And just like that, Canada’s long-awaited, much-analyzed federal election has come and gone. The still-somewhat-smoky scene this morning reveals a much different political landscape, with Mark Carney’s Liberals holding onto a minority (we think) government, the Conservatives growing their support and gaining key seats (though losing one particularly important one), and the NDP nearly wiped off the electoral map and losing official party status altogether.
Some of Beijing’s top critics in Parliament were re-elected this week, but a Conservative candidate said by authorities to be targeted by a Chinese regime operation lost his bid to sit in the House of Commons.
There is no evidence so far that Joe Tay fell short because of the Chinese regime’s efforts, but in the lead-up to the vote, election security officials had warned he was the victim of a transnational repression operation.
Whatever might be said in the coming days about the results of Canada’s 45th federal election one thing is clear; Canadian’s voted for change. Unfortunately, that change is how Western Canada will come to see itself within confederation.
Let me begin by acknowledging that there is no doubt that Mark Carney and the Liberal Party of Canada won last night’s election. We have a very safe and secure electoral system with paper ballots, scrutineers, and multiple levels of review in the event of any discrepancies.
There are the scapegoats we expected following Monday’s disappointing result for Canada’s future generations — that appear destined to strain the ties that bind its very confederation — and then there are the ones many never saw coming.
The ‘boomer vote,’ as was feared, overwhelmingly prioritized Trump, tossing “making housing more affordable,” “growing the economy,” and “making Canada a better place to live” down the ballot.
I think we have to admit from time to time that Westminster-style parliamentary democracy can have a schizoid quality. Canadians voted in a general election last night amidst an atmosphere of looming dread and economic panic. We were obviously desperate for safety and stability: voters of the left-wing luxury-beliefs parties turned against their leaders, and toward Mark Carney, with the savagery and single-mindedness of Cossacks having a pogrom. (Sympathy for federal New Democrats isn’t a natural impulse for me, but hoo boy. Some of those riding totals, man.)
Did Trump actually want the globalist candidate to win?
Canada’s Liberal Party, which appeared headed for certain defeat earlier this year, trounced the opposition in Monday’s elections.
This story’s exclamation point, if not the buried lede, involves Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre. He went from the man who would be prime minister to the unemployment line in a matter of months.
It’s what he wanted …
No wonder Trump wanted Carney as Canada’s PM.
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management formerly with Mark Carney as its chair and head of impact investing, is looking to invest in US manufacturing operations as companies plan to build…
— Ben Tallmadge (@BenTallmadge01) April 30, 2025
h/t Mauser
Once again, a federal election call was made well before western votes had a chance to be considered, leaving some voters feeling disenfranchised, as if their votes don’t matter.
On Monday night, at about 7:15 p.m. PT, media outlets, including CBC News, projected the Liberals would form the next government.
That was 15 minutes after polls had closed in B.C., and not long after they closed in Alberta. The election call was made knowing only the early results of the more Eastern provinces.
Pierre Poilievre spent 20 years being a certain type of politician: the prosecutor, the pest, the attack dog. He’d bare his teeth when he sat in the government front benches, even when most cabinet members would tuck their tails and flip on their backs to defuse opposition attacks. That wasn’t Mr. Poilievre’s way.
That’s why he was so perfect for the political moment in late 2023 and 2024, when Canadians’ economic anxieties and frustrations about this country’s many deficiencies bubbled over. Mr. Poilievre became a vessel for that anger: someone who could give literal voice in Parliament to all the ways they believed the government had failed them. Canadians needed a pit bull, and Mr. Poilievre provided.
The riding-rich, voter-dense Greater Toronto Area looked like a kingmaker for the Liberal Party once again in Monday’s federal vote, delivering a push for Mark Carney while dashing Conservative hopes of an urban breakthrough.
Liberal dominance in the GTA helped Liberals win the three previous general elections under Justin Trudeau, and new Liberal leader Carney looked to the region to buttress his party in a fourth consecutive term.
OTTAWA — Only this campaign could have produced Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The former banker with the sober demeanor of a natural technocrat convinced millions of Canadians he was the guy to lead the nation amid an unprecedented onslaught of threats and ridicule from the brash President Donald Trump.
The Liberals won. Mark Carney returns as prime minister. He’ll get to name another cabinet, meet Parliament for the first time, govern if he can. But the result forecloses cheap gloating in ways I find satisfying. Canada is a country that wishes things were easy. Maybe they aren’t meant to be easy.
This was not one election but two. For the Liberals and their supporters, this was an election, first and foremost, about Donald Trump, and his designs on Canada.
And so far as it was about Mr. Trump, and since it was unclear what, if anything, there was to be done about him, then it was about leadership, on which the Liberals happened to enjoy a decided advantage. Polls showed the public clearly preferred the Liberal Leader, Mark Carney, to the Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre.
MONTREAL — The last thing Quebecers and Canadians want is instability in the federal Parliament, according to Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, calling on his federal counterparts to drop partisanship and work hand in hand to fight U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats.
“I do not see any other scenario than collaboration for at least a year,” said Blanchet during a somber press conference the morning after an “atypical election.”
Allo Yves-François Singh!
That was the craziest election yet, and it wasn’t even over on Day 1 after the voting. The numbers were still changing Tuesday afternoon.
The Liberals picked up a Bloc Quebecois-leaning seat, raising their total to 169, three short of a majority.
The Conservatives won their highest percentage vote in decades but still lost badly. They’re 25 seats behind the governing Liberals.
The NDP is losing official party status after Canada’s election. Here’s what that means
