Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals staged a major political comeback to retain power in parliamentary elections, fuelled by a backlash against US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and comments on making Canada the 51st US state.
With almost all votes counted, results from Elections Canada showed that the Liberals had won 168 electoral districts, followed by the Conservatives with 144. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who just three months ago had looked certain to sweep the polls, lost his seat in the Ontario district of Carleton to Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy.
The Liberals, who have been in power since November 2015, were 20 percentage points behind in surveys in January before the unpopular Justin Trudeau announced he was quitting as prime minister and Trump started threatening tariffs and annexation.
“It was the ‘anybody-but-Conservative’ factor, it was the Trump tariff factor, and then it was the Trudeau departure ... which enabled a lot of left-of-centre voters and traditional Liberal voters to come back to the party,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute polling firm.
Despite the gains, the Liberals currently are not likely to get the outright majority that Carney had sought to help him negotiate with Trump on the tariffs threatening Canada’s economy.
Votes, however, are still being counted in a number of districts with narrow margins. The Liberals needed 172 of the House of Commons’ 343 seats to be able to rule without the support of a smaller party. There will be at least one mandatory recount and the final result might not be known for days.
The Canadian dollar was largely flat against the US dollar, while Canada’s main stock index was slightly higher.
The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing a senior Liberal official, said Carney would name a cabinet and reconvene Canada’s House of Commons within two weeks.
Another priority will be the annual budget, which is usually presented in March or April.
Carney, saying Trump wanted to break Canada, had repeatedly vowed to open talks on new security and economic ties with the US president as soon as possible after the election.
“Our old relationship with the US, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” Carney said in his victory speech in Ottawa. “The system of open global trade anchored by the US ... (which) has helped deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over. These are tragedies, but it’s also our new reality,” he said.
Carney said the coming months would be challenging and require sacrifices.
He also has to deal with Danielle Smith, the conservative premier of the western oil-producing province of Alberta, who complains that the Liberals have undermined national unity with climate policies she says are designed to hurt the energy industry.
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