LIBERALS HOLD ON TO POWER
As results pour in, Trudeau appears destined for second minority in House
Liberals are heading back to government, according to several news organizations late Monday, after an election fought in the midst of a rebounding pandemic, but whether the party would achieve more than the minority government it held for the last two years remained unclear.
With 302 of the House of Commons' 338 seats reporting by 10:30 p.m. ET, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's party was leading in almost 150 ridings, 20 away from a majority with results still to come in 36 ridings.
The Conservatives did make gains as returns dribbled in slowly, confirming predictions of a horse-race finish to a campaign held amid the rebounding COVID-19 pandemic.
By 10:30 ET, the Conservatives had 104 seats, the Bloc Québécois 27, the NDP 23 and one for the Green Party, with all polls closed across the country.
In Atlantic Canada where the first polls closed, the Tories were putting some dents in the usual Liberal fortress — raising party hopes but not enough to secure a victory.
The Liberals carried 26 of the region's 32 ridings in the 2019 election, and all of them in 2015. By late evening, the party was elected or leading in 23 seats — a drop of three — while the Conservatives were ahead in nine, a potential pickup of five constituencies.
For a short while, the Conservatives led in two Newfoundland ridings and remained in a see-saw battle in one of them, a surprise even to some in the party.
“It's not expected, quite frankly,” said former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt on CBC. “I'm not going to get too excited yet, but it's really nice to see the numbers roll in.”
As it turns out, she was right to be cautious.
But it seemed unclear whether the Liberals had much to celebrate, their gamble in calling election possibly ending with fewer seats than before.
Another minority government looked likely.
“The people have spoken,” said Jody Wilson-raybould, the former Liberal justice minister who butted heads with Trudeau. “People are going to have to work together ... Canadians are speaking about the need not to have absolute power.”
Nationally, few voters wanted the election, surveys suggested, and no single issue dominated it, except maybe the performance and popularity of Trudeau.
But if Trudeau's Liberals had dreamed of regaining a majority in Parliament, that hope quickly dimmed, the party slipping into a near dead-heat with the Conservatives under Leader Erin O'toole.
Jagmeet Singh's New Democratic Party picked up ground, while the Greens and Bloc Québécois seemed headed to more disappointing outcomes.
Buoyed by a minority of Canadians opposed to COVID -19 restrictions, the People's Party of Canada under former Conservative Maxime Bernier also climbed in opinion surveys, raising the possibility of splitting the right-of-centre vote.
The polls pointed to a minority Liberal or Tory government, perhaps even a Parliament that looks very much like it did before the previous election.
Much of the focus is on battleground ridings in vote-rich Ontario and B.C., which was shaping up to be a close, three-way race between the top two parties and NDP.
But it was unclear when the final results would even be known, given the need to count as many as a million mail-in ballots, a process that Elections Canada said wouldn't begin until Tuesday. In-person ballot counts Monday emerged slowly as COVID -19 protocols bogged down some polling stations.
At the same time, though, about 5.8 million people voted in advance polls.
The mounting cost of living, Canada's scrambling exit from Afghanistan, Quebec's racial attitudes and how best to handle the burden of COVID-19 itself were among the issues that heated up the campaign.
The nastiness that has often marked politics in the pandemic era also reared its head, with COVID -skeptic protesters hurling abuse and even gravel at Trudeau.
The last election was only two years ago in 2019, when the Liberal government saw its majority trimmed to a minority, Canadians' early enthusiasm for Trudeau having already waned. Under current legislation, the next one didn't have to come until 2023.
When the writ was dropped on Aug. 15, the prime minister insisted that voters needed a chance to pick who should guide the country out of the worst public-health in a century.
Opposition critics were unconvinced, labelling the election a bald attempt to shoot for another majority at a time when the Liberals still enjoyed a reasonable lead in the opinion polls.
As Parliament dissolved, Trudeau's party held 155 seats, the Conservatives 119, the NDP 24, the Bloc 32 and the Greens two. Parties need to win at least 170 ridings to secure a majority in the 338-seat House of Commons.
Whether because of bad luck or poor judgment by the Liberals, the call came on the same day that the Taliban capped a lightning-fast advance by capturing Kabul and taking over Afghanistan.
What followed was a chaotic withdrawal by Western countries, as thousands of Afghans sought to escape from what they feared would be a vengeful new regime.
The federal government came under intense criticism from veterans groups for doing too little, too late to evacuate Afghan interpreters and others who had worked for the Canadian military and government. In the end, Canadian Forces moved 3,700 people out of the country on military cargo planes, but admitted it had left thousands behind.
As the evacuation effort unfolded, the Liberals saw their five-percentage-point advantage in the polls dissolve. Within a couple of weeks they were virtually tied with the Conservatives.
But O'toole faced headwinds himself early in the campaign.
After the party faced stiff criticism for a promise to repeal the Liberals' 2020 ban on assault-style guns, the leader reversed that position on the campaign trail, saying the ban would, in fact, stay in place if he became prime minister.
COVID-19 percolated throughout the election, initially as a knock against the Liberals for launching the campaign while the nation was still consumed with fighting the pandemic.
There was relatively little difference in the parties' approach, though the Liberals emphasized a plan to require all federal employees to be vaccinated and the Conservatives pushed the idea of tighter testing for international visitors. But the worsening fourth wave in Alberta — blamed largely on the province lifting public-health restrictions too quickly and widely — turned the tables some.
As hospitals teetered at the brink of over-capacity and Premier Jason Kenney reinstituted some controls, the Liberals were quick to point out that O'toole had earlier praised his fellow Conservative for skilled management of the pandemic.
The Tories, meanwhile, hammered the Liberals for what they portrayed as profligate spending, which raised the federal debt to over $1 trillion for the first time. O'toole said his government would balance the budget in 10 years with a plan that depends in part on robust economic growth.
One of the campaign's most unexpected wrinkles came during the last of three leaders' debates, when moderator Shachi Kurl asked Bloc Leader Yves-françois Blanchet how he could both deny Quebec is racist and support “discriminatory” laws in the province such as Bill 21, which bars public-sector workers from wearing religious symbols.
The Conservatives, with their hands-off approach to the provinces, had gained some traction in that crucial battleground, including a near-endorsement from Premier François Legault. But the debate question sparked an outcry in the province over alleged “Quebec bashing” — and speculation the blowback could hurt O'toole and bolster the Bloc.
Singh's NDP appeared poised to pick up seats, and potentially play a greater kingmaker role should the Conservatives or Liberals form a minority government.