logo
Canada election results: One in six seats changed parties

Canada election results: One in six seats changed parties

BBC News30-04-2025

While the government of Canada may not have changed hands, the federal election results are anything but business as usual.Party leaders lost their own seats, the New Democratic Party (NDP) now faces the possibility of life on the sidelines and the Liberal Party pulled off a dramatic turnaround in fortunes, all while led by a prime minister who wasn't even a member of Parliament (MP).Preliminary results from Elections Canada show that 17% of seats - 59 out of 343 - changed hands in this election, up from just 7% - 22 out of 338 - in 2021.
The rise in the number of available seats in the House of Commons, from 338 to 343, reflects a new political map which accounts for changes in population.Leaders from three of the five parties represented in the House of Commons failed to win their seats.Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre - who was on course to become prime minister three months ago when his party held a double-digit lead in the polls - lost his seat in Carleton, Ontario to the Liberals.Jagmeet Singh resigned as NDP leader after finishing third in his British Columbia seat of Burnaby Central, while the Green Party's co-leader Jonathan Pedneault came fifth in Outremont, Quebec.Only Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois and Elizabeth May, the other Green co-leader, retained their seats while Mark Carney became an MP for the first time.
All 59 seats that flipped went to either the Liberals or Conservatives.The NDP lost 17 of the 24 seats they were defending - 10 to the Conservatives and seven to the Liberals - and fell short of the 12 seats required for official party status.This means the loss of parliamentary funding for things like office budgets and technology equipment, as well as fewer chances to ask questions of the government and sit on committees.NDP losses were part of a wider shift away from Canada's smaller parties.The Bloc Québécois had 35 seats going into Monday's vote, taking into consideration the impact of boundary changes on 2021 results - calculated by Elections Canada - and last year's victory in the LaSalle-Émard-Verdun by-election.It lost 13 of them in Quebec, with all but one going to the Liberals.Terrebonne, a suburb of Montreal, flipped from the Bloc to the Liberals by just a few dozen votes.Meanwhile, the Greens lost their Kitchener Centre riding, the first Ontario seat in their history, to the Liberals.
Despite making overall gains it was still a turbulent night for incumbents in the two largest parties.The Liberals gave up 16 seats - all to the Conservatives - which was twice as many as the eight they lost in 2021.Nine of the 16 losses came in Toronto and the surrounding "905" - places that all share the same area code.The Conservatives saw 12 of their MPs suffer defeat including Poilievre, up from nine four years ago.All 12 were won by Liberals, including Toronto St Paul's which the Conservatives previously flipped in a 2024 by-election.
RESULTS: How Canada voted - in chartsANALYSIS: Why Carney's Liberals won - and the Conservatives lostWATCH: How Canada's election night unfoldedPROFILE: Who is Mark Carney, Canada's new PM?VOTERS: How I decided who gets my voteUS VIEW: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Letters: How ‘Nick' could save the Tories
Letters: How ‘Nick' could save the Tories

Spectator

time3 hours ago

  • Spectator

Letters: How ‘Nick' could save the Tories

Dying wish Sir: As a 99-year-old with, presently, no intention of requesting assistance to die, I am struck by the articles of Dan Hitchens and Tom Tugendhat ('Bitter end' and 'Killing me softly', 7 June), which base their strong opposition on the opinions of everyone other than the person supposed to be requesting such assistance. He or she, poor soul, is expected to just lie there and listen to whether they are to be allowed to have any opinion at all on the matter. It's my life they are writing about. At present I have the ability to end it whenever I might wish. What Messers Hitchens and Tugendhat are arguing is that, if I change my mind, no one is to be allowed to help me at a moment of my choosing. That's wrong. Alan Hall Westerham, Kent Life lessons Sir: In response to Tom Tugendhat, having seen a friend suffering with severe agitation because of uncontrolled pain, my concern is that there is a strong disincentive for medical practitioners to provide adequate pain control, as adequate doses can exceed the upper limit of the 'normal' recommended range, leaving the doctor liable to litigation. My proposal is to introduce a form of advance instruction from patients: Pain-relief Over Prolongation Of Life (POPOL). Similar to the Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) for life-threatening medical emergency advance instructions at the front of the medical record, this would make it clear that the patient and relatives stipulate giving enough analgesia to control pain, despite the likelihood of it shortening life. It would have similar status to the DNR. This could be relatively easily adopted and would provide a much less controversial way than 'assisted dying' of achieving what many people want – a pain-free death. Having advanced cancer myself, I can strongly empathise with a wish for this path to be followed, which indeed it often was when I first qualified 45 years ago. Dr Ros Furlong MBBS FRCPsych scientific adviser to SANE London N6 Saving Nick Sir: Your recent leading article rightly identifies Nick, the archetypal 30-year-old, as at the thin end of the wedge (31 May). Traditionally the Conservatives stood for him, empowering Nick to acquire capital, a home and a family. Shifting to side with those who already have something, and against those striving to acquire it, is what made the party lose its compass. I founded the group Next Gen Tories (NGT) to put Nick back on the radar. Tackling Nick's challenges is the key to reversing both the UK's economic decline and the party's. We must return to the popular capitalist vision which has been a hallmark of every other postwar Conservative government. If Nick wants to save himself and arrest the country's decline, he should join the Conservatives to force this change of pace. James Cowling London SE10 Brought to book Sir: Having taught A-level English literature for nearly 30 years, I can't agree with Philip Womack's assertion ('Literal disaster', 31 May) that some students' difficulty in interpreting older texts is a sign that 'the foundations of western culture are teetering into collapse'. Part of the joy of teaching literature is to guide students sensitively through the social and historical contexts of a text and build a bank of cultural capital for their future reading. I still blush when I recall my inability to 'elicit a scintilla of sense' from 'The Convergence of the Twain', Hardy's poem about the sinking of the Titanic. 'How could it be an august night,' I asked my teacher, 'when the ship sank in April?' Andy Simpson Sandbach, Cheshire Sir: Christian Wolmar's advice on Chinese banquets (Notes on, 31 May) is sound but incomplete. While it is important to pace yourself and to avoid the host, who is duty bound to press every dish upon you, there are other factors to remember. A refusal always offends, as does slow, reluctant consumption. My friend, a notoriously picky eater, recognised he must take part in the banquet for the good of his business, and managed to conceal a shudder as he accepted the proffered entire chicken foot. He coped by eating it quickly. His speed was taken as enthusiasm and his delighted host immediately offered him another. Joanne Aston Norby, Thirsk Period pains Sir: Madeline Grant is quite right to decry the distortion of history in recent shows ('The sad decline of period dramas', 7 June). The worst offender in this respect, of course, is one William Shakespeare (1564–1616). How much does his Richard III owe to the historical king? Not a lot, but he owes a mountain to Holinshed or, worse, to Thomas More. So much for character but, as for gender, don't get me started. His Joan of Arc was played by a boy, as was his Ophelia. For convenience naturally, and misrepresentation if you will. In the eyes of our national Bard, so it would appear, history is not in the past. It is in the present, and so are we. Robert Fraser Emeritus Professor, English and Creative Writing, Open University Tapioca heaven Sir: Olivia Potts rightly celebrates tapioca (The Vintage Chef, 31 May) but fails to mention the sublime payasam served in Tamil Nadu. This milky sweet cardamom-scented tapioca pudding has only one drawback: it is very difficult to eat with your fingers. But delicious nevertheless. Caroline Walker Beaminster, Dorset Write to us letters@

Britain needs reform
Britain needs reform

Spectator

time4 hours ago

  • Spectator

Britain needs reform

This week's spending review confirms that where there should be conviction, there is only confusion; where there should be vision, only a vacuum. The country is on the road to higher taxes, poorer services and a decaying public realm, with the bandits of the bond market lying in wait to extract their growing take from our declining share of global wealth. When every warning light is flashing red, the government is driving further and faster towards danger The Chancellor approached this spending review with her credibility already undermined. Promises not to raise taxes on working people translated into a tax on work itself which has driven up unemployment. A pledge to put growth first has been accompanied by changes to employment law that make the labour market more rigid and the cost of hiring workers commensurately greater. A party which excoriated the Conservatives for letting prices rise has pumped billions into public-sector wage hikes and seen inflation increase again. An apparent determination to take difficult decisions to control spending by removing pensioners' winter fuel payments has crumbled in the face of backbench pressure. The farcical retreat has only emboldened those in Labour who want to drive us deeper into debt. The NHS and the Ministry of Defence are the most hopeless spending addicts but they are not the only departments to have wrung more from the Treasury than the nation can afford – or the Chancellor indicated she wanted. Ed Miliband has shown that, whatever other criticisms may be directed at him, he is brilliant at getting high on the taxpayers' supply – with generous subsidies for domestic decarbonisation and billions for the most expensive energy the markets can provide. The Department for Education has secured millions more to get the state to pay for families' food. Angela Rayner has extra billions, not to build new houses but to buy existing homes for the state. The Department for Transport also has a line of credit to pay for schemes no private sector investor would go near. And any lingering expectations that welfare reform would yield significant savings seems fanciful given the Prime Minister's desire to end the two-child cap on benefit payments. It is not as though this programme can be justified on the basis of an economy that's roaring back. Tax changes this government has introduced have led to a flight of the wealthy and a consequent depression in revenue. Alongside rises in inflation and unemployment, the cost of government borrowing is escalating to a level which causes international markets to demand a heftier risk premium. At a time when every warning light is flashing red, the government is determined to drive further and faster towards danger. Perhaps the greatest sin of this spending review is one of omission. There is no indication that all this additional expenditure will be accompanied by meaningful public-sector reform. The civil service headcount is growing. In education, the greater autonomy and accountability which drove up school standards is being abandoned. Our shoddily inefficient criminal justice system remains a mess of unaccountable fiefdoms: lamentably inadequate chief constables hide their failures behind the alibi of 'operational independence', the Crown Prosecution Service is a creaking liability and courts are hidebound by a judiciary that resists effective management of their operations. The additional money for defence is going to a department whose procurement policies are hardly a model of prudence. And despite the best efforts of Wes Streeting, one cabinet minister who is at least intent on reform, the extra cash for the NHS risks being swallowed whole by staff unions rather than being used to create incentives for change. The failure to fundamentally reform the functioning of government is all too visible in every operation of the state. Britain desperately needs reform. But our government offers only the inadequate management of accelerating decline. Licences to kill While the state proves incapable of reform, our parliament is attempting to prove it is world-leading in terminating innocent lives. Legislation to make it easier to kill the ill and elderly (the private member's bill to encourage suicide) appears still to enjoy majority support. And next week Labour MPs seek to amend the Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalise abortion. The state should undoubtedly treat any decision to terminate a pregnancy with sensitivity. But this amendment is an invitation to abusive partners to coerce vulnerable women into late-stage abortions and removes one of the last protections unborn children still have. Do we really want this decade to be one in which the only thing we do more efficiently than ever is kill innocent souls?

Tories propose emergency law to speed up A9 dualling
Tories propose emergency law to speed up A9 dualling

Press and Journal

time4 hours ago

  • Press and Journal

Tories propose emergency law to speed up A9 dualling

Private investment and quicker environmental reviews can help fast-track A9 dualling between Inverness and Perth by up to four years, according to a Tory blueprint backed by an SNP veteran. Russell Findlay's party is plotting an emergency law to ensure upgrades to widen the busy route are finished in the next Scottish Parliament's lifetime – up to May 2031. 'Enough's enough,' he said, speaking exclusively on The Stooshie, the weekly political podcast from the P&J. 'People who use that road realise that the time for excuses is long gone.' The idea has already won the backing of Fergus Ewing, the MSP for Inverness and Nairn and vocal critic of SNP progress on the promised upgrade. 'I welcome this proposal,' Mr Ewing told the Press and Journal. 'The SNP government has plainly broken pledges, and lost trust.' The Conservatives want a portion of the Scottish Government's transport budget to be ringfenced for the dualling scheme to ensure work does not stall. Mr Findlay believes the private sector should be brought in to attract more funding for the road. This would involve using 'infrastructure investment partnerships' with individual businesses, aiming to reduce costs when finding contractors for sections of the project. 'I think that would do a lot to focus the minds of hard-headed investors to get the job done,' he said. The Tories also say environmental impact assessments carried out on each section of the A9 should be 'expedited'. 'We have to respect the impact on the environment of any infrastructure project, but these can take over a year,' Mr Findlay told The Stooshie. The SNP originally promised to complete A9 dualling by this year, but admitted in 2023 that was no longer. A new timetable to finish the project a full decade from now is in place. Laura Hansler, an A9 campaigner from Kincraig, backed the Tory proposals in principle. 'The suggestions are fantastic,' she said. But she warned 'further clarity' is needed over how exactly the emergency law would prevent further delays. The Scottish Greens are opposed. 'Environmental impact assessments are an important legal requirement,' said Mark Ruskell, a party MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: 'We are fully committed to dualling the A9 and have prioritised funding for this programme within our annual budgets. 'We are also actively considering whether there is any way that we can fast-track work, including opportunities for undertaking 'advance works' ahead of main construction contracts.' Tory leader Mr Findlay spoke to The Stooshie ahead of his party's conference in Edinburgh this weekend. On the latest episode he also told us: You can listen to Mr Findlay's full interview here.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store