| Yves Lévesque | |
| Birth Date: | 1957 |
| Office: | Mayor of Trois-Rivières, Quebec |
| Term Start: | November 4, 2001 |
| Term End: | December 27, 2018 |
| Predecessor: | Guy Leblanc |
| Successor: | Jean Lamarche |
| Party: | Conservative (federal) Conservative (provincial; 2021-present) |
| Otherparty: | CAQ (provincial; after 2003, before 2021) Parti Quebecois (provincial; before 2003) |
Yves Lévesque (born 1957) is a Canadian politician, who served as Mayor of Trois-Rivières between 2001 and 2018.
Lévesque won his first electoral victory in 1994, when he became city councilor in Trois-Rivières-Ouest. He was re-elected in 1998.
In the wake of the province-wide municipal merging of 2001, he ran for Mayor of Trois-Rivières and won an upset victory against favourite candidate and Cap-de-la-Madeleine Mayor Alain Croteau. In the 2003 provincial election, he campaigned in favour of the re-election of Parti Québécois incumbent Guy Julien, who lost.
In 2005, Julien ran against Lévesque for mayor, but the incumbent was easily re-elected with 70% of the vote.[1]
Recently, Lévesque has been trying to get the Trois-Rivières Draveurs, a franchise of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, back in town.[2]
On December 27, 2018, Lévesque announced he was retiring as mayor for medical reasons.[3]
Lévesque officially joined the Conservative Party of Canada in May 2018, taking out a party membership and speaking at the party's convention in Saint-Hyacinthe. He stated at the time that he was considering running for the party in the 43rd election.[4] He joined the Conservative Party because of its stated goal of decentralizing power to the provinces.[5]
On May 30, 2019, Lévesque was named the Conservative candidate for the riding of Trois-Rivières.[6] During the race, he was expected to win; however, he lost the race, standing third. Lévesque blamed party leader Andrew Scheer's first French-language debate, wherein Scheer's perceived inability to defend his personal views from the other leaders shifted support from the Conservatives in Quebec, which never recovered.[7]
Lévesque ran in Trois-Rivières again as a Conservative in 2021 and gained 17,027 votes (an increase of 1,787) but came in second.
| Mayoral candidate | Vote | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yves Lévesque (X) | 26,503 | 51.37 | |
| Jean-François Aubin | 23,252 | 45.07 | |
| André Bertrand | 1,837 | 3.56 |
| Party | Mayoral candidate | Vote | % | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independent | Yves Lévesque (X) | 29,204 | 49.25 | |||
| Independent | Sylvie Tardif | 18,491 | 31.18 | |||
| Independent | Catherine Dufresne | 8,324 | 14.04 | |||
| Independent | Marcelle Girard | 1,609 | 2.71 | |||
| bgcolor=#002343 width="30px" | Force 3R | Richard St-Germain | 1,321 | 2.23 | ||
| Independent | Pierre Benoit Fortin | 352 | 0.59 | |||
| Candidate | Party | Vote | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yves Lévesque (X) | Independent | 25,637 | 54.9 | |
| André Carle | Force 3R | 21,077 | 45.1 |
| Candidate | Vote | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yves Lévesque (inc.) | 34,298 | 70.3 | |
| 13,741 | 28.2 | ||
| 754 | 1.5 |