Beauce

Beauce is located south of Quebec City in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, straddling the Chaudière River valley. The riding's largest town is Saint-Georges (population roughly 33,000), followed by Beauceville, Sainte-Marie, and Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce. The population of about 111,000 is overwhelmingly francophone (nearly 98 percent French-speaking) and predominantly Catholic. The region has long been renowned for its fierce entrepreneurial culture and is sometimes called "le royaume des PME"—the kingdom of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Candidates

Richard Lehoux (Conservative) was the incumbent, first elected in 2019. A fourth-generation dairy farmer from Saint-Elzéar, he served as mayor of Saint-Elzéar from 1998 to 2017 and as reeve of the Nouvelle-Beauce RCM from 2000 to 2017. He was elected president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM) in 2014, serving until 2017, when he retired briefly to his dairy farm before seeking the Conservative nomination.

Maxime Bernier (People's Party of Canada) is the founder and leader of the People's Party of Canada. Born in Saint-Georges, he is the son of Gilles Bernier, who represented Beauce from 1984 to 1997. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from UQAM and a law degree from the University of Ottawa. He served as the Conservative MP for Beauce from 2006 to 2019, holding cabinet posts including Minister of Industry and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Stephen Harper. He narrowly lost the 2017 Conservative leadership race, then left the party in August 2018 to found the PPC.

Solange Thibodeau (Bloc Québécois) has been a municipal councillor for the City of Saint-Georges since 2013. She has extensive experience as a small-business owner, having operated the restaurants La Clé de sol and La Boîte à lunch, as well as co-owning the Gîte de la rivière from 2006 to 2015. She was previously a radio host for the program "Sans Frontières" at Radio-Beauce and worked as a photographer and advertising journalist at l'Éclaireur-Progrès.

About the Riding

Beauce's economy reflects its entrepreneurial DNA. The region is home to nationally significant companies including the Canam Group, a steel products manufacturer founded in 1960 that employs nearly 4,000 people and operates 22 plants worldwide, and Pomerleau, a major construction firm that began its rapid growth in the 1970s. But smaller firms dominate the landscape: furniture, food processing, clothing, printing, metalworking, and garage door manufacturing all sustain the regional economy.

Agriculture remains important, with dairy farming and maple syrup production forming a significant part of the economic base. Roughly 16 percent of Quebec's maple syrup operations are located in the Beauce region, and the area has been central to Quebec's maple industry since the 1950s.

The 2021 campaign in Beauce was notable for the rematch between Lehoux and Bernier. The riding's traditionally conservative and libertarian-leaning electorate made it the most closely watched PPC target seat in the country. Bernier's opposition to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports drew both support and controversy during the pandemic-era campaign. Supply management in dairy—a system Bernier had pledged to dismantle—remained a sensitive topic in a riding with deep farming roots. The carbon tax, small-business tax relief, and federal regulation of the firearms used by rural residents were also prominent issues.