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March 6, 2025 • Volume 39, No. 21
Next edition March 20
L’édition de cette semaine à l’intérieur...
Blais re-relected on bittersweet night for Liberals By Fred Sherwin The Orléans Star
Stephen Blais addresses his supporters on election night after being re-elected with 52 per cent of the vote in Orléans. SHERWIN PHOTO
The recent provincial election turned out to be bittersweet for Orléans MPP-elect Stephen Blais and local Liberal supporters. Although Blais managed to easily retain his seat by more than 10,000 votes and the Liberal Party regained official status for the first time since the 2018 election, both victories were overshadowed by the fact that Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie failed to win in Mississauga, once again throwing the party’s leadership into question despite her election night vow to stay on. As for Blais, he has never been in a stronger position. The 30,482 votes he received is the most votes ever received by a candidate of any party in the riding previoulsy, and his margin of victory of 10,614 votes, is second only to his predecessor Marie-France Lalonde who won by
11,836 votes in the 2014 General Election. Progressive Conservative hopeful Stéphan Plourde finished a distant second to Blais with 19,868 votes. NDP candidate Matthew Sévigny received 3,371 votes. The Green Party’s Michelle Petersen got 1,398 votes, while the rest were split between New Blue candidate Patricia Hooper (641 votes), Libertarian Ken Lewis (233 votes) and independent candidates Arabella Vida (138 votes) and Burthomley Douzable (130 votes). A total of 56,123 people cast a ballot in this year’s provincial election, or 47.7 per cent of the total eligible voters in Orléans, which was slightly higher than the 46.9 per cent who voted in the 2022 election. Now that he’s been re-elected with a solid majority, Blais says he plans to continue to fight CONTINUED ON PAGE 2