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QUEBEC — Bruised by their stunning byelection loss, Quebec’s wounded Liberals said Tuesday the message from voters is coming in loud and clear. Now they need to find ways to reconnect.

But some shaken Quebec City MNAs have pointed to the government’s own idea of holding hearings into systemic racism in Quebec as a source of some of the discontent expressed Monday in the Louis-Hébert byelection debacle.

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Some Liberals now are wondering what the government has got itself into by opening up the identity issue for debate. While the idea has gone over well in Montreal, the same cannot be said for the provincial capital and the Liberals may be paying a price.

“We got a big slap in the face,” Vanier-Les Rivières MNA Patrick Huot told reporters the day after the Liberal election loss to the Coalition Avenir Québec. “People are saying, ‘don’t take us for granted.’ ”

Huot ran down the list of errors the Liberals committed, including the fact Sam Hamad, the popular former MNA for the riding, was abruptly shown the door. The original party candidate, Éric Tétrault, was forced to pull out, which means they got off to a bad start.