Good morning. Mark Carney delivers the Liberal Party a fourth straight term – we’ll get straight into the latest from the election, and you can find more headlines at the bottom of the newsletter.
Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses supporters at his campaign headquarters late last night.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
2025 election
The comeback incumbents
Just three months ago, the Liberal Party seemed moribund, flattened by the deep unpopularity of Justin Trudeau and stuck 25 points behind the Conservatives. But last night, Mark Carney helped the Liberals defy electoral gravity, orchestrating one of the biggest turnarounds in Canadian political history and leading his party to a fourth consecutive term. As of early this morning, the Liberals were ahead or elected in 168 ridings, four seats shy of a majority government. The Conservatives were at 144 seats, the Bloc Québécois at 23, the New Democrats at seven and the Greens at one. The Liberals claimed 43.5 per cent of the popular vote, a little more than the Conservatives at 41.4 per cent.
Carney easily won his seat in the Ottawa-area riding of Nepean. Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet secured his in Quebec with a comfortable victory; it was a bit closer for Green Party Co-Leader Elizabeth May in B.C. The other leaders didn’t fare as well. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came a distant third in his Burnaby, B.C., riding and announced that he would step down as soon as an interim leader could be named. As of early this morning, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre risked losing his seat in Carleton, Ont. – a riding he’s held for two decades, since he was 25 years old – trailing Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy by roughly 4,000 votes with 254 of 256 polls reporting. Elections Canada will resume counting of special ballots at 9:30 a.m. ET.
Echoing a theme of his campaign, Carney said in his victory speech last night that U.S. President Donald Trump “wants to break us, so that America can own us. That will never, ever happen,” he told the raucous crowd at TD Place Arena in Ottawa. Carney praised the other leaders for a hard-fought battle that he said strengthened the country’s democracy. “We are all Canadians and my government will work for and with everyone.”
Let’s look at four reasons why Carney’s Liberals pulled off this once-improbable win.
Donald Trump upended the race
It’s pretty much axiomatic at this point: The Conservatives were cruising to massive majority until Trump returned to the White House and dished up a global trade war with a side of annexation talk. All of a sudden, the federal election hinged on the question of who could best navigate Trump’s economic and existential threats – and there was Carney, reminding voters at every possible turn that he’d steered the Bank of Canada through the 2008 Great Recession and the Bank of England through the Brexit vote in 2016. What seemed destined to be a referendum on the Liberals’ decade in power transformed into a coronation of Carney’s crisis-management skills instead.
The Conservatives couldn’t close the gap
Poilievre lost his preferred opponent when Trudeau stepped down. He lost his signature issue when Carney, as Prime Minister, axed the carbon tax. In the final stretch of the election campaign, Poilievre did manage to shift some focus from Trump’s assaults on the country back to housing, tax cuts and affordability – and even tightened the Liberals’ eight- or 10-point lead in the polls to three points over the weekend. Had the race gone on a little longer, or had fewer Canadians cast their ballots in advance, perhaps the Conservatives could have made up the difference. But while Poilievre delivered the party’s best showing in more than a decade, not enough voters found themselves persuaded by his particular brand of change. “It will be an honour to continue to fight for you,” he told supporters late last night, although how he would do that if he lost his seat in Parliament was not immediately clear.
Carney dances to Down With Webster as the band played in Ottawa last night.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The NDP collapses
New Democrats are leading or elected in seven ridings, short of the 12 seats required to maintain official party status and well down from their 25 seats in the 2021 election. “Obviously I know this is a disappointing night for New Democrats,” Singh said at the NDP headquarters last night, repeatedly tearing up as he thanked his family, his caucus and his staff. The party garnered 6.3 per cent of the popular vote, a sharp decline from the 17.8-per-cent share four years ago. The Liberals picked up several NDP seats in B.C. ridings – including Singh’s own – but the Conservatives also ate into their support, nabbing blue-collar ridings such as Ontario’s Windsor West and Manitoba’s Elmwood-Transcona.
Quebec rallies behind Carney
The Liberals hoped a red wave in Quebec would improve on the 35 ridings they won in 2021. The Bloc aimed to save the furniture – and most of the party’s 32 seats – after their support plummeted. Ultimately, the separatist party managed better than feared, ahead or elected in 23 Quebec ridings as of early this morning. But the Liberals are poised to pick up 43 seats, the sole beneficiaries of the Trump effect. Although the Bloc’s Blanchet pleaded for a “normal” election, the campaign was dominated by Trump’s trade war, which has hit the province’s aluminum and forestry industries while threatening its heavily protected dairy sector.
More (so much more) from The Globe
In Alberta: The province will remain a Conservative stronghold, as the party is set to win all but three of its 37 ridings.
In Ontario: The Liberal Party faced its most disappointing results here, losing ground to the Conservatives, particularly in Toronto’s suburbs.
On turnout: 7.3 million people cast their ballots in advance polls, but experts don’t anticipate that election-day voting will break records as well.
On Carney’s first moves: The Prime Minister is expected to name a new cabinet within two weeks, bring in a new budget that includes a promised middle-class tax cut, and introduce legislation to remove interprovincial trade barriers. He’ll also need to start trade and security talks with the U.S.
In Opinion: Shannon Proudfoot was on the ground at Conservative HQ, while Campbell Clark looks ahead to the bigger moments to come for Carney. And Andrew Coyne breaks down the tale of two elections: Trump v. change.
On everything else: Do you have questions about what’s next for Canada? Submit them here and Globe reporters will tackle them tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET.
Vancouver attack
‘Cherish those people you love.’
A memorial near the scene of a fatal vehicle attack in Vancouver.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
A five-year-old girl, her parents, and a middle-school teacher are among the 11 people who died when an SUV barrelled through a crowded street festival in Vancouver on Saturday night. The accused driver, who was under mental-health supervision, had often reached out to police in recent years, including in the week before the attack. Read more here about how the festival attack unfolded.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: As of last week, there were 1,020 measles cases in Ontario – more than in all of the United States. Where, André Picard wonders, is the public health response?
Abroad: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a three-day ceasefire in Ukraine next month, even as the Kremlin made territorial demands that pushed a long-term peace deal further out of reach.
The border: The Peace Bridge duty-free shop has gone into receivership amid a sharp drop in Canadian visits to the U.S.
The grid: A major power outage left tens of millions of people in Portugal and Spain without phone and internet service, trains and subways, traffic lights and ATMS, and (my personal nightmare) trapped hundreds in elevators for hours.