Six MNAs with Arab roots begin a new chapter in Quebec’s National Assembly
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Six MNAs with Arab roots will take seats in Quebec’s new National Assembly after the October 5 election, but the more significant story is how broadly that representation is now spread — across three parties, multiple ridings and both returning and first-time legislators.
The group includes three Quebec Liberals, two Conservatives and one Québec solidaire MNA, a distribution that makes the result less about one community aligning with one political camp and more about a wider presence across Quebec’s political spectrum.
Among the returning members are Ruba Ghazal, re-elected in Mercier for Québec solidaire, and Monsef Derraji, who retained Nelligan for the Quebec Liberal Party. Both already have established records inside the National Assembly and will enter the new session with parliamentary experience behind them.
The election also brought four first-time MNAs with Arab roots into the legislature: Nada Boumeftah in Maurice-Richard, Sonia Ziadé in La Prairie, Tarek Henoud in Arthabaska–L’Érable and Karim Elayoubi in Chauveau.
Six MNAs with Arab roots will take seats in Quebec’s new National Assembly after the October 5 election, but the more significant story is how broadly that representation is now spread — across three parties, multiple ridings and both returning and first-time legislators.
The group includes three Quebec Liberals, two Conservatives and one Québec solidaire MNA, a distribution that makes the result less about one community aligning with one political camp and more about a wider presence across Quebec’s political spectrum.
Among the returning members are Ruba Ghazal, re-elected in Mercier for Québec solidaire, and Monsef Derraji, who retained Nelligan for the Quebec Liberal Party. Both already have established records inside the National Assembly and will enter the new session with parliamentary experience behind them.
The election also brought four first-time MNAs with Arab roots into the legislature: Nada Boumeftah in Maurice-Richard, Sonia Ziadé in La Prairie, Tarek Henoud in Arthabaska–L’Érable and Karim Elayoubi in Chauveau.
Their victories do not establish how Arab voters cast their ballots. Élections Québec does not publish voting results by ethnicity, so there is no official basis for saying the community itself determined these outcomes.
What the results do show is that candidates from Arab backgrounds are winning in ridings made up of voters from many different communities and under different party banners. That makes the development more significant as a measure of political participation than as a simple count of “Arab seats.”
Overall turnout in the October 5 election reached 66.92 per cent, according to Élections Québec. Parti Québécois won 59 seats, while the Quebec Liberal Party secured 40.
The next test will come inside the legislature itself: which committees the six MNAs join, what policy files they take on and how visible they become in debates over health care, immigration, the economy, public services and other issues affecting Quebecers more broadly.
That is where the longer-term significance of their election will be measured — not only by representation, but by the role they play in shaping legislation and public policy.
