MONTREAL - If Justin Trudeau is interested in becoming Liberal leader, he wasn't letting on Monday night.
The son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was one of just seven Quebec Liberals to emerge unscathed after the NDP surged to 58 seats in the province.
Talk turned quickly to leadership after the Liberal debacle across the country, which also included current Liberal honcho Michael Ignatieff going down to defeat in his own riding.
"Now is not the time to discuss leadership, now is the time to look at what this party actually needs" said the 39-year-old Trudeau.
"I think changing leaders as often as the Liberal party has in the past few years hasn't been the magic bullet we thought it would be... We need to a lot of hard work on the ground before we can get anywhere near the kind of trust we need from Canadians."
He added he will continue to support Ignatieff as leader if the party decides to keep him.
Trudeau won again in the riding of Papineau, beating out the next closest candidate -- a New Democrat -- by 3,000 votes.
He first won the working-class riding in 2008 by about 1,000 votes over Bloc Quebecois incumbent Vivian Barbot, who finished third this time around.
Though Trudeau has struggled to shed his image as a political lightweight, he will likely take on a larger role in the party after the ousting of several key MPs -- and he has already shown signs of asserting himself.
He made headlines late in the campaign when he acknowledged the Liberals had trouble connecting with voters and suggested some party members had grown complacent.
Despite his party's poor showing, Trudeau said he was pleased to see Quebecers jump ship from the separatist Bloc Quebecois, even if it wasn't to join the Liberals.
"(Quebecers) have stopped saying, 'OK let's just sit on the sidelines,"' he said.
"I think we'll look at a very different country in the coming years with Quebec playing a major role."
