By Daniel Béland

December 17, 2025

Even by the standards of our current, blink-and-you-miss-it, whiplash politics, the tenure of Pablo Rodriguez as leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec has been a whirlwind. While he’s no Liz Truss, Rodriguez resigned as leader of the LPQ only about six months after winning the party’s leadership on June 14.

If we exclude interim leaders, that makes him the shortest-serving LPQ leader since Confederation, a distinction he certainly did not expect to be remembered for six months or even six weeks ago.

In mid-November, two bombshells shook the LPQ and raised serious doubts about Rodriguez’s leadership. First, Rodriguez — a former federal Liberal cabinet minister — removed popular MNA Marwah Rizqy as parliamentary leader while suspending her from caucus because she had fired her chief of staff, Geneviève Hinse, without consulting him ahead of time. Hinse also served as chief of staff to Rodriguez when he was in Ottawa.

In early December, he expelled  Rizqy from the LPQ caucus while announcing “he would reinstate Hinse to her position.” Second, on November 20, the Journal de Montréal quoted alleged text messages exchanged during the LPQ leadership race referring to the payment of “brownies” (i.e., $100 bills) to buy pro-Rodriguez votes. These allegations were strongly denied by the LPQ leader, who even threatened to sue the Journal de Montréal.

This was not the end of the controversy surrounding the Rodriguez and the LPQ, controversy that took an especially dramatic turn a week ago, when Quebec’s anti-corruption agency, the UPAC (Unité permanente anticorruption), officially launched a criminal inquiry into allegations surrounding the last LPQ leadership race.

This type of inquiry can take months, and Rodriguez said again he had done nothing wrong, that he would remain leader, and that he wanted to shed light on the allegations.

But on Tuesday, another dramatic development shook Rodriguez’s leadership: the publication of an article in the Journal of the Montreal reporting that, during the LPC leadership race, at an April 12 event attended by Rodriguez, more than 20 people who had donated to his campaign each received an envelope containing $500 in cash to “reimburse” their gift, something illegal according to Quebec electoral laws.

Although Rodriguez claimed he was not aware of these payments, these new revelations convinced more and more influential LPQ members to call for his resignation, in public and behind closed doors. In the end, earlier Wednesday, it became clear Rodriguez would finally resign, something he announced to his caucus in mid-afternoon.

Given what happened to Rodriguez, it’s not clear that luring someone from Ottawa to run — like François-Philippe Champagne (who has already demurred), Steven Guilbault, or Mélanie Joly — would even be possible.

The next Quebec provincial elections are scheduled for October 5, 2026, in less than 10 months. Assuming there are no snap elections, this gives plenty of time to the LPQ to select a new leader, who could be either crowned or elected by party members after a leadership race. If there is a leadership race, it must be short, just like the one that took place early this year within the Liberal Party of Canada.

In terms of potential leadership candidates, the two most obvious names that are floating right now are two individuals who respectively finished in second and third place on June 14: Charles Milliard and Karl Blackburn.

A former president and CEO of the Fédération des Chambres de commerce du Québec, Milliard is relatively young (he was born in 1979), he has a lot of business experience, and he has been involved with the LPQ for a long time, but he has never been elected to political office before. At the last ballot of the LPQ leadership vote, he finished less than five points behind Rodriguez.

As for Blackburn, he is older and more experienced politically than Milliard, as he served as Roberval LPQ MNA between 2003 and 2007. Despite these differences, Milliard and Blackburn have something in common: unlike Rodriguez, the former MP of the Montreal-based Honoré-Mercier riding, they come from “the regions,” in which the LPQ needs much more support among their heavily francophone population to have a shot at winning the election.

Both Milliard and Blackburn have limited “star power”, and in the context of a potential leadership race, the LPQ might want to attract at least one “star candidate” who could perhaps act as a savior in the Jean Charest/1998 mode, or the functional equivalent of Mark Carney for the Liberal Party of Canada after Justin Trudeau announced he would step down.

Given what happened to Rodriguez, it’s not clear that luring someone from Ottawa to run like François-Philippe Champagne (who has already demurred), Steven Guilbault, or Mélanie Joly would even be possible.

The truth of the matter is that the next LPQ leader will face tremendous challenges, especially because the resignation of Rodriguez will not erase suspicions about “Liberal corruption” among Quebec voters. In the end, the LPQ will not only have to find a new leader but will also have to rebuild trust.

That’s not an insurmountable task for one person, but it is a tough sell to anyone with easier things to do.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.