KAMOURASKA-TEMISCOUATA -

A by-election campaign in Kamouraska-Temiscouata will find the Liberals' star candidate France Dionne fighting hard this week to hold on to their seat.

The by-election in the Lower-Saint-Lawrence riding comes after Liberal MNA Claude Bechard's death from pancreatic cancer in September.

Dionne, who spent the last six years as Quebec's delegate in Boston, promoting Quebec exports to New England, is campaigning with one pressing priority: employment.

"To keep the jobs in the region," she said.

Dionne spent some time last week visiting a factory where 200 employees turn chunks of slate into tile to tell them she knows how to keep the factory open and create demand overseas for their product.

"She seems good at business," said employee Francis Pelletier, convinced by her campaign.

Premier Jean Charest said Dionne was a top candidate for the spot left vacant by Bechard's death.

"We are fighting very hard. We have a very good candidate, who used to be the MNA for the riding from 1985 to 1997," he said.

Keeping business in the region

The Liberals are pushing a campaign based on their economic track record, a move that may help them overcome the cloud of scandal that has hurt them in recent polls.

Opposition members say, however, that's one reason the Liberals shut down bidding for new metro cars for the STM, the Montreal transit authority, in October, handing a multi-billion-dollar contract to Bombardier workers in la Pocatiere.

On Oct. 5, the government announced it was awarding Bombardier-Alstom a contract to build more than 300 cars, and passed a law to that effect.

"What has happened with Bombardier is politically something in the advantage of the Liberal Party. When they did it -- and they did it exactly for that reason," said Quebec Solidaire leader Amir Khadir.

Electoral map

Critics say that's not the only trick up the Liberals' sleeve.

With a population of only 44,000, a single vote in Kamouraska-Temiscouata weighs much more than a vote in an area like the Lac-St. Louis riding in Montreal's West Island, with a population of about 106,000.

The chief electoral officer had a plan to resolve this inequality by creating a new electoral map that would have eliminated the riding and two other sparsely-populated ridiongs, and create three new seats in the Montreal suburbs.

The day before calling the by-election, the Liberal government moved to suspend the project of re-drawing the map.

"We believe the regions need to be represented. We had even tabled legislation before Mr. Bechard passed away, on this issue," said Charest.

Voters will decide on their new representative Nov. 29.

The Parti Quebecois candidate is Andre Simard, a newcomer to politics, and on the Action democratique du Quebec's bill is Gerald Beaulieu, who lost in the 2007 election to Bechard.