MONTREAL - Former MP and provincial cabinet minister Daniel Paille is the new leader of the Bloc Quebecois.

Paille, who lost his seat in the last election, beat out current MPs Maria Mourani and Jean-Francois Fortin.

Paille faces the daunting job of trying to bring back the party that was all but decimated in a disastrous showing in last May's election.

The separatist party had been dominant under longtime leader Gilles Duceppe until it foundered. The Bloc misfortunes came largely at the hands of the New Democrats, who benefited from a late campaign surge.

Party membership has slumped since then.

Paille acknowledged that he has a difficult job, but said the Bloc speaks for Quebec in a way no other party can.

"Quebec voted for change in the last election....and they got change," Paille said Sunday after his victory was announced.

"But they never voted to take the Quebec nation backwards."

More than a quarter of the party's 53,000 members didn't renew their card and couldn't vote for the new leader.

Paille, 61, worked for many years as an economist and a financial analyst in the private sector.

He held a seat in the House of Commons for only a year and a half before losing his seat in the NDP surge this spring.

He was elected to Quebec's national assembly in 1994 as a member of the Parti Quebecois, serving as minister under premier Jacques Parizeau.

He was elected as a Bloc MP during a 2009 byelection in the Montreal east end riding of Hochelaga and was the party's finance critic.

Paille also worked briefly for the Harper Conservatives.

Soon after the Tories took office, in 2007, they hired Paille as an independent investigator to look into contracts handed out by the previous Liberal government.

Paille was asked to consider whether there should be a public inquiry into the Liberals' contracts for public-opinion polling.

The move did not work out exactly as planned. Paille concluded that not only should there not be an inquiry into the past government, he accused the current one of spending an "astounding" sum on polls.

Soon after he became involved with the Bloc Quebecois and was elected in a 2009 byelection, before losing his seat this past spring.

The party had been dominant under longtime leader Gilles Duceppe until its sudden, near-total wipeout in the May 2 election.