OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s grip on a nervous Liberal caucus is weaker today.
The separatist Bloc Québécois stole a Liberal seat in suburban Montreal and Trudeau’s ex-governing partner, the NDP, held onto a Winnipeg riding — results that will embolden Trudeau’s internal critics, and gladden the hearts of his parliamentary Opposition, just as the minority government opened a fall sitting in the Commons.
Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh both saw their parties lose big shares of the popular vote.
In both ridings, turnout was respectable for an off-cycle byelection, at around 39 per cent. In the end, the NDP’s Singh held onto a desperately needed Winnipeg seat while Liberals saw their fears confirmed in a tight but clear Quebec loss.
It was close — only 248 votes separated the winning BQ candidate from the defeated Liberal candidate in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun.
That may help Trudeau fend off his critics a little longer. It could also prompt calls for a recount.
But the trend is bad, and the Liberals know it.
On his way to a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trudeau told reporters that “we are reflecting on how we are going to be able to increase (voter) participation so that people can understand that there’s an important choice to be made in the next election.”
“Obviously it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold Verdun, but there’s more work to do and we’re going to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it.”
The defeat in Trudeau’s home province of a riding the Liberals have held since they came to power in 2015, much of which was represented for decades by former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, is likely to increase calls by his critics to step down.
However, on Tuesday, a senior Liberal told the Star that it was “not exactly a shock,” and was openly talked about at Liberal caucus last week in Nanaimo by party officials. They also laid out a plan to deal with it and to chart an electoral path forward to a federal election, scheduled at the latest in October 2025 — a plan they hope to be able to execute as long as the Liberals can win the support of any one opposition party on a case-by-case basis in Parliament.
If anything, that Liberal insider said, Monday’s results make it less likely the NDP will want to rush to the polls either.
However, for the Liberals, the reality of hard numbers, not projections, is a bruising one.
The prime minister has heard internal advice from restive Liberals for two months to step aside — although only one sitting MP has gone public.
Still, in Montreal, the governing Liberals were hoping to avoid a fate similar to the June defeat in the stronghold of Toronto—St. Paul’s.
And that sense of electoral weakness is undeniable now, even if Trudeau and his inner circle have been downplaying dismal public opinion polls for months.
Trudeau has been unbowed, vowing Friday he would stay at the helm even if he lost.
However he must now explain how he will chart a path back for a party mired in the polls about 20 points behind the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives, without even the NDP to support him in Parliament.
On the other hand, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh — who bailed on a co-operation deal with the Liberals two weeks ago to put distance between himself and Trudeau — managed to hang on to a Winnipeg area riding where the Conservatives mounted an intense but unsuccessful campaign to win.
It was a clear victory in Winnipeg for Singh’s candidate, Leila Dance, who beat the Conservative candidate, construction electrician Colin Reynolds, by a 1,158-vote margin.
Both by-elections had been prompted after incumbents left politics — the former Liberal David Lametti quit his LaSalle-Émard-Verdun seat with a bitter taste in his mouth having been dumped in a cabinet shuffle last year.
Daniel Blaikie, the former NDP MP in Elmwood-Transcona, quit Singh’s fourth-place parliamentary caucus to work with the provincial NDP government in Manitoba under Premier Was Kinew.
But in their departures was the expectation that their ridings would hold for their leaders.
Instead, the Conservative vote share in the Winnipeg riding grew by nearly 16 points, and the NDP lost the nearly 20-point lead it held in the last federal election.
In the Montreal area, the NDP was just 374 votes behind the Liberal Laura Palestini. But it was the BQ that benefited from any anti-Liberal support.
Now, it’s Trudeau who is on the defensive.
Singh posted on “X” in the early morning hours Tuesday “huge congratulations” to his candidate, Dance, “on this big victory for working families.”
He said it showed “our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start.”
In reality, for Singh it shows the status quo for the NDP held.
That, in itself, is no great comfort.
Especially when Singh personally put in a big effort to expand his base of support.
The NDP campaigned hard in both ridings. Singh personally hit the hustings and dragged his caucus to campaign in Montreal to gain a foothold in Quebec, where the party only has one seat, after its Orange Wave of support under Jack Layton collapsed in the era of Thomas Mulcair, and in the face of 2015 Trudeau-mania.
By Tuesday, despite a massive 91-name ballot that delayed reporting of official results, it was clear the Liberals and NDP split votes in the Quebec riding, and the BQ came up the middle.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre posted on “X” Monday night another attack on the BQ in Quebec, saying the BQ has voted nearly 200 times to maintain Trudeau in power, and allowed him to expand and centralize power in Ottawa. Yet the Conservatives were never in a position to snatch the Montreal seat.
In Winnipeg, the Conservatives grew their vote share.
That riding, once represented by Daniel Blaikie and his father, the late Bill Blaikie, had been an NDP seat although the 2015 result was razor thin. Just 61 votes had then separated the NDP and the incumbent losing Conservative candidate. But over the subsequent two elections, the NDP had jacked up their popular vote from 34 to nearly 50 per cent.
On Monday it was the Conservatives who went up, gaining about 44 per cent of the votes, with the NDP only ahead by 4 points, at 48 per cent of the popular vote.
