In an election with no winner, the message for politicians is clear: ‘Get back to work!’

Canadian voters have sent the clearest possible message to their newly elected and re-elected representatives: Get back to work! Stop playing stupid political games. Don’t even think about elections. Make Parliament work.

Finish the job you started with COVID-19. Do what must be done to crush the pandemic’s fourth wave, give workers and businesses the financial support they need to get back on their feet, assist women to return to the workforce, provide the national leadership the country needs to protect its people from new waves of COVID variants and from future pandemics. Start making actual progress on climate change, confront racism wherever it shows its ugly face, get clean drinking water to every Indigenous community, get serious about gun control and make city streets safe again.

Tuesday, the unofficial results uncannily replicated the outcome of the 2019 election. As in 2019, the Conservatives took marginally more popular votes but fewer seats than the Liberals. With mail-in ballots still being counted, these unofficial seat totals are bound to change slightly: Liberal, 158 (up one seat from 2019); Conservative, 119 (down two); Bloc Québécois, 34 (up two); NDP, 25 (up one); Green, 2 (unchanged).

In other words, it was an election without a winner. No party, no leader could claim victory. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, having lost his gamble for a majority government, had no choice but to adopt a newly conciliatory tone in his speech early Tuesday morning. “You are sending us back to work,” he told the TV audience. No more politics, no more election talk, he promised; he would work in cooperation with the opposition parties to get the nation’s business done. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh also went into co-operation mode.

The only outlier was Conservative leader Erin O’Toole whose concession speech sounded the launch of a campaign to save his leadership. He attacked Trudeau, claiming the prime minister intends to call another election in the next 18 months. O’Toole promised to fight the Liberals in Parliament and in on the hustings when an election is called.

At this stage, O’Toole is the only leader whose job is in jeopardy. His attempt to play to his social conservative base in the west while courting progressive voters in the east failed. Fortress Alberta cracked, and the party was unable to make inroads in seat-rich Quebec and Ontario. The unofficial results had the Conservatives losing three seats in Ontario while the Liberals gained two and the Greens one.

The Greater Toronto Area is block of red seats that the Conservatives must unlock if they hope to win Ontario. O’Toole, like his predecessor Andrew Scheer, clearly did not have the keys to the GTA.

In the national context, O’Toole was no more successful — perhaps marginally less successful — in this election than the bumbling Scheer was in 2019. Many Tories will remember this when they consider O’Toole’s continued leadership.

Trudeau is expected to move quickly in response to the “get back to work” order from the electorate. I’d be surprised if drafting has not already started on a speech from the throne to open a new Parliament within a few weeks. Governments often take their sweet time following an election — time to rest from the campaign, to reflect on the challenges ahead, and to sort out priorities and personnel — before summoning Parliament. In this case, Trudeau needs to demonstrate he is sincere about getting on with the job. He will want to use the goodwill of the Bloc and NDP to get as much of his government’s legislation passed — starting, I suspect, with daycare — while the spirit of co-operation lasts.

And the prime minister would not be a politician if he did not see a fine opportunity to get the job done while the hostile leader of the opposition is occupied fending off challenges to his leadership.

I’d be surprised if drafting has not already started on a speech from the throne to open a new Parliament within a few weeks

Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, “Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World,” co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is being published this fall. His regular column appears Mondays. geoffstevens40@gmail.com.