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Montreal Gazette
3 days ago
- Politics
- Montreal Gazette
Kheiriddin: This BBQ season, Carney could be flipping MPs
With Parliament now back in business, pundits and politicos are focused on this session's agenda. What will the government do about Trump and tariffs? How will Mark Carney perform in Question Period? When will Pierre Poilievre return to Parliament? And how will the NDP survive without party status? But not much will happen on the Hill in the next few weeks: the PM will be busy hosting the G7 at Kananaskis in Alberta, and the House will rise in late June. No, the real intrigue lies just over the horizon in the fall. The big question: Can the Liberal minority morph into a majority by then, to secure four years of power and avoid tangling with the opposition? The math is simple: The Liberals currently hold 169 seats, after the Newfoundland riding of Terra Nova—The Peninsulas flipped to the Conservatives following a recent recount. If the courts order a byelection in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, where Elections Canada sent mail-in ballots astray due to improperly printed postal codes, the riding would likely flip to the Bloc Québécois, bringing the Liberals' total down to 168. And with Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia now elected as Speaker, they technically would only have 167. The majority threshold is 172. That means Carney would need five more MPs to lock in power. Small wonder, then, that the Liberals did not extend the NDP the courtesy of official party status. If the NDP had any hope of maintaining it, that went out the window when it botched its interim leader selection process, prompting three of its MPs to pen a letter of complaint — and sending blood into the water for circling Liberal sharks. What could the Liberals offer to get NDP members to cross the floor? They could start with pharmacare, by expanding the list of 'free' drugs from diabetes and birth control. During the election, former leader Jagmeet Singh had pledged to expand coverage to 'around 100 of the most prescribed medications,' including antibiotics, pain medication and cancer drugs. Regional development money could also be targeted to NDP-held ridings, to help tackle the impact of tariffs. But the big carrot could be foreign policy. The NDP has long supported Palestinian statehood, and was pushing for recognition in the Commons last year. Former PM Justin Trudeau said last fall that Canada was discussing the subject with its allies, and just last week Carney delivered a statement with Britain and France that the three nations are 'committed to recognizing a Palestinian state.' There is speculation that the Liberals are planning on putting forward a resolution — one that would undoubtedly pass if all seven NDP MPs voted for it, or enough made the switch to Liberal ranks. If the Liberals don't find enough friends on the left, they may also look to poach some Conservatives, who have their own set of problems. The party is rife with rage about its recent loss, much of it directed at management. A dozen MPs told reporters on background that they want campaign manager Jenni Byrne out of the picture. If Poilievre doesn't play ball, MPs who don't see a future in the party might be tempted by the promise of influence elsewhere — particularly if they're staring down the barrel of four years in opposition. This summer, the traditional barbecue circuit could look quite different. Instead of trolling for votes, the Liberals could be trolling for recruits. Securing a majority would mean both killing the NDP and wounding the Conservatives, who might be tempted to play knife the leader again, given that there would be no imminent possibility of an election. Let the 45th session of Parliament begin.
Hamilton Spectator
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
Federal Election results in blue wave across Windsor-Essex
While the Liberal Party of Canada held on to at least a minority government after nation-wide ballots were cast in the 2025 Federal Election, the political landscape in the Windsor-Essex area committed to a blue wave. Conservative candidates resecured the Essex Riding, while also winning the previously Liberal-held Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore Riding and the NDP-held Windsor West Riding. Essex Riding Conservative incumbent Chris Lewis was re-elected by around 16,000 votes after Monday night's Federal Election ballots were counted. That accounted for just over 45,500 votes, or 57.3% of the vote, unofficial results from Elections Canada detailed. That was up from the 41.1% of support he earned in the 2021 election. This re-elected Lewis for his third consecutive term, having first been elected in 2019. Lewis's dad, Kim, spoke of how his late wife, Helen, always told her youngest son 'to always tell the truth, it will set you free.' 'We are so proud that he has been elected to represent us for another term,' Kim said of Lewis, noting he is on the mission to leave the world a better place than he found it, and that his son is one who truly cares about people and the community. 'Mama, this one is for you,' Lewis said, addressing supporters. She passed away a year-and-a-half ago. He also thanked his wife, Allison, and his family for their support, and the volunteers who dedicated themselves to his campaign. 'I want to say 'thank-you' to the folks of Essex, who put their trust in me now for a third term,' Lewis said. 'It is the greatest honour of my life to serve people.' Lewis believes everyone is put on this world for a reason. 'To the people of Essex, it means the world to me you entrusted me one again to represent you in Ottawa. I will do it with dignity, I will do it with humility, and I will do it with a bounce in my step, a smile on my face,' Lewis said. 'I am going to continue to work for you,' Lewis said, noting he will bring the fresh ideas, thoughts, dreams, hopes, aspirations, and concerns of his constituents to Ottawa. 'I am incredibly proud of my leader,' Lewis said. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did not get re-elected in his Carleton Riding. 'He has worked cares about our region. 'I know that Essex can celebrate tonight, because you've got somebody going back who knows how to get the job done, that knows the ins and the outs. If there was ever a time that was vitally important to send someone back to Ottawa that knows that, now is the time,' Lewis said. His number one priority in his third term will be tackling the cost of living, a top concern he has heard from constituents. While campaigning, he spoke to many young adults who expressed their frustration in not being able to own a home or get by. 'We are going to continue to pressure the government to ensure the Carbon Tax is taken off everything,' Lewis said. He will also be watching the auto sector, ensuring someone is properly dealing with US President Donald Trump on tariffs. 'I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.' With the election results, his Private Member's Bill C-241, a tax deduction for travel for tradespersons, is no longer in play. It passed its third reading in the House of Commons in March of 2023, and was sent to the Senate-level for further evaluation. Lewis hopes to be able to reintroduce it. 'It is so vital for our skilled trades,' he said. Lewis also spoke of hosting a clean campaign, of which he was proud, while congratulating the other candidates who ran in Essex. Essex Riding Liberal candidate Chris Sutton earned the support of just over 29,000 voters, NDP's Lori Wightman earned just over 4,000, and Jason Henry of the PPC earned just over 800, according to Election Canada's unofficial tally. There was no Green Party candidate in Essex this election. Elections Canada notes 79,546 of 109,799 registered electors in the Essex Riding – or 72.45 % (not including electors who registered on Election Day) voted. That was up slightly from the 70% voter turnout in the 2021 election. According to preliminary estimates from Elections Canada, the Essex Riding had one of the highest turnouts in the country at advanced polls, with 34,668 ballots cast. After results were tallied, Windsor West NDP incumbent Brian Masse came in third place in his riding. Conservative Harb Gill, garnered 21,270 votes, or 39.1%, earning the seat, according to Elections Canada's unofficial tally. Liberals came in second in this riding. Conservative Kathy Borrelli earned the Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore seat, which previous Liberal rep, Irek Kusmierczyk, held. Unofficial results show Borelli earning 31,682 votes, beating Kusmierczyk by just a fairly narrow margin of just under 360 votes. Advanced voter turnout in other area ridings was fairly high, with 23,129 cast in the Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore Riding and 16,464 in Windsor West. Nation-wide, preliminary Elections Canada's unofficial results note the Liberal Party of Canada earned 168 seats, while Conservatives earned 144, the Bloc Québécois earned 23, the NDP had seven elected, and the Green Party earned one.
Toronto Star
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Jagmeet Singh's NDP wrestles with what comes next after its worst election ever
VANCOUVER — One day after their worst election ever, federal New Democrats found themselves clinging to life with barely any seats, a defeated leader on his way out, and major questions about the party's future in Canadian politics. Polls suggested the NDP was in trouble, and the result in Monday's federal election was worse: a drop from 24 to just seven seats, at most, with the loss of extra resources and privileges in Parliament since the party didn't win enough ridings to be recognized officially in the House of Commons. Now begins the process to reckon with the heartbreak that was evident in a Burnaby, B.C., hotel ballroom, as the NDP's three-election leader Jagmeet Singh — who lost badly in his riding in the city — announced he will resign when the party chooses his interim replacement. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The only silver lining was that, despite the shellacking at the ballot box, the shrunken rump of the NDP could still hold the balance of power if the end result remains a minority Liberal government. 'We knew it wasn't going to be good ... We didn't know it was going to be this bad,' said George Soule, an NDP strategist who helped with the campaign. Ahead of Singh's address to supporters on Monday night, anxious anticipation turned into melancholy as New Democrats stared blankly while incumbent after incumbent — including party stalwarts Matthew Green, Peter Julian, Nikki Ashton, Brian Masse and more — fell as voters in NDP-held ridings flocked to the Liberals and Conservatives. 'My body's here, but my brain's off in La La Land right now just because of how long we've been going at it,' Mitch Biagioni, a volunteer on Singh's local campaign, said before the final race was called. Wrestling with a diminished NDP presence in Parliament, he described a political environment alienating to progressives like himself. Many New Democrats see Carney as a right-leaning banker whose platform includes an income-tax cut that brings relief to low- as well as high-wage earners, and $28 billion in 'savings' that the NDP argues will lead to program cuts. (The Liberals deny that.) 'The Liberal plans don't actually work for everybody. We've had like a neo-liberal thing since the '80s, and it's just been awful for a lot of people, especially my generation, and the generation after me,' Biagioni said. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I want a more progressive candidate, and I want a candidate that (wants) more social services and growing health care and all the things that are actually important.' On top of that disappointment, early assessments from some New Democrats blamed the bad showing on U.S. President Donald Trump's trade tariffs and annexation threats, which shaped the election as Carney's Liberals championed themselves as the only answer to the American affront on Canadian sovereignty. 'The election wasn't necessarily about a good local MP. It was about who can form a government of more than 172 seats ... and who can stand up to Donald Trump. That was the ballot question,' said Joel Harden, the former Ottawa MPP who vacated his seat to run federally, and lost Monday to Liberal incumbent Yasir Naqvi. 'It's tough when you're going into an election with 25 seats, to scale yourself up to that particular frequency,' Harden said. For Soule, the NDP strategist, the next step is to figure out the best path forward as the party and its reduced caucus choose an interim leader to replace Singh. Soule said it's possible that 'nobody wants to touch this,' but several potential candidates will be interested in the job. He declined to name anybody on Tuesday. Speaking earlier in Victoria, British Columbia's NDP Premier David Eby said he has no interest in the job, but that he wants to see someone take over the party who is committed to rebuilding it so that it can keep playing a role in the future of Canada. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I do hope that someone steps up,' Eby said, adding that 'it was a tough night for our federal cousins.' Soule, meanwhile, believes the NDP can recover with a clear progressive offering, and if Carney's Liberals move to the right, as many New Democrats expect. It's not the first time the NDP has been shunted to the margins of Parliament. In the 1993 election, under then-leader Audrey McLaughlin, the NDP dropped from 44 to nine seats, but did not disappear. 'The progressive movement is going to come together and fight,' Soule said. 'I genuinely have hope.' Harden, leaving open another shot at public office, said New Democrats should quickly start thinking about the party's future because of the typical instability of minority governments. ' There should be some version of a listening tour,' Harden said, calling for development and incentive programs at the riding level. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'That to me, that's the missing piece.' On Tuesday afternoon, as the NDP campaign plane prepared to leave Vancouver for Ontario, Singh boarded with his family to cheers and hugs from his travelling staff. After almost eight years leading the party, he prepared to leave it to find its footing in whatever comes next for the New Democrats. 'It's been a good journey,' he said. Politics Headlines Newsletter Get the latest news and unmatched insights in your inbox every evening Error! 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CBC
29-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Other parties need to organize if they want to change Conservative dominance in B.C. Interior: poli sci prof
Though they didn't manage to form government, the Conservative Party of Canada is celebrating a near-complete sweep of British Columbia's resource-rich Interior and north following Monday's election, growing on decades of centre-right dominance in the area. And a political science prof in the region says other parties need to start organizing now if they want to have any chance of stopping what he describes as largely a "one-party race" in the province outside of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. The Conservatives wrestled away two key NDP-held ridings, flipping both Skeena-Bulkley Valley and Similkameen-South Okanagan-West Kootenay. The party had long hoped to take the seats, and Leader Pierre Poilievre touched down in both locations to meet with voters during the campaign. It marks the first time the NDP hasn't had a presence in the province's Interior since 2000, and continues the near shutout of the Liberals from the region dating back to the 1970s. Jason Morris, a professor of political science at the University of Northern B.C., says supporters of other parties need to be "busier than beavers" organizing themselves if they hope to see someone other than a Conservative elected to represent the region next time around, pointing out that party has a strong presence in the area even in non-election years. In contrast, he observed that the Liberal Party often doesn't even announce candidates for some ridings in the area until midway through election campaigns and has at times put forward the names of people with no history in the region. "It's just a terrible way to try to build for the future," he said in an interview that was completed prior to the election results. "Political parties ... aren't just supposed to be functioning when the writ is dropped. They're supposed to be doing their best in the communities they wish to represent." NDP 'squeezed out': former MLA Former NDP MP Nathan Cullen says he believes the party he used to represent had a strong ground game with local volunteers and incumbents, but ultimately met with circumstances it couldn't control. "The NDP got squeezed," he said in an interview with CBC Daybreak North host Carolina de Ryk. Cullen said he heard from former colleagues that many NDP supporters felt they had to cast their vote for either the Liberals or the Conservatives in order to make their voices heard, creating an uphill battle for the party. Among those to lose their seats was Taylor Bachrach, Cullen's would-be successor as NDP MP for the Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding, defeated by the Conservatives' hand-picked candidate Ellis Ross. Ross, a former chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, had managed to flip the North Coast once before, when he defeated the NDP incumbent in the provincial race for the Skeena riding in 2017. In the federal election, he campaigned under a promise to bring more major industrial projects that would benefit area First Nations, pointing to the success of the LNG Canada project, which is set to come online later this year. "There was a lot of energy on the Conservative front," Cullen said, while praising Bachrach for a strong second-place finish. The NDP also lost the riding of Similkameen-South Okanagan-West Kootenay, coming in third behind the Conservative winner. Conservatives set to work across party lines Elsewhere, Conservative incumbents saw their vote share increase over previous years, signalling strong support for the party in ridings it already held. Among them was Dan Albas, winning his fifth consecutive term in the newly formed riding of Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna and cracking the 50 per cent mark for overall votes for the first time since 2011. He said while he appreciates the mandate, he recognizes his party will have to find common ground with others in a parliament that seems poised to return a minority government. "We are going to have to really work together to try and figure out where we can find areas that we can agree on," he said. That was echoed by Cariboo-Prince George victor Todd Doherty, who pointed to his work advocating for mental health supports under a Liberal government as the type of work he wants to continue. Liberal gains But despite Conservative dominance, the Liberals also saw gains in their overall vote share in the Interior, finishing second in the majority of races in a region in which the party is often an afterthought. And the party has gained a seat in Kelowna, where Stephen Fuhr led Conservative incumbent Tracy Gray by just 235 votes. Fuhr was first elected in 2015, becoming the first victorious Liberal candidate in the Interior since 1974. However, he lost to Gray in 2019 and chose not to run again in 2021. But he says the momentum of Mark Carney and his desire to fight against Donald Trump brought him back into the race this year, and he credits both of those factors for his potential victory, as well as the shifting demographics of Kelowna to being younger and more urban. "Progressive parties can win in Kelowna," he said.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
John Ivison: On campaign's final weekend, the Grits have the momentum
KING CITY, ONT. – With two days to go until polling day, Mark Carney was careful not to break into a victory lap. At a campaign event at Seneca College in this commuter community 40 km north of Toronto, Carney was asked to grade his own campaign performance. The problem with being successful is that it breeds hubris, a quality voters tend to find toxic. But the Liberal leader is a quick study and sidestepped a curve-ball that could have struck him squarely between the eyes. 'Every study I've ever taken, it is the teacher who gives the grades,' he said. It was a prudent response. The polls give the Liberals a four-point cushion nationally, with regional break-outs in Ontario and Quebec looking even more rosy. Carney consistently outpolls Pierre Poilievre on perceived competence and likeability. The race does not always go to the candidate ahead in the polls, but that's the way to bet. Betting markets give the Liberals a 71 percent chance of forming government, compared to a 20 percent chance for the Conservatives. A certain Donald Trump faced similar odds in 2016 and triumphed. But the momentum is with the Liberals. You can see it and feel it on the ground. On Friday night, Carney campaigned in an NDP-held riding, London—Fanshawe, that has been held by the mother-daughter dynasty of Lindsay and Irene Mathyssen since 2006. On Saturday evening, Carney is scheduled to hold a rally in Windsor West. The seat is held by veteran NDP MP, Brian Masse, who has won there eight times. It is a measure of the rise in Liberal fortunes, at the expense of the NDP, that Masse's seat is now considered to be in play. There is no sentiment in politics, and in return for propping up the government for the past two years, the Liberals are intent on wiping New Democrats from the electoral map. The King—Vaughan seat is currently held by the Conservatives, but it too is considered a potential pick-up for the Liberals. The reason is the story of this election: Carney has been the candidate who has best addressed the anxieties about the Trump administration felt by millions of Canadians. He has talked about 'the biggest crisis of our lifetimes' and the rhetoric has felt overblown at times, particularly in the weeks between Trump bloviating about Canada becoming the '51st state.' But the president has entered the stage again, as if on cue from the Liberal campaign. In an interview with Time magazine, he said he is not trolling when he says he wanted to grow the American empire to include Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. 'I say the only way this works is for Canada to become a state,' he told the magazine. Carney referred to the comments in his remarks. 'I take it literally,' he said. 'Others ignored it and said it's a joke. But I took it seriously.' He said Trump's efforts to reshape the global trading system 'demonstrates the costs and consequences of our democratic choices.' The line of questioning from reporters focused on how Carney would deal with Trump's threats, if elected. He was asked if he is setting unrealistic expectations by saying Canada can win a trade war. He said the country loses any negotiations if it gives the Americans what they want. 'We will be damaged if we lose access to the (U.S.) market,' he said. But building a single Canadian economy and exploiting trading opportunities elsewhere would give Canada leverage. 'That's winning the trade war,' he said. He said he does not believe the U.S. would ever resort to military force. 'But I do think the U.S. is trying to put economic pressure on us to gain major concessions … a level of integration of our countries that would impinge on our sovereignty,' he said. 'We have to be clear-eyed about this. These aren't just words when I say in a crisis we have to prepare for the worst. And the worst is, that is the goal. Take what the president says literally.' Carney said he sees 'a landing place' of a negotiated settlement but did not expand on what that might look like. Earlier this month in Oakville, Ont., he was asked whether Trump is likely to abide by any deal that is reached. He said negotiations would have to focus on sectors where the fundamental economic interests are so tightly bound that the incentives to reach agreement are present. 'I look specifically at the auto sector, where it is going to become very apparent very quickly that taking apart something that has been built up over my lifetime is not in the interests of U.S. jobs,' he said. In large measure, the election appears to have come down to voters answering the question Carney posed in his remarks in King City: 'Is Pierre Poilievre the person you want sitting around the table with President Trump?' It will be a stunning reversal for the pollsters and the pundits if the answer on Monday is 'yes.' jivison@
