Crushing defeats in Monday's QuÈbec byelections don't mean the Liberals can't take office in the next general election, says Yukon MP Larry Bagnell.

Bagnell said in an interview Tuesday he does not feel the Liberals' inability to retain one of their longest-held QuÈbec ridings, Outremont, or make headway in two others, Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean and Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, is an indication the party has fallen out of favour with Canadian voters.

'It's certainly not reflective of standings across the country. We're in a dead heat with (the) Conservatives in the polls,' he said.

In Monday's byelections, the Liberals surrendered Outremont, which they have only lost once since 1935, by more than 20 percentage points to Jack Layton's NDP.

In other ridings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives picked up Roberval-Lac-Saint Jean, which was firmly held by the Bloc QuÈbÈcois. The Bloc, for its part, held onto Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot.

Bagnell said he didn't feel the losses would hurt Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's chances of holding onto his top spot, but conceded his party could still be suffering from the residue of the QuÈbec sponsorship scandal and ill-feelings over Dion's involvement in passing the Clarity Act.

In the 1990s, Dion, then minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, challenged the validity of the question used in the 1995 QuÈbec referendum in three separate letters to Lucien Bouchard, then the premier of QuÈbec, and Jacques Brassard, then Intergovernmental Affairs minister for QuÈbec.

In 2000, the Liberals passed the Clarity Act, which established conditions of a province leaving Canada, including that referendum questions be clearly worded.

Bagnell said the Liberal party will stand by its values in the next federal election.

Darrell Pasloski, the election's Conservative candidate for Yukon, said Tuesday he views the QuÈbec byelections as 'historical' events.

Pasloski said with the Conservative victory and tough losses for the Bloc QuÈbÈcois and the Liberals, he doesn't expect a fall election.

'We won a seat in Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, which was a stronghold of the Bloc, and we won it with 60 per cent of the popular vote.

'The lack of relevance of the Bloc is something I think QuÈbecers are starting to realize,' Pasloski said.

'I think it was a good day for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. I'm pretty confident we won't be seeing a vote following these votes.'

Pasloski said he feels Canadians are starting to accept Harper as more 'prime ministerish' and that worries the Conservatives would be punished at the polls in QuÈbec over troops being sent to Afghanistan have been dispelled.