QUICK TAKE: Twenty dollars in a cap, and a second chance signed by Fréchette

Under twenty dollars

A written sentence

Read the sentence twice: under C$20.

That’s the number Louis-Charles Thouin picked himself. In a written statement, reported by La Presse on September 17, he describes the prizes he gave away as having little value. Under C$20.

The number is small. That’s the whole point.

Under C$20 per winner. How many winners, he doesn’t say.

A small number reassures. We tell ourselves it’s nothing. That nobody makes an affair of state out of one green bill.

And yet that number is the entire problem.

The bingo cage

Everybody knows what bingo sounds like.

The rattle of balls in the cage. The voice calling out the letter and the number. The dauber stamping the card. The hush just before somebody shouts.

We know the folding tables. We know the coffee in paper cups. We know the regulars, who have kept the same seat for years.

It’s one of the few places people go for the pleasure of being together, and for a small prize.

For a candidate, it’s something else. A hall full of seated voters. Hours of them. A microphone.

A small prize, exactly. That’s where it starts.

The cap

In CAQ colours

On September 17, the Journal de Québec broke the story, later confirmed by La Presse. Radio-Canada summed it up on the 25th.

Louis-Charles Thouin, outgoing member for Rousseau and a Coalition Avenir Québec candidate, slipped C$20 and C$10 bills into caps and shirts bearing his face.

He then gave them away as door prizes at bingos run by community groups in his riding.

Gifts in party colours, La Presse notes. With cash inside.

Thouin is no rookie. Elected in Rousseau in 2018, re-elected in 2022, his National Assembly profile shows. He was parliamentary assistant to the premier.

September 8

According to The Canadian Press, picked up by Noovo, one of those bingos took place on September 8. The winners were seniors.

The campaign was already under way. His National Assembly profile says his term as a member ended on August 27, when the legislature was dissolved.

A cap, then. A campaign item, with a candidate’s face on it.

And inside, a bill.

Something you wear on your head. Something that says a name. And money.

A campaign cap doesn’t hide a bill by accident.

Lévis, on a Thursday

A serious error of judgment

On Thursday, September 17, in Lévis, Christine Fréchette arrives at a party cocktail event. She is CAQ leader and premier. Thouin was her parliamentary assistant until dissolution.

She calls it a serious error of judgment. She promises to make sure nothing like it happens again.

Then she adds that there was no ill intent behind it. And that Thouin has her confidence.

A second chance

The next day, according to The Canadian Press, she says she is ready to give him a second chance. Her confidence has been shaken, she admits.

He remains the candidate in Rousseau.

She doesn’t drop him. She doesn’t suspend him. She keeps him.

She had the political power to act. She didn’t use it.

A leader can forgive. A leader can also cut ties. On the 17th, she forgave.

Some CAQ members would have wanted her to push him out, Radio-Canada reports, even if it meant running nobody in this Lanaudière riding.

I stand with the voters of Rousseau and the groups that lent out their bingos. I stand against Christine Fréchette’s decision, made September 17, to keep this candidate. Because the election law exempts only food and drink, and these prizes had cash in them.

The law has no under-C$20 clause.

A serious error, and full confidence. Both on the same night.

Section 558

What the law forbids

Quebec’s Election Act has a section for this. Section 558.

It punishes anyone who, to influence a voter, induces that voter to back a candidate by granting any gift, loan, job or other advantage.

The fine runs from C$5,000 to C$20,000 for a first offence.

The law files this offence among corrupt electoral practices. A person found guilty loses the right to vote and to run for five years. And if that person is a sitting member, the election is annulled.

What the law exempts

The section spells out its exceptions. There are only two: food and drink, served at a meeting of voters or to volunteers.

It doesn’t exempt small sums. It doesn’t exempt caps. It doesn’t exempt the luck of a draw. It doesn’t exempt bingos. It doesn’t exempt good faith.

It weighs one thing only: the intent to influence a vote.

The text says nothing about an amount. It talks about an advantage.

I’m not a judge. I’m reading a statute, and I’m reading all of it.

That intent, I don’t know. Nobody has been charged. No prosecution is public. The Chief Electoral Officer can bring one. For this section, the law gives him 10 years.

A sandwich, yes. Cash, the law never carved out.

In his own words

Three bingos

The most striking part isn’t the act. It’s the sentence that explains it.

As part of his election activities, Thouin writes, according to La Presse, he held door-prize draws at three bingos run by community groups.

The prizes, he adds, were offered free of charge by his campaign.

By his campaign. As part of his election activities.

He doesn’t say how many caps. He doesn’t say how many bills. He doesn’t give the total.

Luck and value

His defence comes down to two points. The winners were picked by chance. The prizes were worth little.

Chance decides who receives. It says nothing about why anyone gives.

Value isn’t the test the law applies. Section 558 sets no amount.

And Thouin’s own sentence settles a question nobody needed to ask him. This was not the act of a sitting member. It was the act of a campaign.

He called it electoral himself. The rest follows.

Not an ounce of malice

A well-meaning mistake

Thouin’s best defence exists. It deserves to be heard in full.

A CAQ colleague lays it out to Radio-Canada. Thouin doesn’t have an ounce of malice in him. It was a mistake made with good intentions. Sometimes things move fast in a campaign.

Fréchette says the same thing another way: no ill intent.

A well-meaning mistake, repeated at three bingos, starts to look like a method.

And the CAQ, in its written statement, promises to account for everything. The cost of the gifts and the small sums slipped inside will be booked as election expenses. Nothing hidden, is the gist.

What the gesture shows

And yet that defence turns on itself.

If the gesture was innocent, why promise it won’t happen again?

If the money is an election expense, then it served the election. An election expense, under Section 402, is the cost of any property used during the election period to promote a candidate.

Good faith doesn’t erase the definition.

One bingo organizer, quoted by the Journal de Québec according to the website EnDroit, says she had the impression he was trying to buy seniors’ votes. That is her impression. It weighs what testimony weighs. No more. No less.

No malice, maybe. But an election expense, by his own account.

Into the expense report

A hundred and twenty days

Here is where the story turns into bookkeeping.

The vote is on October 5, Élections Québec announces.

Section 432 then gives each candidate’s official agent 120 days after polling day to file a report of all election expenses with the Chief Electoral Officer, invoices and receipts attached.

A hundred and twenty days. Early February 2027.

Until then, nobody knows what those bills add up to. Thouin hasn’t published it. Neither has the CAQ.

The Rousseau cap will become a line in that report. A unit cost. A total.

The spending ceiling is calculated from the number of registered voters: C$0.95 per voter for the 2026 general election, according to Élections Québec. Every bill tucked into a cap counts against that ceiling.

Half paid back

Then there is what Élections Québec says on its own website.

Once the report is audited, a partial reimbursement goes to candidates who were elected or won at least 15% of valid votes. At the provincial level, the rate is 50%.

An election expense that is reported and accepted is therefore half reimbursed, with public money, to any candidate who meets those conditions.

If the bingo bills pass the audit as election expenses, half of them could land on us. If the audit rejects them, the question moves elsewhere.

Élections Québec then publishes a summary. It’s a safeguard. A late one.

Either way, we’ll find out after the vote.

The cap ends up a line item, 120 days too late.

Fifty percent

Ten dollars out of twenty

Let’s look that number in the eye.

Fifty percent.

A campaign slips a C$20 bill into a cap. It books it as an expense. And the public, in the best case for that campaign, would pay back ten.

That’s the mirror. Accepting that a bingo bill is an expense like a lawn sign.

I’m not inventing this calculation. It’s the ordinary machinery, applied to an item that should never have been in it.

Rousseau, the charities, the treasury

The voters of Rousseau pay first. They get a gift with a face on it, in a hall where they came to play.

The community groups pay next. Their bingos, built to break loneliness, become the backdrop of a scandal.

Taxpayers might pay at the end. On a report almost nobody will read.

And yet the decision to keep the candidate was made before that report even exists.

The expense gets refunded. Trust doesn’t.

A lost campaign day

About ten CAQ insiders

The discomfort doesn’t only come from outside.

Radio-Canada spoke with about ten outgoing members and CAQ candidates. The vast majority said they were angry, disappointed, embarrassed or far from impressed, without giving their names.

One candidate says he can’t even understand why Thouin is still there. One candidate says it hurt, two days spent on this instead of on policy. One candidate says it wasted a campaign day.

A woman candidate sums it up: cash bills in politics are pretty much banned.

One lost day, in a campaign of about 40 days, is not nothing.

Doubts before the campaign

Others fall in line. One candidate calls it very irresponsible, but says she trusts the leader.

According to a source inside the CAQ organization, cited by Radio-Canada, outgoing members had voiced doubts even before the campaign. Thouin first considered not running again. He reportedly changed his mind when Fréchette became leader.

These are anonymous sources. I report them as such.

The unease speaks softly. The decision speaks loudly.

Ghazal, Milliard, Duhaime

The other leaders

The opponents opened fire. That’s their job.

According to The Canadian Press, Ruba Ghazal of Québec solidaire calls it senseless to hand out money to people like that in 2026.

Liberal leader Charles Milliard talks about unacceptable conduct. He mocks the idea of a cap with C$20 inside.

Éric Duhaime of the Conservative Party urges Fréchette to show some humility.

One signature, not three

I don’t take any of their sides.

Each of them has an interest in keeping this alive until October 5.

What matters isn’t their anger. It’s the decision. And the decision has one signature on it.

Her name isn’t Ghazal, or Milliard, or Duhaime.

Rivals’ anger doesn’t replace a leader’s decision.

The 2024 cocktails

A first investigation

This isn’t the first time Thouin’s name has crossed paths with political money.

In 2024, Radio-Canada recalls, the ethics commissioner investigated the C$100 cocktails affair. The member had invited municipal officials from his riding to a CAQ fundraiser. In exchange for donations, the invitation said, they could talk with the transport minister of the day, Geneviève Guilbault.

Cleared by Ariane Mignolet

At the end of her investigation, the commissioner, Ariane Mignolet, cleared him.

That needs to be written plainly. Cleared means cleared. We don’t retry 2024 in 2026.

But we can note a pattern. Twice, the same member at the same intersection: the voter on one side, money on the other.

The 2024 invitation promised access to a minister. The 2026 cap held a bill. It isn’t the same thing. The reflex looks alike.

The first time, a commissioner ruled. The second time, a party leader.

The commissioner judged 2024. For 2026, it’s a party leader.

Small sums, an open file

Ten dollars, twenty dollars

I also have to state what cuts against my own anger.

The sums are small. Ten dollars, twenty dollars. Nobody is getting rich.

The CAQ hasn’t denied anything. It has promised to put the amounts in the expense report, where Élections Québec can see them.

Nobody has been charged. And the only past investigation cleared him.

What remains open

You can find this harsh for a few bills. I understand the argument. I don’t share it. The law doesn’t weigh the bill. It weighs the act.

All of that is true. None of it answers the question the law asks: intent.

The Chief Electoral Officer can prosecute. His investigations, EnDroit notes, remain confidential.

Until October 5, then, the only check that counts is the voters’. After that, it belongs to the accountants.

Small sums, a big question, and no answer before the vote.

Rousseau votes October 5

Two checks

There are two checks, and only one arrives in time.

The first is the ballot. The voters of Rousseau hold it on October 5.

The second is the expense report. It comes 120 days later, when the member has long since been elected or beaten.

The only one on time

The voters of Rousseau asked for none of this. The voters of Rousseau didn’t choose bingo halls as the arena. The voters of Rousseau will still have to rule on what their leader refused to rule on.

Fréchette’s decision has one precise consequence. It moved the leader’s judgment onto the voters.

Between now and then, they will have neither the total of the bills, nor the list of bingos, nor any finding from Élections Québec.

It’s their right. It wasn’t their job.

The leader handed her judgment to the bingo players.

The cap on the books

What will remain

A cap will remain.

The bill was spent long ago. The face is still on it.

In February, it will go into an expense report, with a cost, a date, an invoice.

The next time a candidate drops by to greet a bingo hall, players will look at his cap before their card.

And somebody will ask what’s inside.

The price of a bingo vote

Who should rule on a cap stuffed with a bill: the leader who keeps her candidate, or the voters of Rousseau?

The cage will spin again next week, in community halls.

This time, the prizes might just be prizes.

Twenty dollars per cap, and one chance too many.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• LégisQuébec — Election Act, sections 402, 432, 558, 567, 568 and 569, accessed September 25, 2026
• Élections Québec — election expenses and reimbursement, accessed September 25, 2026
• National Assembly of Quebec — profile of member Louis-Charles Thouin, accessed September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Radio-Canada — C$20 bills at bingo, unease inside the CAQ, September 25, 2026
• lapresse.ca — Fréchette calls it a serious error of judgment, Thouin’s statement, September 17, 2026
• Noovo (The Canadian Press) — a second chance for Thouin, September 18, 2026