Régis labeaume is Quebec’s hottest politician.

First elected mayor of Quebec City in a 2007 byelection as an independent, he was re-elected in November 2009, with almost 80% of the vote. He brought along 25 members of his new Team Labeaume party with him, completely dominating a council of 27.

Things were not so easy for Gérald Tremblay, who was re-elected mayor of Montreal last November, in a tough three-way race that included persistent allegations of corruption and kickbacks. Premier Jean Charest, until recently the most popular politician in Quebec, is also battling scandals: there are allegations that the construction industry has been skimming off as much as 30% of the province’s $50-billion commitment to infrastructure spending through bid rigging, political payoffs and the involvement of organized crime.

But Labeaume is unchallenged and Montrealers look with envy to the provincial capital, where snow removal happens the morning after a snowfall, not three to five days later, as it does in Montreal. Indeed, Labeaume has big plans for one of Canada’s most historic and tourist-friendly cities. During Radio-Canada’s New Year’s Eve show, an actor impersonating the mayor poked good-natured fun at Labeaume’s dreams of grandeur for Quebec City, which include a massive rebranding exercise. Labeaume wants the city to shed its traditional, “heart of French Canada” image to become a magnet for creative talents in the arts and technology who are multilingual.

Politically, Labeaume’s roots are in the Parti Québécois. He was an aide to a PQ minister in René Lévesque’s government. But from there, he left politics and went into business, making a personal fortune when the Liberals undid the PQ’s expropriation of Asbestos Corp. Ltd. Labeaume bought the company no one wanted, made it profitable and then cashed in when he flipped it.

Now, he wants to use his business savvy to transform Quebec City into a 21st-century, New Economy destination, relying on innovations in technology and culture to grow but also rooted in values important to the city.

His master stroke in the election campaign was a pledge to contribute to the construction of a new “amphitheatre,” with capacity for about 20,000 spectators. The voters knew the “amphitheatre” would really be a new hockey arena; the hope is that such a facility might play a part in luring a National Hockey League team back to the city — and Labeaume did nothing to discourage that view. Quebec City still hurts from the 1995 loss of the Nordiques. Sold to Denver inves-tors, that team became the Colorado Avalanche.

Mining Quebec City’s emotional connections is something Labeaume wants to develop further. To that end, he has hired Clotaire Rapaille, a multilingual, French-born psychiatrist who switched from treating autistic children to corporate communications, ultimately becoming a top U.S. marketing czar.

Labeaume wants Rapaille to do a makeover of Quebec City’s image, just as he helped Fortune 500 companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Chrysler, as well as major Canadian banks, rebrand themselves.

Rapaille says he learned from autistic children that emotion and gut reactions are more effective in communicating than the substance of what is being said. “Quebec is culture,” he said in a Radio-Canada interview. “Absolutely unique.”

And because Quebecers are emotional, Rapaille believes, they are well placed to bridge differences between Americans, whom he views as being adolescents, and English-Canadians, whom he considers more adult but uptight.

Rapaille and his team plan to move to Quebec City for February and March to develop Labeaume’s ideas about the city’s image and develop the rebranding process.

And he also wants to win another term as mayor in 2013. IE