MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canada's ruling Conservatives picked up a seat in three elections on Monday to fill vacant federal parliamentary seats in Quebec, according to CBC News and official election results.
The Conservatives, who form a minority government in Ottawa, won the Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean electoral district in Quebec's Saguenay region about 280 miles northeast of Montreal.
Conservative candidate Denis Lebel won handily over Celine Houde of the Bloc Quebecois, a Quebec-based separatist party that had held the district nestled in the French-speaking province's separatist heartland.
The opposition Liberals posted no victories in Monday's vote and lost a long-held stronghold, the Outremont seat in Montreal, to Thomas Mulcair, candidate for the left-leaning New Democratic Party. The loss in Outremont could be a blow to Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, himself from Quebec.
Mulcair, formerly a Cabinet minister in the government of Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest, is a newcomer to the New Democrats and gives them their first seat in the province of 7.5 million in some time.
The Bloc Quebecois appeared set to retain the Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot seat east of Montreal.
The election results did little to change the balance of power in Canada's 308-seat House of Commons, where the Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have 126 seats to 95 for the Liberals, 47 for the Bloc Quebecois and 30 for the New Democrats.
But the Liberals' defeat in Outremont, which they had held since 1935, and the Bloc Quebecois' loss in Roberval could affect those parties' willingness to bring down the minority Conservatives anytime soon.
The strong showing by the Conservatives, who came second to the Bloc Quebecois in the Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot vote, will increase their representation to 11 seats in Quebec, where the party had been hoping to make further inroads with voters.
