Another byelection loss forces Liberals to face a tough reality
Failure to win Montreal riding reinforces party’s sense of electoral weakness
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.
In both ridings, turnout was respectable for an off-cycle byelection, at around 39 per cent. In the end, Jagmeet Singh’s NDP 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 in 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 for 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.
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, Singh managed to hang on to a Winnipeg riding where the Conservatives mounted an intense but unsuccessful campaign to win.
It was a clear victory for Singh’s candidate, Leila Dance, who beat the Conservative candidate, construction electrician Colin Reynolds, by a 1,158-vote margin.
Only 248 votes separated the winning BQ candidate from the Liberals’ Laura Palestini.
Both byelections had been prompted by incumbents leaving politics — the former Liberal MP David Lametti quit his LaSalleÉmard-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 to work with the provincial NDP government in Manitoba.
In their departures was the expectation that their ridings would hold for their leaders.
But in Montreal, the Liberal vote dropped nearly 16 points from the last federal election when Lametti held the seat. He had won comfortably in three federal campaigns since 2015, usually more than 20 points ahead of the BQ and about 13 to 26 points ahead of the NDP.
The BQ won with 28 per cent share of the vote, up six points. The NDP’s share was 26 per cent, also up more than six points.
In Winnipeg’s Elmwood-Transcona, the NDP won with 48 per cent of the vote, only a slight increase over their showing in the 2021 election when Blaikie won it with 49 per cent.
However the Conservatives were the ones who showed political momentum there, winning 44 per cent of the vote, a gain of nearly 16 points over the party’s 2021 showing.
In Montreal, the NDP was just 374 votes behind the Liberals’ Palestini. But it was the BQ that benefited from any anti-Liberal 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.
By Tuesday, it was clear the Liberals and NDP split votes in the Quebec riding, and the BQ came up the middle.
Posting on “X” on Monday night, Poilievre attacked the BQ, saying it 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 had been an NDP seat, although the 2015 result was razor-thin: just 61 votes had then separated Blaikie and the incumbent Conservative he defeated. But over the subsequent two elections, the NDP had jacked up its popular vote from 34 per cent to nearly 50 per cent.
On Monday it was the Conservatives who went up, taking about 44 per cent of the votes, with the NDP only ahead by four points at 48 per cent of the popular vote.
The defeat in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s home province in 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 Trudeau’s critics to step down