Liberals poised to govern after strong showing Monday
Early results show Liberals narrowly ahead in a tight two-party race against Conservatives; majority is possible
Mark Carney’s Liberals are poised to form the next federal government, Elections Canada’s results show — a remarkable turnaround for a party that just a few months ago appeared headed for major defeat.
Whether the party’s showing in Monday’s federal election means it will lead a majority or minority government, it was too soon to tell as results continued to come in early Tuesday.
“No matter where you live, no matter what language you speak, no matter how you voted, I will always do my best to represent every one who calls Canada home,” said Carney in his victory speech delivered at the Liberal Party headquarters in Ottawa at 1:20 a.m.
As of 1 a.m., unofficial results showed the Liberals with 163 seats, the Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre with 148, Yves-François Blanchet’s Bloc Québécois with 23 seats, the NDP with eight seats and the Green party with one seat.
There are 343 seats in the House of Commons. To form a majority government, a party needs 172 seats.
Carney won his seat in the Nepean riding Ottawa, taking 63.7 per cent of the vote as of early Tuesday. Poilievre, however, was behind in the race to secure his seat in Ottawa’s Carleton riding where he trailed Liberal Bruce Fanjoy.
“Conservatives will work with the prime minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal that puts these tariffs behind us while protecting our sovereignty and the Canadian people,” Poilievre said in a concession speech delivered in Ottawa to supporters on Tuesday morning. He gave no indication of stepping down as the party leader, saying that he plans to “continue to fight.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh finished third in his British Columbia riding and at 12:40 a.m., announced he will resign as party leader “as soon as an interim leader can be appointed,” in an emotional speech to supporters in his home riding of Burnaby Central.
Singh has served as his party’s leader since 2017, and was as a member of Parliament MP for Burnaby South 2019 to 2025. Monday was Singh’s third election as NDP leader.
Blanchet has won his riding Beloeil-Chambly with 48.6 per cent of the votes.
With eight seats, the NDP was poised to drop below the 12 seats it needs to have official party status in the House of Commons.
In the Nunavut, incumbent Lori Idlout, the NDP candidate, held the lead as of 2 a.m. with 2,117 votes, ahead of second-place Liberal Kilikvak Kabloona with 1,786 and Conservative James T. Arreak in third with 1,413 votes. That was with 52 of the 66 polls reporting reporting results.
“The Liberal government has been very good to Nunavut,” said Kabloona, speaking of the signing in March of the implementation contract under the Nunavut Agreement between the federal and territorial governments and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
“This is a government that is serious about reconciliation and I have full confidence,” Kabloona added.
It is a tight race in the Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou riding, with Liberal candidate Mandy Gull, the former grand chief of the Cree Nation government in Quebec, in the lead with 12,036 votes.
Bloc Québécois candidate and incumbent Sylvie Bérubé was in second place with 10,196 votes as of midnight. Conservative Steve Corriveau was third, with 6,720 votes while for the NDP Thai Higashihara had 701 votes with 207 or 214 polls reporting.
This election took place amid high inflation, a rising cost of living and tensions with the United States following a new wave of tariffs threatened or imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump has also publicly mused about Canada becoming the 51st state of the U.S., most recently on Monday morning via his social media platform Truth Social.
“When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations and it will be with our full knowledge that we have many many other options to build prosperity for all Canadians,” Carney said Monday night.
Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and of the Bank of England became Liberal leader in March, following Justin Trudeau’s resignation. Before Trudeau quit, national polls showed the Conservatives under Poilievre likely headed for a majority win in the next election.
Trudeau’s resignation, and Trump’s aggression, seemed to reverse that tide in stunning fashion.
Carney was sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister on March 14 and called a snap election for April 28, dissolving Parliament and launching a 36-day campaign.
Issues like Arctic sovereignty and northern infrastructure were central in northern ridings, as Canada faces increased geopolitical interest from Russia and China in the Arctic region.
Carney visited Iqaluit on March 18, before the election was announced, to announce commitments in Arctic sovereignty, such as $6 billion to develop an Arctic over-the-horizon radar system.
He also announced $253 million for Nunavut infrastructure going toward power plants, housing infrastructure and a hydroelectricity facility to be constructed outside Iqaluit.
Poilievre also visited Iqaluit prior to the election in early February with promises to build a permanent military base that would be completed within two years if he became prime minister.
I’m very happy with the results. I would have preferred a Carney majority, but Poilievre losing his seat takes a lot of that sting away. I hope that Poilievre’s ouster from federal politics results in a return to sanity for the CPC.
Our results haven’t come in as of posting this, but it looks like a good outcome for Nunavut either way.
Unfortunately, I doubt Poilievre is finished. Expect him to ask some low ranking MP to give up their seat so he can run in their place.
I expect him to shaft one of the MPs around Calgary and run a by-election in a safe seat at home.
The Conservatives got 41.3% of the total vote second highest of any political party in the past 35 years. Second only to the Liberals who got 43.7%.
This shows the country is divided and any governing party must be cautious on their policy decisions.
While I’m hopeful the liberal party will be more effective under Carney than Trudeau, I fear it is just putting lipstick on a pig. There’s a growing sense that Canadians have become overly loyal to systems that don’t serve them. Let’s hope for a better future, and the opposition building stronger platforms so we do not have one sided politics.
DOOMED!!
If the Conservatives had won the election that would have been a positive outcome
However, the Liberals winning is also a good outcome. I expect they will continue with earnest to implement policies and programs that are destroying the good in Canadian society.
Maybe, by four years time, a few more of the woke-folks will wake up and realize how much the Liberals have contributed to the rot in Canadian society
Its nice to see the word “woke” have some meaning again. It had a useful definition when it was first introduced, then morphed into “anything a conservative person doesn’t like”, and that’s too broad a definition to be useful.
But now, its come around to being useful again. Now it means “this is an unserious argument being made by an unserious person”
An unserious person only recognizes one side of a critique. Regardless of where you land on the use of the term or on social justice issues, that you can only see your perspective is something that screams ‘unserious’ to me.
We could say that red means life and blue usually means that something is dying or needs to be warmed a bit so I might be happy with these results, especially with the awful leader the conservatives have that lost his seat – he is a not so liked guy – I didn’t want him as MY prime minister that’s for sure, now if their leader was different maybe it would have turned out differently but I guess we don’t know that, eh? I guess we just have to see what the next 4 years will be like to see what actually doesn’t happen and how much we will need to endure.
They are red and blue because they started out as quite literally Party Blue and Party Red. The blue party perged with the Tories and became the conservatives, this is why the cons are sometimes still called Tories.
What’s “woke?”
“Woke” means anything you don’t like/don’t understand.
The Chinese have a synonym for ‘woke’; baizuo, meaning white Liberal
Urban Dictionary defines baizuo (woke) as:
“… a popular Mainland Chinese term coined for a specific subset of Westerners who are despised … for their pretentiousness, hypocritical behavior and an overbearing sense of entitlement. Baizuos are mostly characterized by their heavy use of political correctness and double standards to covertly advance their own material or emotional interests at the expense of others, while claiming otherwise, from a self-assumed superior moral position.
Some are truly non-malicious, but are too naive or lack the worldview to provide useful opinions or solutions to real societal problems.”
‘woke’
There are good, critical definitions of woke out there. None of the ones here are of any use. I posted one yesterday but see now it was not allowed by the moderators. This is funny, but not funny and why we should all despise this publication. It limits our discussions based on the prejudices of the editor and his staff. This is not a serious place to get informed, it’s a place to have opinions and ideas prescribed and put into little wee boxes no larger than the minds at NN.
Woke originally meant ‘awake to’ or ‘aware of’ social injustices. For many this remains.
Critics, conversely, have noted patterns that go beyond this.
To be woke, for example, is to see individuals reduced to an identity group. Features and membership being governed by informal, yet socially powerful cliques who might punish non-conformists by stripping identity (i.e.; that person is not a ‘real’ Inuk, they are an apple or an oreo).
Identities, in turn, are organized along a hierarchal scale that distinguishes between oppressed and oppressor.
John K, you are an Inuk, therefore you are oppressed. Being of European descent I am, by definition, your oppressor.
To challenge this structure is to out yourself as a racist or bigot of some sort (beware of the Kafka trap).
While there are truths in the woke critique, it is also a simplistic, reductionist worldview that left to grow unchecked will inevitably harm the social fabric in the multi-racial, multi-national states of the west.
Communities local NGOs use to much of their environment amongst citizens. Not a big fan of the way it’s been controlled
It’s too bad we have a tiny little voice for Nunavut again that will do little to nothing and won’t sit at the big table where things are decided on for the country and for Nunavut.
No party status no voice again for 4 years, we had a chance to have someone that would sit next to the PM and at the table for Nunavut. Will be another long four years of minimal representation by our MP.