WHAT THE RESULTS MEAN

By Kirk Winter

The dust has finally settled on Monday night’s federal election, and Elections Canada has certified the results as official.

The turnout across the country was 66 percent. In Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock was close to that at 65 percent and in Peterborough-Kawartha 71 percent of voters cast their ballot. The riding of Carleton (Ontario) had the highest turnout with 77.5 percent of eligible voters. The lowest turnout, only 45 percent of eligible voters was in Abitibi-BaieJames-Nunavik (Quebec).

Here are the official numbers:

Federal

Liberals – 157 seats, 5.9 million votes, 33.1 percent of the popular vote

Conservatives – 121 seats, 6.1 million votes, 34.4 percent of the popular vote

Bloc Quebecois – 32 seats, 1.38 million votes, 7.7 percent of the popular vote

NDP – 24 seats, 2.9 million votes, 16 percent of the popular vote

Green – 3 seats, 1.16 million votes, 6.5 percent of the popular vote

Peoples' Party – 0 seats, 292,000 votes, 1.6 percent of the popular vote

Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock

Jamie Schmale, Conservative – 32,257 votes, 49 percent of the popular vote

Judi Forbes, Liberal – 17,067 votes, 26 percent of the popular vote

Barbara Doyle, NDP – 9,676 votes, 14.7 percent of the popular vote

Elizabeth Fraser, Green Party – 5,515 votes, 8 percent of the popular vote

Gene Balfour, Peoples' Party – 1,245 votes, 1.9 percent of the popular vote

Peterborough-Kawartha

Maryam Monsef, Liberal – 27,400 votes, 39.3 percent of the popular vote

Michael Skinner, Conservative – 24,357 votes, 34.9 percent of the popular vote

Candace Shaw, NDP – 11,872 votes, 17 percent of the popular vote

Andrew MacGregor, Green Party – 4,930 votes, 7.1 percent of the popular vote

Alexander Murphy, Peoples' Party – 890 votes, 1.3 percent of the popular vote

Robert Bowers, Independent – 180 votes, 0.3 percent of the popular vote

Ken Ranney, Stop Climate Change Party- 172 votes, 0.2 percent of the popular vote

For the foreseeable future, Canadians are going to be governed by a minority Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau. Trudeau fell only 13 seats short of a majority government, so likely only the NDP will be needed to support Liberal legislation moving forward. There are many areas of agreement between the Liberal and NDP platform, and on issues like pharmacare there is outright agreement. The NDP may be able to push the Liberals further to the left on the issue of climate change, forcing Trudeau to introduce more robust targets for Canadians in the battle against climate chaos.

Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives gained 22 seats and won the popular vote with massive turnout from traditionally “blue” Alberta and Saskatchewan. However, their haphazard performance in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario doomed them to the opposition benches. Stephen Harper worked very hard to build a Conservative coalition in Quebec not seen since Brian Mulroney. Scheer’s self-immolation in the French language debates led to a Bloc Quebecois/Liberal route in Quebec. Ontario, the prize in every Canadian election, held firm for the Liberals. Fortress Toronto proved impregnable to the Conservatives, and wildly unpopular Premier Doug Ford was effectively used by the Liberals as a piñata to suggest what all of Canada might be looking at if Scheer was elected. Scheer’s utter lack of a program to fight climate change was cited by innumerable voters as the reason that well-educated, urban-dwelling Canadians did not vote Conservative, and the party clearly has some soul searching to do on that key electoral issue. Scheer claims he will be staying on as leader, but only time will tell. The Conservatives do not have a well-founded history of keeping on leaders who lose very winnable elections like the one just held.

Jagmeet Singh has likely just become the most influential man in Canada. Most expect Trudeau will come to Singh for the additional votes the Prime Minister will need to pass government legislation. Singh’s 24 NDP seats will be key to propping up the Trudeau Liberals, as David Lewis’s NDP propped up Trudeau’s father Pierre after the election of 1972. Singh’s new-found influence has won a temporary reprieve from political ignominy for the NDP leader. Many within the NDP are seething at Singh’s poor election performance, particularly the loss of almost 20 seats in Quebec that Jack Layton worked so hard to win, and under different circumstances, these disgruntled NDPers would have been calling for a leadership review. If Singh plays his cards right, many important NDP promises will likely find their way into the upcoming Liberal budget. Some political pundits fear, though, that Singh will overplay his hand, forcing an election sometime in 2020, one a currently cash-strapped NDP would be unable to fight effectively.

Elizabeth May and the Greens have to be happy with their additional seat and significant uptick in popular support, but frustrated at their inability to break through in vote rich Ontario where too many Green candidates finished a distant fourth in their respective races. Rumblings persist within the party that May wants to step down, especially after her husband was unable to join her in Ottawa after losing his bid to win a seat for the Greens in British Columbia. Some within the movement view newly elected Green MP from Fredericton, Jenica Atwin, as a leader- in-waiting.

The election of 2019 will be remembered as the vote that resurrected the Bloc Quebecois from the ash heap of political irrelevance. Yves-Francois Blanchet ran the perfect campaign in Quebec, soft selling separation and instead wrapping his party in the flag of Quebec nationalism. Quebec pollsters reported that the Bloc comeback was fuelled by Quebecers fears of Andrew Scheer and his stand on pipelines and the controversial Bill 21 that bans Quebec civil servants from wearing any religious iconography. Blanchet reminds many of Lucien Bouchard, a previous Bloc leader, who was able to gain support in Quebec from not just separatists but nationalists, who currently are the majority in Quebec.

Maxime Bernier delivered the most fanciful speech on election night, claiming that after losing his own seat and his nascent party winning fewer than 300,000 votes Canada wide, he would be staying on as leader, and that the party would live to fight another day. Bernier is contemplating legal action against a number of groups as it became public knowledge that someone had organized and executed a well-thought-out and damaging attack on the Peoples' Party and that possibly that group could be linked to the Conservative Party.

Prime Minister Trudeau has a full plate to deal with when parliament resumes, and issues like pharmacare, climate change, middle class prosperity and infrastructure promise to be front and centre in the months to follow.