Toronto: Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suffered a huge setback as his Liberal Party lost the by-election in the party's longtime stronghold, the Toronto-St Paul constituency. A Conservative candidate, Don Stewart, seized the seat with about 42 per cent of the vote against Leslie Church, a former Parliament Hill staffer and lawyer, who took roughly 40 per cent of the ballots cast.
The seat was held by the Liberals for more than 30 years, even though the party's past low points, such as the 2011 federal election that returned just 34 Liberal MPs to Parliament. In the 2021 election, the Liberals won the Toronto-St Paul seat by 49 per cent to 22 per cent. Notably, the Liberals currently have 155 of 338 seats in the House of Commons.
The substantial blow to Trudeau and his government came ahead of a national election expected next year. Despite the Liberal Party's loss, Trudeau vowed to lead the Liberal Party into the elections next year and to “work hard” to address the voters' problems.
“This was obviously not the result we wanted, but I want to be clear that I hear your concerns and frustrations…These are not easy times. And it is clear, I and my entire team have much more hard work to do to deliver tangible, real progress that Canadians can see and feel,” he said in a statement, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said the Conservatives have gained on the political battlefield by blaming Trudeau for the rising cost-of-living crisis. The next federal election must be held by October 2025 and a range of polls show the Liberals, who have been in power since November 2015, would lose badly to the Conservatives.
