Conservative candidate Jonathan Rowe has defeated Liberal Anthony Germain by 12 votes in the Newfoundland district of Terra Nova-The Peninsulas following a judicial recount.
Rowe initially lost the seat on election night to Germain by 12 votes — 19,605 to 19,593, according to Elections Canada.
The margin of victory following the recount is the exact number of votes Germain initially won by.
Information manipulation poses the single biggest threat to Canadian democracy, concluded commissioner Marie Josée Hogue, in her final report on foreign interference in federal elections, earlier this year.
It probably came as no surprise to the commissioner that emerging technologies amplified the falsehoods during the recent general election.
Generative AI has emerged as a new player in the disinformation game, enabling malign actors to create huge quantities of misleading content.
For a while, the razor-thin election-night outcome in Terrebonne, a riding just north of Montreal, struck many Canadians as an example of the system working as it should: Liberal Tatiana Auguste was initially declared the winner by just 35 votes; standard validation procedures flipped the riding to the Bloc Québécois by 44 votes; and then a judicial recount, triggered automatically because the outcome was so close — less than 0.1 per cent of the turnout — found Auguste had won by a single vote.
Judicial recounts are still underway in three federal ridings where April 28 election results were determined by narrow vote margins, with one finalized recount in Terrebonne, Quebec, resulting in a one-vote Liberal win — the slimmest federal race outcome in over 60 years.
Superior Court Justice Garrett Handrigan is overseeing a recount in Terra Nova–The Peninsulas, Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Liberals were ahead by only 12 votes on election night — the closest margin nationally.
Elections Canada says it is investigating after a voter in a Quebec riding came forward with an envelope that had been returned to sender.
Inside was a vote for the Bloc Québécois in the Terrebonne riding, where, as it stands, incoming Liberal MP Tatiana Auguste was declared the winner by one vote after several recounts.
Elections Canada said the return address printed on this elector’s return envelope was incorrect — specifically, part of the postal code.
Good thread at the link, h/t Mauser
I expect that the BQ will contest the Terrebonne election, and the Terrebonne election will be annulled, leading to a by-election.
The story:
April 5: Elector sends mail ballot using Elections Canada pre-addressed envelope.
May 2: Ballot is returned due to incorrect postal code. https://t.co/kxdyCk7i7T— Election Watcher (@CdnElectWatch) May 12, 2025
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre defended his top-line campaign message in the election but acknowledged that he also has to make changes to win the next time.
Mr. Poilievre arrived on Parliament Hill Tuesday morning to meet with his MPs after their election loss – and the loss of his own seat.
For the first time since election night, he acknowledged the voters of his former Carleton riding, thanking them for their support over the last 20 years.
More…
Conservatives expected to point fingers at Jenni Byrne during election post-mortem
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is expected to hear on Tuesday from caucus members’ discontent over mistakes made over the course of the campaign, with fingers pointing to campaign manager Jenni Byrne.
Conservative MPs and insiders who spoke to National Post did not lay the blame on Poilievre, who they said was busy crisscrossing the country, but rather the operational and internal decisions spearheaded by Byrne during the campaign.
Days after an estimated 19.6 million Canadians cast their ballots, the results of this year’s federal election are coming in, bringing with them a new political landscape.
Here are some of the takeaways from Canada’s 45th trip to the polls …
Poilievre did well, he should remain as leader.
Despite being dubbed “the most important election of our lifetime,” one in three eligible voters chose not to cast a ballot in Canada’s recent federal election, prompting Democracy Watch to call for urgent reforms to strengthen democracy and increase voter engagement.
The watchdog group released a statement highlighting that the newly elected Mark Carney-led Liberal government secured 49% of the seats in the House of Commons with the support of just 30% of eligible voters.
OTTAWA – More than three quarters of Canadians believe misinformation had an impact on the outcome of the federal election, a new poll suggests.
The Leger poll, which sampled more than 1,500 Canadian adults from April 29 to May 1, suggests that 19 per cent of people think false information or misinformation had a major impact on the election.
Almost a third (32 per cent) said it had a moderate impact, while 26 per cent said it had a minor impact on the election’s outcome.
Our gov’t bought media wants to talk to us about disinformation. Sounds legit.
Just hours before Canada’s federal election, a man treated a street festival here in Vancouver like it was a bowling lane and his vehicle was the ball. Eleven people have died as a result, with several others injured. But sure, let’s make the federal election all about U.S. President Donald Trump.
Local police quickly ruled out terrorism. How could they possibly know so fast?
Well, because they were apparently like, “Oh, it was just THAT guy.” And not because he hangs out at the doughnut shop with them and shoots the breeze, but because he’s out there doing enough criming that they know his exact brand of crime – and it isn’t terrorism.
Vina Viejo, a personal support worker in Richmond Hill, supported Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government with votes and campaign donations for almost a decade.
But Viejo’s had a change of heart.
In last Monday’s federal election, she moved her support behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and says she convinced her partner and multiple family members — about 15, she estimates, except for one holdout sister — to join her in abandoning the Liberals.
Conservatives in Canada are trading blame for Monday night’s election loss, showing that Pierre Poilievre will need to heal divisions within the movement as he fights to stay on as leader.
As a clear Liberal win was emerging on election night, Conservative candidates and their supporters had one question: What the heck just happened?
The party had lost a remarkable 27-point lead in opinion polls and failed to win an election for the fourth time in a row.
A minority gov’t is hardly a “A clear Liberal win” but then BBC bias is as bad as the CBC’s.
OTTAWA — As the federal election campaign approached its final days, the Conservative war room couldn’t help but dwell on a brutal paradox.
Inside the confines of the office where the campaign was headquartered in downtown Ottawa, insiders say the overwhelming feeling was that the campaign couldn’t have gone much more smoothly. Despite mounting criticism from pundits and even fellow Conservatives, everyone on the campaign seemed to be rowing in the same direction. Unusually, the media coverage was mostly favourable, or at least neutral. And they had entirely avoided the “bozo eruptions” that had plagued so many Conservative campaigns before.
The 2025 federal election delivered a fourth consecutive Liberal government under Mark Carney—but not the majority many expected. And the key reason? An underwhelming performance in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, where the party lost six seats, or seven if you count the new riding of Milton East–Halton Hills South. The Conservatives made significant gains, especially in York Region, and those losses cost the Liberals their shot at majority territory.
That result stings for a party that improved its vote share across Ontario and benefited from a collapsed NDP vote. So, what happened?
The Liberals have dropped one seat after Elections Canada’s validation process determined they lost a tightly contested Quebec riding.
Terrebonne, just north of Montreal, was one of the last ridings to be called on Tuesday afternoon. The final vote count had the Liberals flip the seat from the Bloc Québécois by 35 votes.
h/t Patti Jo
