Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, right, and newly-elected candidate Louis-Philippe Sauvé pose with their campaign posters on Sept. 17 in Montreal. The Bloc Quebecois won the Montreal Liberal stronghold riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun after an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press

Top Liberals demonstrated either exceptional creativity or deep denial in casting their party’s humiliating by-election defeat in the Lasalle-Émard-Verdun riding as a merely disappointing political setback.

“Obviously, it’s never fun to come so close to winning a by-election,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday, after his party narrowly lost the lower Montreal riding that it won by 20 percentage points in 2021.

“For sure, it’s heartbreaking to lose a campaign by only 248 votes,” chimed Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada, further stretching credulity by saying reporters’ descriptions of Lasalle-Émard-Verdun as a Liberal stronghold were just “media spin.”

It is hard to understate the significance of the Liberal collapse in a Quebec riding with the demographic profile of Lasalle-Émard-Verdun. The fast-gentrifying circonscription has a progressive bent, and anglophones and allophones account for about 40 per cent of........

© The Globe and Mail