OTTAWA—Mark Carney, the archetypal banker who styled himself crisis-manager-in chief, appeared to be on track to narrowly win a minority Parliament as voters east to west on Monday looked set to deliver the Liberals a rare fourth term in power.
To navigate their third minority in a row, the Liberals must negotiate with political rivals who excoriated Carney in the campaign as a liar, a plagiarist, and a friend of rich investors not ordinary Canadians. The separatist Bloc Québécois would hold the balance of power.
Naming a new cabinet, presenting a federal budget and leading trade talks with U.S. President Donald Trump starting almost immediately will be among Carney’s first tasks.
With ballots still being counted as of 12:01 a.m., the Liberals needed 172 seats for a majority in a newly expanded 343-seat Parliament. At publication time, the Liberals had won or were leading in 162 seats, due to the collapse of NDP and Bloc Québécois support, with 42.6 per cent of the popular vote.
The Conservatives under their firebrand leader Pierre Poilievre grew their seat total, and were on track to snag 149 ridings with 41.9 per cent of votes cast, the party’s largest share of the popular vote since 1988. Poilievre was fighting for his own Carleton seat in a much tighter race that saw a blitz of Conservative volunteers in a bid to secure victory.
The BQ had 23 seats, and the NDP were holding just eight of their 24 seats, not enough for official party status. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, leading in his third federal campaign, looked set to lose his riding.
Poilievre had not conceded defeat nor had Carney declared victory at midnight, as supporters gathered at separate election night parties in the nation’s capital.
Carney, the rookie politician who pitched himself as an agent of change from the Trudeau era, was elected handily in the suburban Ottawa riding of Nepean, on a day when Trump doubled down on his economic and annexation threats.
Poilievre failed to persuade a broader base of Canadians to give his party the keys to government although he led the Conservatives to their highest ever fundraising and membership numbers, launched a massive advertising effort to paint Carney as unethical and untrustworthy, and on election night saw the party tracking to best Stephen Harper’s 39.6 per cent of the popular vote which delivered the Conservatives’ 2011 majority.
In a race where the NDP and Bloc Québécois vote collapsed, producing a tighter two-way national contest than Canada has seen in decades, it wasn’t enough.
For weeks Carney argued he, and not Poilievre, had the economic know-how and chops to confront the U.S. president. For most of the campaign, Carney held a lead, but that narrowed sharply in the past week as Poilievre pressed the case for change.
The results failed to meet Liberal strategists’ privately optimistic expectations of a 180 seats or more for a strong majority, after a campaign that saw Carney, 60, surf a wave of Canadian anxiety about the future.
Candidates Carney recruited to run, like former Quebec finance minister Carlos Leitão, gun control advocate Nathalie Provost, Ontario’s Hydro One chair Tim Hodgson, and former broadcaster Evan Solomon gained seats in Parliament.
The Greens fared badly. Co-leader Elizabeth May hung on, but her co-leader Jonathan Pedneault failed to earn a seat, and Mike Morrice lost his Kitchener Center riding.
In Quebec, Liberals gained ground at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, picking up BQ seats in francophone ridings, critical to the win.
As polls opened Monday morning, Donald Trump — who’d receded to the backdrop of the campaign after dominating the first two weeks — thrust himself back into the electoral calculus, urging Canadians to “elect the man who has the strength and wisdom” to essentially do what the president wants, as he repeated what he says are the benefits of Canada becoming “the cherished 51st state of the United States of America.”
Just a few short months ago Poilievre had seemed certain to cruise to a majority victory in a campaign he long framed as a referendum on Justin Trudeau. But he could not make the “lost Liberal decade” label stick to Carney. On the eve of the vote, Poilievre seemed to sense victory would elude him, tearily telling supporters in his riding, “I want you to know that it won’t matter what happens tomorrow, I will be there to fight for you.”
Poilievre may now face challenges from within a frustrated party caucus, and externally, after Ontario and Nova Scotia progressive conservatives steered a wide berth of him and his campaign manager Jenni Byrne, with Premier Doug Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke slamming Poilievre’s campaign Monday night for having “made a major strategic error” in failing to pivot the federal campaign to confront the Trump threat head-on.
Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said in an interview Poilievre was the most effective Opposition leader “of our lifetime” and has “broad and enthusiastic grassroots support in the base of the Conservative party.”
“Perhaps he could have transitioned a little earlier into auditioning more clearly for the role of prime minister,” said Kenney, but he said Poilievre had run “a very strong campaign.”
“Has it been flawless? No. But I think the key is that he has demonstrated an ability to learn and to change his tone and modify his message. So I think his willingness and ability to course-correct and learn is a strength that would be well received by members even if they’re disappointed.”
Carney, on the other hand, pulled off a victory thought impossible four months ago by touting his record of managing major economic turmoil in two G7 countries as a former central banker in England during Britain’s messy exit from the European Union, and in Canada when the country avoided recession amid the global financial crisis in 2008.
Carney downsized cabinet, ditched unpopular policies like the consumer carbon price and capital gains tax hikes, recruited new faces to run, and kept Trudeau-era ministers largely offstage in the campaign. Conservatives and NDP failed to make hay of Carney’s post-bank career as head of investment giant Brookfield Asset Management.
Meanwhile Poilievre’s voting base relied more heavily on young male voters, while women and older voters slipped into the Liberal column. The Tory leader vowed never to legislate against abortion and proposed measures to crack down on urban and suburban crime and domestic violence. Yet polls showed female voters were turned off by his hard edges, and older voters sought economic stability.
At the dissolution of Parliament on March 23, the Liberals held 152 seats, the Tories 120, the Bloc 33, the NDP 24 and the Greens two. There were three Independents and four vacancies in the 338-seat Commons, which is expanding by five ridings due to population growth.
