter, Milliard’s natural charm pays off. Everyone rises for a group photo with him.
An aide remarks: “They say these casual meetings yield results on election day.”
And results are something the Liberals need big time at this stage of the campaign. With only two weeks before the election, poll after poll shows the party languishing behind the leading Parti Québécois.
As for the Coalition Avenir Québec, which is selling itself as an autonomist party promising no referendum, the Liberals are either tied or trailing.
Over the last few weeks, there has been some grumbling on the state of the Milliard campaign even inside the Liberal party.
Quoting a dozen anonymous party veterans, Radio-Canada reported Sept. 14 that some members think Milliard is not making use of available campaign veterans to get his campaign going.
They have criticized his launch, which focused on the Liberal policy for the Quebec City region and was overshadowed by CAQ Leader Christine Fréchette’s own start in which she tagged U.S. President Donald Trump as her main adversary.
When the campaign bus rolled out, Milliard’s face was not on it despite his own admission that he is not well known to Quebecers. It took the Liberals until Day 18 of the campaign before it flip-flopped and added his face.
“When you are in politics, you have to accept criticism,” Milliard said last week when asked about the discontent. “It’s part of the game. We are a party that is 160 years old. There are people who have been in the party for years and have their opinions.
“I spoke to many of these people who are not named. You know I am a very humble person. I adapt in life. I noted there were questions about the picture on the bus. So we decided to have the bus evolve in putting my face there.”
Some Liberals, however, see irony in the fact most of the compliments the Milliard campaign has earned have come from PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who has a vested interest in seeing the Liberals do better because it bleeds away federalist voters parked with the CAQ.
Time is running short for the Liberals. Already there is speculation Milliard will suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Dominique Anglade.
In 2022, Anglade led the party to its worst electoral performance in party history, winning only 21 seats (down from 31 in 2018) and 14.4 per cent of the vote. Anglade would later be forced to resign.
Nearly all the ridings the Liberals won in 2022 were in the Montreal area. The party currently holds 18 seats in the legislature.
Milliard, who only became leader seven months ago and is running his first campaign, kicked things off in August saying he wanted to make a breakthrough in the regions, and he has spent much of the campaign there.
Milliard is running in the Eastern Townships riding of Orford. Early polls there were positive for the Liberals in the region but now show the Liberals in fourth place.
But Milliard, the 47-year-old former president of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, is campaigning intensively as two days spent following his campaign bus around shows.
The days are filled with policy announcements, radio interviews and rallies. He has crunched apples, sipped cider and sampled poutine from the finest casse-croûtes Quebec has to offer.
He does not hesitate to approach strangers. At the Festival Western de St-Tite last weekend, he donned a black cowboy hat and mingled with the fans for five hours.
His style is energetic and easygoing. The campaign runs on time. As of Wednesday morning, the Milliard campaign bus has racked up a total of 7,085 kilometres criss-crossing Quebec.
While expectations were low for his performances in the first two televised debates, observers said Milliard improved from the first to the second. The last one, sponsored by Radio-Canada, takes place Wednesday evening in Montreal.
On this particular campaign day, Milliard was standing on the shores of Lac Mégantic to announce plans to inject $200 million into boosting Quebec’s CLSCs as anchors to the health and social services network.
He is asked about how he is going to lift the Liberals.
“The number of votes in the ballot box this morning is zero,” he said. “So it’s ours to win.”
A few hours later and farther down a winding highway, Milliard holds a news conference to show his support for the Comité Citoyen l’avenir naît ici, a citizen’s committee fighting to restore obstetric services at the Hôpital Lac-Mégantic.
The committee argues women should not have to travel an hour and a half to Sherbrooke to give birth. The other leaders have pledged to help the group as well.
The support from Milliard is more than welcome, group founder Rozane Bizier-Lacroix says in an interview.
“I think he’s honest in his promises,” she said, standing outside the hospital. “Now we have to see what is put in place if he is elected, but it’s still something that he came here.”
That evening, the Liberal campaign rolls into the Quebec City region for a rally at a popular Ste-Foy pub. Milliard and most of his workers are operating on four hours of sleep following the TVA debate.
Milliard is up for it. So are excited supporters who rush for selfies with him.
“Do you feel the winds of change that are coming?” Milliard asks the crowd, standing on a small stage. “I told you from the start that campaigns are useful and people are starting to understand the CAQ is over.
“The trial of the CAQ is over and the verdict is guilty — guilty of wasting the taxpayers’ money. We can hold our heads high because we are the only federalist party on the ballot Oct. 5.”
And with that it’s back on the bus and back on the road.
The Gazette’s On Quebec Politics newsletter by Andy Riga breaks down key election issues, from polling shifts to legislative manoeuvring to ideas circulating in francophone commentary that don’t make it into English-language coverage.
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