Sherbrooke

The riding of Sherbrooke centres on Quebec's sixth-largest city, perched where the Magog and Saint-François rivers meet in the Eastern Townships roughly 150 kilometres southeast of Montreal. Two post-secondary institutions dominate the cityscape: the francophone Université de Sherbrooke, renowned for its cooperative education programs, and the anglophone Bishop's University in the borough of Lennoxville.

Candidates

Élisabeth Brière (Liberal) — A notary with nearly three decades of practice in real estate and mediation. Brière also lectured at the Université de Sherbrooke and served as president of Maison Aube-Lumière, a local palliative care residence. A resident of Sherbrooke since the late 1980s, she sought to become the first Liberal elected in the riding in a generation.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault (NDP) — Elected in 2011 at age 19 as the youngest MP in Canadian history, Dusseault was a student of applied politics at the Université de Sherbrooke and co-founder of the campus NDP club. Re-elected in 2015 as one of 17 NDP members returned in Quebec, he had served as the party's National Revenue critic and chaired the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Claude Forgues (Bloc Québécois) — The longtime director general of Centraide Estrie, where he spent 37 years leading the charitable organization. Forgues had been active in the sovereignty movement for years before narrowly winning the Bloc's federal nomination in September 2019.

Dany Sévigny (Conservative) — A Sherbrooke businessman who campaigned on tackling the region's labour shortage and positioning the city as a capital of green energy technologies. His candidacy drew support from former organizers of Jean Charest's political campaigns in the Eastern Townships.

Mathieu Morin (Green Party) — A law and MBA student at the Université de Sherbrooke running his third campaign under a green banner, having previously stood in Joliette federally in 2015 and in Saint-François provincially in 2018.

Edwin Moreno (Independent), Steve Côté (Parti Rhinoceros Party), and Hubert Richard (No Affiliation) also appeared on the ballot.

About the Riding

Sherbrooke serves as the administrative and commercial hub of the Estrie region. The Université de Sherbrooke and its affiliated research parks are the city's largest employers, followed by the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke, which anchors a robust health-sciences sector. The local economy had diversified from its earlier textile and manufacturing roots into microelectronics, information technology, and pharmaceutical research, though the city's median household income remained below the provincial average. A significant labour shortage across the Eastern Townships was a growing concern heading into the 2019 campaign, with employers increasingly looking to immigration to fill vacancies. French was the mother tongue of roughly 88 percent of residents, though a growing number spoke Arabic, Spanish, and other languages. The riding's student population gave it a younger-than-average demographic profile and lent the contest a competitive, multi-party character.