“The dynamics of social and political interchange are an integral part of all of Rubbo's films but in (I Hate To Lose) he has excelled himself. With an uncanny intuitive sense of how this dialectic operates, Rubbo set about to make a film on the Quebec provincial election held in November, 1976 (when Rene Levesque of the Parti Quebecois was swept into power)... the result, a film in the mode of his other ‘diary' films, assured and highly observant, warm and again gratifying in its feel for first-person journalism. Rubbo chose the electoral race in Westmount as his subject, originally to focus upon the interesting candidacy of Nick auf der Maur, leader of the Democratic Alliance, a left-wing group who were expected to do well... But, as in his other films, the material begins to chart its own course, and Rubbo follows these threads as they develop. Just as auf der Maur lacks a strong presence in the film, his opponents... begin to attract Rubbo's attention... the final ten or fifteen minutes which covers election night is probably the finest bit of work that Rubbo has done... From the moment the election results come in ..., Rubbo shows us a riding that, like an island, is lost in an ocean that it doesn't understand. While the Parti Quebecois victory is happening around them, it is an event that like in ‘Alice in Wonderland' is happening ‘out there somewhere'... the English ‘reality,' symbolized for generations simply by the name Westmount, is sad, confused and lost - detached from its surrounding environment by a force that it seems unwilling to comprehend.”