Yvon Levesque seeks re-election by fighting high fuel prices

Helped by anti-Liberal sentiment in Quebec, Yvon Lévesque, the Bloc Québécois MP for the Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou riding, won the last federal election, but Lévesque may still be the candidate to beat in the Oct. 14 federal election, some political observers in the riding suggest.

That's because support for the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Green Party may split the vote of those who don't back the nationalist platform of the BQ.

First Nations and Inuit represent about one-fifth of the 58,000 potential voters in the riding.

However, fewer than 40 per cent of eligible voters in Nunavik came out to vote on the last federal election in January 2006. Of those who did vote, seven in 10 voted Liberal.

Overall Lévesque picked up 46.6 per cent or 13,928 of the 29,909 votes cast, trouncing both the Liberal and Conservative candidates.

The NDP received 1,800 votes, or about 6.1 per cent.

Romeo Saganash, a lawyer who works for the Grand Council of the Crees as its director of Quebec relations, was approached to be a candidate for the NDP in Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou.

But earlier this week Saganash told Nunatsiaq News that he decided against running for the NDP.

Already in the race to represent Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou is Jean-Maurice Matte, 45, mayor of Senterre, for the Conservatives. Ronald Tétreault, 72, a past mayor of Val d'Or and former member of Quebec's legislative assembly who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in 1979, was to be the official candidate, but withdrew suddenly Sept. 10, leaving the riding without a Liberal candidate for the moment.

Under the BQ slogan "présent pour le Québec" (here for Quebec), Lévesque, 68, who lives in Val d'Or, will seek a third mandate on a platform that includes fighting high fuel prices in the riding.