For Canadians from coast to coast, it was a nail-biting night on Monday, April 28 as the results poured in from the country’s forty-fifth general federal election. It was many hours after polls closed, late into the night, before the results began to come into focus: the Liberal Party of Canada, led by new Prime Minister Mark Carney, has earned a rare fourth term in office.

It’s a result that nobody would have seen coming just a few months ago when the Conservatives were enjoying a 24 percent lead in most national polls.

One thing that’s certain is that the Liberals will form a minority government, although it took until Tuesday afternoon for this to be confirmed. The House of Commons currently has 343 seats, meaning that any one party needs to elect 172 Members of Parliament in order to reach majority status.

By midday on Tuesday, the Liberals were elected in 169 ridings. The final seat count may shift by small numbers in the coming days as recounts take place.

The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, were elected in 145 ridings and will form the official opposition. Poilievre, however, was not elected in his Ottawa-area riding and therefore will not be returning to the House of Commons—for now.

This neck-and-neck battle between the Liberals and Conservatives came at a cost to the country’s other parties. The New Democrats paid the highest price and were wiped off the map in most regions, dropping from 24 seats at the last Parliament’s dissolution to just seven now. This sets them far below official party status.

Jagmeet Singh also lost his Vancouver-area riding, prompting him to step down as leader of the NDP in his concession speech.

The Bloc Quebecois saw their support in Quebec drop sharply as well, falling to just 22 seats from 33. The Greens held on to one seat.

The closest election result, though still unofficial, took place in Newfoundland where Liberal incumbent Anthony Germain appears to have fended off his Conservative challenger by just 12 votes.

Races within such a tight margin of error trigger an automatic recount.

In Provencher

For incumbent Ted Falk of the Conservatives, Monday’s election produced another decisive win in Provencher. He secured his fourth term in office by earning 34,364 votes, or 66.1 percent.

The Liberal’s Trevor Kirczenow trailed with 13,594 votes, or 26.1 percent. Although a distant second place finish, this was a sharp improvement for Kirczenow, who in 2021 only received 8,471 votes.

The NDP’s Brandy Schmidt finished third with 2,398 votes, the PPC’s Noel Gautron received 943 votes, and the Green Party’s Blair Mahaffy got 705 votes.

Among Falk’s supporters, gathered at the Friedensfeld Community Centre on Monday night, the mood was sombre, although short bursts of cheering arose on occasion as Falk’s numbers jumped ahead.

By 10:30 p.m., Falk was delivering his victory speech.

“Obviously the national result isn’t going quite the way we would like,” Falk said. “The last number they gave me, our results here in Provencher were sitting at about 68 percent of the vote. If my memory serves me right… that would probably be a record for my tenure as a member of Parliament. Sixty-six percent is the highest I’ve had up until [now].”

He said that his campaign volunteers collectively walked just over 3,000 kilometers to knock on more than 11,000 doors over the past five weeks. For all the people working to ensure his win, he carries a debt of gratitude.

 “I’ll continue to work hard to serve you because government shouldn’t be the master, it should be the servant,” Falk concluded. “And we want to make sure it stays that way.”

Over in Kirczenow’s camp, the sentiment was similar but the reasons were reversed.

“I feel very relieved by the general election result across the country,” Kirczenow told The Citizen. “I know that Canada is in excellent hands with Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Canadians’ democratic and human rights will continue to be protected.”

Despite his Provencher loss, Kirczenow said that he’s pleased to have received more than a quarter of the votes in this election.

This result isn’t surprising, he adds, considering the number of people he’s spoken with throughout the campaign, many of which have expressed fear over holding progressive values in such a conservative riding.

On a regular basis in the past five weeks, Kirczenow added that he encountered aggression from conservative voters who actively worked to impede his campaign.

“I hope that looking at these election results will help everyone realize that in the privacy of the ballot box, many of us in Provencher do indeed support women’s rights and 2SLGBTQ rights,” said Kirczenow. “Together we reject election interference, the purposeful spread of misinformation, and intimidation tactics.”

As well, Kirczenow hopes his Conservative counterparts will take Poilievre’s loss as an indication that there ought to be a better and kinder way to conduct themselves going forward.

Concession Speeches

Poilievre’s failure to secure his seat in the Carleton riding is surprising to many given that the Conservatives picked up a lot of electoral ground in this election. Until this year, Poilievre held the seat for 20 years. But on Monday night, he was defeated by a Liberal.

“To my fellow Conservatives, we have much to celebrate tonight,” said Poilievre in his election night address. “We got the highest share of vote that our party has received since 1988… and we did all of this in a very difficult environment.”

Poilievre suggested that this year’s loss, while unfortunate, would prove to be a lesson that propels the Conservatives over the finish line in the next election.

In the meantime, he said, his party will work hard at holding the Liberal government to account while committing to work with the rest of Parliament on common issues.

“We will always put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump,” he said. “Conservatives will work together with the prime minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal that puts these tariffs behind us while protecting our sovereignty and the Canadian people.”

For Singh, the loss of his Burnaby Central riding also came as a stinging blow. Still, he insisted in his own remarks that the NDP’s loss will prove a temporary setback.

“Tonight and every night, all of us here were on Team Canada,” Singh said. “We want Canda to thrive and we’re going to continue to fight for Canada… We may lose sometimes, and those losses hurt. It’s tough. But we are only defeated if we stop fighting… I have met New Democrats from coast to coast to coast who will never back down, even when they’re told there’s no room for them at the table.”

Carney’s Message to Canadians

As newly minted prime minister, Carney delivered an election night message resounding with optimism and goodwill.

“I want to congratulate Poilievre on a hard-fought, fair campaign and his commitment to the country that we both love,” Carney said. “He will have many, many more contributions to our land.”

Carney added that his reason for entering politics earlier this year was the realization that Canada was in need of big change. In getting there, he has pledged to defend and maintain the three main values that Canadians hold dear: humility, ambition, and unity.

As for humility, Carney has said that he’ll lead by example.

“I have much to be humble about,” he said. “It’s true, over my long career, I have made many mistakes, and I will make more. But I commit to admitting them openly, to correcting them quickly and always learning from them.”

Further, he added, humility comes from working with other political parties, and with the provinces and territories and Indigenous peoples, to build a better Canada.

“We are at a hinge moment in history. Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War… is over. These are tragedies, but it’s also our new reality. We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves and, above all, we have to take care of each other.”

In that vein, Carney issues a call for all Canadians to put an end to division and anger and move forward in unity.

In the coming years, he said, Canada will set out to build twice as many homes using Canadian technology, Canadian skilled labour, and Canadian lumber. New trade and energy corridors will be created while establishing Canada as a clean and conventional energy superpower.

“The point is that we can give ourselves far more than the Americans can ever take away,” Carney concluded.