After a short 36-day campaign and $610 million later, Canada has elected yet another Liberal minority government. The seat tally does not look much different from before Parliament was dissolved in late August.
Saint John-Rothesay stays red
Liberal incumbent Wayne Long won his third election in Saint John-Rothesay. Long finished the night with 46 percent of the vote, while Conservative candidate Mel Norton held 33 per cent, and NDP candidate Don Paulin was third with 13 per cent. Long and his Liberal supporters celebrated the victory in O’Leary’s Pub Monday night.
He noted that he thinks “people see how hard I worked, how hard our team worked… this was us against everybody”.
Liberals
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party only gained one additional seat to what they had in the 2019 federal election, ending the night with 158 seats in the House of Commons.
There were notable winners and losers for the Liberal party such as Jenica Atwin, the incumbent Liberal from Fredericton who was first elected in 2019 under the Green Party and crossed the floor in June of this year.
Several cabinet members lost their seats such as Maryam Monsef, Minister for Women and Gender Equality, and Rural Economic Development, who lost her seat in the Ontario riding of Peterborough-Kawartha. Fisheries and Oceans minister Bernadette Jordan lost her seat in South Shore-St Margarets in Nova Scotia and Deb Schulte, Minister of Seniors lost her seat in Ontario’s King-Vaughan riding.
The Liberal party won 31.8 per cent of the popular vote, which is down 1.3 per cent from the 2019 election and the lowest percentage for any governing party in Canada’s history.
In his victory speech, Trudeau said that Canadians are “sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get Canada through this pandemic and to brighter days ahead… the moment we face demands real, important change, and you have given this Parliament and this government clear direction”.
Conservatives
Erin O’Toole’s Conservative party ended the night with 119 seats, two fewer than the 2019 election under former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.
O’Toole made it clear that he is not stepping down from leadership and intends to keep fighting for his party and to defeat Trudeau in the next election.
O’Toole was adamant about the work that the Conservative party was going to get to in the next parliament. He announced that a “post-election review to examine what went right, what went wrong, and what we can do better to win in 18 months” will take place.
The CPC received 34.1 per cent of the popular vote in Monday’s election, almost exactly the same as the 34.3 per cent from the 2019 election.
NDP
25 New Democrats were elected, only winning one additional seat. Leader Jagmeet Singh kept his seat in British Columbia’s Burnaby South riding. Notably, Metis and two-spirit candidate Blake Desjarlais scooped up Edmonton-Griesbach’s previously Conservative seat.
The NDP had hoped to gain more seats in this election after losing 20 of the 44 it had in 2015 during the 2019 federal election. The party’s popular vote increased by 1.7 percent from 2019 to 17.7 per cent on Monday.
Singh says he is not giving up on his party leadership just yet. He said that he was proud of what his party had accomplished and that “despite our numbers, we were the most successful opposition party in the last Parliament, and this Parliament looks pretty much the same”. He reassured NDP voters by saying “to all of you struggling, we see you, we hear you”.
Greens
Green leader Annamie Paul came in fourth in her riding of Toronto Centre after many internal leadership questionings from her party.
Although the party’s leader failed to gain a seat, two Green candidates were elected. Former Green party leader Elizabeth May retained her seat in British Columbia’s Saanich-Gulf Islands and Mike Morrice won Kitchener Centre in Ontario after the Liberal candidate dropped out of the race amid allegations of harassment. Paul Manly admitted defeat of his seat in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.
It is unclear whether Paul will step down from leadership. On Monday night she told her supporters “it is hard to lose. No one likes to lose but I’m so proud of the effort”. The Green party won 2.3 per cent of the popular vote, down significantly from 2019’s 6.4 per cent.
Bloc
The Bloc Québécois (BQ) ended the night with 34 seats, two more than in 2019. Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet picked up his seat in Beloeil-Chambly.
The Liberals had hoped to gain more seats in Quebec, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was re-elected in the riding of Papineau, along with cabinet minister François-Phillipe Champagne from the Saint-Maurice-Champlain riding.
People’s Party
The People’s Party of Canada (PPC) may not have won any seats in this election, but its popular vote increased from 1.6 percent to just over five. The PPC rose in popularity after leader Maxime Bernier became vocal about the government’s overreach in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bernier lost his riding in Beauce, Quebec to the Conservative incumbent Richard Lehoux. He told supporters on Monday night that “this is not just a political party. This is a movement. It is an ideological revolution that we are starting now,”.
Over the course of the campaign, O’Toole consistently reminded voters that voting for the PPC in lieu of the Conservatives would only lead to the continuation of a Trudeau government.
CBC News Labs analyst Richard Raycraft pointed out that “vote-splitting between the Tories and the PPC may have cost the Conservatives up to 24 ridings,”.
Click here to view the results of each riding.
