Former Parti Québécois cabinet minister Daniel Paille has been elected the new leader of the Bloc Québécois.
"We have work to do," he said in his victory speech in French. "But that work is exceptional. Imagine, we have a unique chance, as a people, to build our country. I believe this."
Paille won on a second ballot against Maria Mourani. His total vote was 7,868 or 61.2 per cent. Mourani placed second, scoring 4,972 votes or 38.7 per cent of the vote. Jean-Francois Fortin was third.
Paille, 61, won the leadership but the election was hardly impressive. A sign of how moribund the Bloc has become, of the 36,341 paid-up members eligible to vote, only 14,039 bothered to mail in their ballots. That represents a participation rate of 38.7 per cent.
At the time of the May 2 federal election where the New Democrats crushed them, the Bloc had 50,000 members. That means a quarter of the members did not bother to renew their cards.
