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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was headed toward a third straight electoral victory Tuesday morning, although his bet that a snap vote would help him secure a majority government failed to materialize.
Both Canada’s CTV Network and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. projected the incumbent Liberal Party was set to win enough seats in parliament to form a minority government.
Preliminary figures indicate the results from Monday’s election were nearly identical to the 2019 national vote. As of Tuesday morning, the Liberals were leading in 158 electoral districts, short of the 170 needed for a majority in parliament. The Conservative Party, led by Erin O’Toole, was running second with 119 seats. The results are based on over 98% of polls reporting. In 2019 national vote, the Liberals won 157 seats and the Conservative Party 121.
While the Liberals have secured re-election, a minority result will be viewed as a setback. This will force Mr. Trudeau to rely on another party—perhaps the left-leaning New Democratic Party—to help implement a progressive agenda with a focus on expanded child care, affordable housing and climate change.
In Montreal, Mr. Trudeau said he was ready to fulfill his party’s promises and help end the Covid-19 pandemic’s hardship on households.
“What we’ve seen tonight is that millions of Canadians have chosen a progressive plan,” he said. “The moment we face demands real important change, and you have given this parliament, this government real direction.”
Mr. Trudeau, 49 years old, called snap parliamentary elections halfway through his four-year term in mid-August, when Canada’s Liberal Party was riding high in the polls following Mr. Trudeau’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Trudeau invoked his powers to dissolve Parliament and call a vote, gambling his party he could win a legislative majority.
Since the last election in October 2019, Mr. Trudeau has led a minority government, requiring support from other parties to get legislation passed. A majority in Monday’s election would have allowed Mr. Trudeau to push through his agenda without having to strike deals with opposition parties. It would also have given his party control over parliamentary committees, whose investigations into financial ties between the prime minister’s family and a youth charity, as well as alleged sexual misconduct among military leadership, have proved politically embarrassing.
Mr. Trudeau framed the election as a pivotal moment in the country’s history. “We have big decisions to make based on what we learned from this pandemic,” he said before election day.
Yet Mr. Trudeau’s early-election gamble didn’t work as planned. His main political rivals and some voters blasted the prime minister for putting his own political interests ahead of the public, which remains preoccupied with Covid-19. Pollsters said Mr. Trudeau was unable to shake off voter anger over the decision to trigger a nationwide vote, called during the early stages of a fourth wave in Covid-19 cases.
A poll issued last week from Ipsos Global Public Affairs indicated over two-thirds of respondents said this was the wrong time to have an election. Anger over the election call “is an anvil that Trudeau has had strapped to his waist as he tried to swim across this election moat,” said Darrell Bricker, Ipsos chief executive.
Julia Maurik, a resident in Toronto’s west end, said Monday the election didn’t need to be called, and believed the exercise was a waste of taxpayers’ money. “Everybody’s walking around with masks on, voting in a pandemic,” she said, outside of a church where voting took place. “I’m not sure the country needs this.”
She said she believes Mr. Trudeau’s early-election call was likely motivated by polling numbers, as opposed to his argument that it was time to give voters a say on what post-pandemic Canada should look like. “He’s putting a spin on a decision that was opportunistic,” she said.
Mr. Trudeau acknowledged in his victory speech some of the backlash from his early election call.
“I hear you when you say that you just want to get back to the things you love, not worry about this pandemic or about an election, that you just want to know that your members of parliament of all stripes will have your back through this crisis and beyond,” he said.
Through the campaign, Mr. Trudeau declined to answer reporters’ questions about his future in the event he didn’t win a majority. His speech indicated he has no plans to step aside despite falling short of a majority.
“I think retiring from politics would be the farthest thing in his mind. He just got a fresh mandate,” Gerald Butts, a longtime friend of Mr. Trudeau’s and his former senior aide, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 U.S. presidential election in part because of his administration’s handling of the pandemic. Though Mr. Trudeau received high marks among Canadians for managing the public-health crisis, that seemingly hasn’t helped on the campaign trail.
“Adequate pandemic management is no longer sufficient to win re-election in the post-Covid world,” said Daniel Béland, a political-science professor at Montreal’s McGill University.
Mr. Béland pointed out that voters in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia ousted the incumbent Liberals in an election last month, even though the province’s Covid-19 strategy earned widespread praise.
Other factors weighed on Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Béland and pollsters say. Chief among them, analysts say, is Mr. Trudeau’s personal popularity. It has taken a hit during his six years in office after a series of ethics scandals cast doubt about his judgment. And, they add, he is no longer the fresh face with the positive demeanor that helped carry the Liberals to power back in 2015.
A spokesman for the Liberal Party said the election campaign has “seen a hugely positive response to Mr. Trudeau’s progressive plan to finish the fight against Covid-19.”
Diane Gadient, an Ottawa resident, said she cast her vote to oust Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals and his ethical lapses were a main reason why. She said she is also upset by the aggressive spending Mr. Trudeau deployed during the pandemic to stabilize the economy and help affected workers. “They are giving away money left, right and center. The money doesn’t grow on trees.”
Morrie Berglas, a tech-company employee in Ottawa, said he cast his vote for the Liberals. “I don’t think the Liberals have done that bad a job,” Mr. Berglas said. “There’s nothing stellar, but it could be a lot worse.”
The Conservative Party’s relatively new leader, Mr. O’Toole, positioned himself as a moderate, political analysts say. Unlike in past campaigns, the Tory platform didn’t advocate for an immediate return to balanced budgets.
Mr. O’Toole, a former military officer and cabinet minister, criticized Mr. Trudeau’s plans to force federal government employees to be fully vaccinated and to compel plane and train travelers to show proof of vaccination.
Mr. O’Toole said that he would respect personal health choices and that he favors rapid testing and screening over mandates.
In a speech to supporters, Mr. O’Toole said the Conservatives would learn from this campaign and be ready in case Mr. Trudeau tries to trigger another early election.
“We will take stock of what worked and what didn’t and we will continue to put in the time to show more Canadians that they are welcome in the Conservative Party of Canada,” he said.
Meanwhile, the leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, said Tuesday he was prepared to fight for Canada’s less fortunate and signaled the party’s support for Mr. Trudeau in parliament might be contingent on higher taxes for high-income earners.
“We are going to keep on fighting to make sure that the super wealthy pay their fair share, that billionaires pay their fair share, so that burden doesn’t fall on you and your families,” Mr. Singh said.
Peter Donolo, vice chairman of Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Canada and a senior aide for former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, said that Messrs. Trudeau and O’Toole both failed to address core questions that dogged their campaigns. Mr. Trudeau, he said, couldn't answer why he called the election “because the honest answer was he called it to win a majority, which is not an acceptable answer for people.”
As for Mr. O’Toole, Mr. Donolo said the Tory leader struggled on Covid-19 and his opposition to vaccine mandates.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
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