Just enough for Trudeau to lead gov’t

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held on to his job in national elections Monday — but he will lead a minority government, the country’s news media reported.

Trudeau’s Liberal Party will likely form a government with help from smaller parties, national broadcaster CBC said. Other news outlets concurred.

The Liberals needed 170 seats to form a majority government in Canada’s 338-seat Parliament. CBC reported that the Liberals were on track to win 156 seats. They will likely seek support from members of the New Democrat Party and possibly the Bloc Québécois to pass legislation.

Trudeau’s party lost ground in Canada’s Atlantic provinces, ceding parliamentary seats in a region where Liberals won every district when they wrested control from the Conservatives in

2015.

But gains by Conservatives in the Atlantic provinces and elsewhere weren’t enough to topple Trudeau (inset), analysts said. The Conservatives were expected to remain in the minority.

Trudeau went into the election scarred by a series of scandals, including revelations that he donned black- and brownface on at least two occasions in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Late in 2018, Trudeau came under fire for demoting his justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, when she opposed leniency for a company that had questionable dealings with the government of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy. WilsonRaybould, the nation’s first indigenous justice minister, later resigned.

The top Conservative politician, Andrew Scheer, encountered scandals of his own when The Globe and Mail newspaper disclosed that he held dual Canadian-American citizenship.

Scheer’s dual citizenship was exposed as he lambasted other Canadian political figures for also holding American citizenship.