Canada election results: One in six seats changed parties
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
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BBC News
7 hours ago
- BBC News
Spending review: New stations in £445m rail plan for Wales
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will use her spending review on Wednesday to announce £445m for new rail projects in north and south details are expected on Wednesday, but plans for five new stations in Cardiff, Newport and Monmouthshire, as well as upgrades in north Wales, are on the follows years of complaints of underinvestment in the Welsh railway Treasury said the package had "the potential to be truly transformative". But the Conservatives criticised the lack of support for a new M4 relief road, while Plaid Cymru said the cash was "merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed". The spending review will set out Reeves' plans for how public services will be funded for years to was not clear on Tuesday evening what the impact of the announcement might be for the Welsh government's day to day spending, with cuts to budgets other than health, schools and defence Wales gets to spend is determined by a calculation based on how England-only departments - such as health and local government - are follows weeks of rows between Welsh and Westminster Labour, as concerns grew over the next Senedd election as polling suggested the party could lose its dominant role in Welsh politics. According to the Treasury, the £445m will be spent on fixing level crossings, building new stations and upgrading existing lines, and is a combination of direct funding and cash for the Welsh said it was the "cornerstone of the UK government's plan to address decades of underinvestment in critical infrastructure that has held back the Welsh economy".Rail funding has become a totemic issue in Welsh politics, with the lack of knock-on funding for Wales from High Speed 2 repeatedly raised with the First Minister Eluned first minister has publicly called for more rail spending from the UK government - one of a list of calls she has made on Sir Keir Starmer in recent say if High Speed 2 had not been classified as an England and Wales project, Wales would be owed between £431m - according to finance secretary Mark Drakeford - or multiple billions, according to Plaid Cymru and previous sums used by senior Labour figures including Welsh Secretary Jo extra money is not connected to HS2, although Labour was keen to make a symbolic sources, and former transport minister Lee Waters, said the sum is more than Wales would have had from the high speed rail project. Welsh Transport Secretary Ken Skates and others have lobbied the UK government figures on a range of projects recommended by transport reviews looking at north and south include new stations at Cardiff East, near the city's Newport Road, and in the west of are hopes for a station in the eastern Newport suburbs of Somerton and Llanwern, and one that will serve the Monmouthshire villages of Magor and Undy, along with improvements to the mainline to allow local services to stations were proposed by a review to boost rail transport in a region that has seen an increase in house building in recent years, but is connected via the congested M4 motorway and has a limited local railway work is estimated to cost £ north Wales, the Welsh government has been pushing for work on the Wrexham to Liverpool route to enable metro-style services, and upgrades on the north Wales mainline to boost the frequency of also wants to commence development work to increase capacity at Chester - a hub for trains from north Wales. Rachel Reeves could also commit more funding to help make coal tips in Wales first minister has previously said that £25m allocated to Wales at last year's October budget was not enough. Looking ahead to the next Senedd election, a senior Labour figure said: "Labour's delivered what the Tories wouldn't, what Plaid can't and what Reform have no interest in."Former transport minister Lee Waters said: "Civil servants calculated that we lost out £431m in Barnett formula funding by the way the high-speed rail project was categorised by the Treasury. This £445 million makes good on that."We will have to wait to see what exact schemes the Chancellor is agreeing to but that figure would allow the priority schemes that the Welsh government and the UK Department of Transport had been working on to go ahead."Taken together this is a very significant package of rail investment, much more than we ever got from the Tories, and will make a real difference to people."We now need to make sure we get a change to how funding works for rail so that this is the beginning of a pipeline of investment into the future"Another Labour source said the "historic investment" was down to the "work of the Welsh Secretary, Jo Stevens, who has delivered Labour's promise to right the chronic underfunding of Welsh rail by the Tories". Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Darren Millar called it a "kick in the teeth", complaining of no extra cash to enable an M4 relief road or for upgrades to the A55 and A40 trunk roads."The promised rail investment falls well short of the £1bn plus in rail funding planned by the previous UK Conservative government for the electrification of the North Wales line."Plaid Cymru's finance spokesperson Heledd Fychan said: "£445m is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the billions Wales is owed on rail, and what Labour – up until they came into power – used to agree with us on."The people of Wales have seen this injustice for what it is – Wales being short-changed by successive Westminster governments. This announcement won't change that."Additional reporting by Gareth Lewis
Leader Live
9 hours ago
- Leader Live
Welsh FM accused of doing ‘nothing' to protect pensioners from winter fuel cut
Darren Millar, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, called for Eluned Morgan to apologise to the pensioners affected by the change last winter, arguing the Welsh Government should have stepped in to support those in need. Speaking during First Minister's Questions on Tuesday, Mr Millar said the cut had forced vulnerable people to choose between heating and eating. Baroness Morgan, leader of the Welsh Labour Government, said she was 'absolutely delighted' that the UK Government had reversed the cut for many. The payment, worth up to £300, will be restored to the vast majority of pensioners, with anyone with an income of under £35,000 a year now getting the payment automatically. The decision last July to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners was intended to save around £1.5 billion a year, with more than nine million people who would have previously been eligible losing out. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, announced the partial U-turn on Monday, following significant backlash from charities, opposition MPs and the Government's own backbenchers. Speaking in the Senedd, Mr Millar said: 'Yesterday we saw a screeching U-turn on the winter fuel allowance by Rachel Reeves, after considerable pressure from the Conservative Party. 'You will know that over half a million Welsh pensioners were deprived of their winter fuel payments last year, leaving some very vulnerable people with the unenvious choice of having to choose between heating and eating – it's an absolute disgrace. 'You are meant to stand up for Wales but what did you actually do in terms of this winter fuel allowance? You did absolutely nothing.' Mr Millar argued Baroness Morgan should have implemented a Welsh winter fuel payment or stood up to Sir Keir Starmer and demanded the payment be restored sooner. Baroness Morgan responded that she was 'absolutely delighted' that Sir Keir Starmer had listened to pensioners in Wales and across the country. 'I'm really pleased that because we have made representations to the Prime Minister on this issue that he has changed his mind and that will make a difference to hundreds of thousands of pensioners across Wales this winter, in a country where we do have more older people and housing which is more difficult to heat. 'I don't think that it's bad to listen to people and then to make sure that you respond to them.' Baroness Morgan had previously pushed back against the cut, having called for a 'rethink' in early May, saying it was something 'that comes up time and again'. At the time, the Government said there would 'not be a change to the Government's policy'. On Monday, Ms Reeves suggested that the 'stability we've brought back to the economy' meant the Government was able to change the eligibility threshold for winter fuel payments.
The Independent
10 hours ago
- The Independent
What would a Tory spending review look like? With Badenoch, nobody knows
It would be an exaggeration to claim the nation eagerly awaits the invention of 'Badenomics' but Conservatives are certainly impatient with Kemi Badenoch 's apparent inability to create a narrative on the economy, land blows on a weakened Labour government, or compete with Nigel Farage's Reform UK on a key electoral issue. This week's Labour announcements on winter fuel payments and the spending review offer some prime opportunities to 'punch through'. What is the problem? It's hardly confined to today's Conservatives; every political party that has been in power and badly loses an election finds it difficult to get a hearing. Policies the party are most closely identified with are the ones recently and decisively rejected by voters. How far should a heavily defeated team try to claim that they were right all along and that the electorate made the wrong decision? This might be termed the 'blame the voters' approach; while some buyer's remorse may have set in, it's rather futile to attack the electorate. Alternatively, a party can admit mistakes as a means of resetting voter appeal, but that means upsetting former colleagues and handing your enemies an easy win. What are the Conservatives doing about it? Making speeches, for now, rather than policy… and trying to plot a path to redemption. Last week, perhaps in response to internal concerns, shadow chancellor Mel Stride came as close as possible to apologising for the Liz Truss mini-Budget without actually saying 'sorry'. 'Contrition' is the preferred term. Truss has proved to be a potent political weapon, but for the Labour Party, scarcely a day goes by without Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves making a scathing reference to that disaster. Stride was critical of it at the time, having left the government and as chair of the Treasury select committee; his apology-adjacent speech won't stop Labour deploying Agent Truss (and she keeps popping up, unhelpfully) but it might blunt the attacks somewhat. What are the Tories saying about the rest of their record? Still fairly proud of it. Badenoch says the Tories made 'a lot of good things happen', such as reforms to social security, plus 'near full employment' and raising school standards. 'But people remember the most recent period … and I think the most recent period was the most difficult,' she concedes. So it is Rishi Suank's fault for 'talking right, governing left' as she has put it. So Badenoch is sorry-not-sorry? The Tory mistakes she points to, such as on Brexit and net zero, actually come from the right, not the centre, and don't necessarily chime with public opinion. A passionate and now obdurate Eurosceptic, she seems to want more Brexit at a time when the voters have concluded it was a flop; as the years go on, she'll need to say if she would reverse Starmer's 'Brexit reset' that builds closer, easier relations with the EU. She will also be asked if she would scrap planning reforms that boost growth, stop skilled migration, bring back zero-hours contracts, reduce VAT on private school fees, and so on. She will also need to eat many of her own words as a minister on climate change and green growth, now she's a 'net zero sceptic'. She may hope to win back some Reform voters by tacking to the right, but she can never out-Farage Farage. Indeed, she's ridiculed him for promising economic fantasies, so how can she now embrace them and return to Boris Johnson-era cakeism? Where are the Tories with winter fuel payments for pensioners? They are demanding an apology from Labour. But Labour's present policy is identical to Badenoch's – restore the payment for all now, but try to means-test it later – so she is disarmed, and cannot even claim credit for forcing the U-turn, which was obviously down to Labour panic after local election losses. And what do the Tories say about the spending review? Badenoch's line is that there would not be a black hole in public finances if they'd won the last election, and taxes would be lower. The latter part is true, but equally a hypothetical Tory government would now be imposing an even more painful squeeze on social security and public services, to the point where the numbers would simply not be credible, leading to strikes. Voters sensed this unreality last July, and as time passes the Tories will have to come up with credible plans of their own rather than relying on Jeremy Hunt's pre-election claims. Anything else? Plenty. Stride may be doing his best, but Badenoch seems more interested in 'culture wars' than macroeconomics, which is a problem. Her shadow frontbench team is surprisingly lacking in talent and Labour ministers, despite their relative inexperience, mostly run rings around their opponents. Can the Conservatives forge the 'Right Approach' again? In truth, the Tories are on a long march back to the centre and sooner or later will have to accept climate change and exorcise the ghosts of Truss and Johnson. They need to show themselves trustworthy and realistic, and willing to compromise with their lost voters. These are the kinds of radical, symbolic 'unthinkable' things Tony Blair had to do to make Labour electable in the 1990s, and Starmer did afresh in recent years. Only then will voters lend their ears. Badenoch isn't the leader for that task.
