From start to finish, Liberals focused on COVID

Prime minister aimed to challenge Canadians to vote on pandemic policy

MONTREAL—When Justin Trudeau plunged Canada into a pandemic election last month, he rationalized it the same way he did during his final rally of the campaign: that it was now time for Canadians to decide who should finish the fight against COVID-19 — and who should chart the country’s path to recovery.

That decision handed the Liberals their third consecutive victory Monday night, but fell short of delivering the majority that Trudeau sought, and cemented his government in minority status for a second time.

Ballots were still being counted across the country early Tuesday morning, but with the seat count hovering near the party’s 2019 showing, the question Trudeau will now need to answer is whether his gamble was justified by the static numbers.

Despite an outcome that will make many Canadians wonder why they were forced to trudge through a campaign they didn’t ask for, spirits were up among Liberal party staffers, whose cautious optimism over the result strengthened as Monday night’s results rolled in.

The overall tone was decidedly subdued, however, at Liberal headquarters in downtown Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel. With capacity capped at 250 people to respect pandemic protocols, gone was the throng of rambunctious supporters that once packed the same room when Trudeau secured a Liberal majority in 2015.

In a private room elsewhere in the hotel, Trudeau, his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, and their children Xavier, EllaGrace and Hadrien gathered on a grey couch to watch the numbers trickle in.

At the end of the campaign, the Liberals once again found success in Toronto and the surrounding 905 region — a key battleground where the party dominated in 2019.

But the Grits weathered losses in Atlantic Canada, with Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives gaining four seats in the region for a total of eight. While Atlantic Canada largely remained a Liberal fortress — the party secured 23 of the region’s ridings — they notably lost Bernadette Jordan, who served as fisheries minister in Trudeau’s cabinet, to Conservative challenger Rick Perkins.

In other cabinet losses, Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef was also projected to lose her Peterborough-Kawartha riding to Conservative candidate Michelle Ferreri.

Election day followed a whirlwind push from Trudeau on Sunday, where he made appearances in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and B.C., laying out his final appeals to supporters until his voice grew hoarse.

“Now, we can feel it. There’s a new day dawning in this country. An opportunity to take the lessons we learned from each other ... and apply them, not just to ending this pandemic, but on how we step up on other crises other than COVID,” Trudeau said at his last campaign event in Burnaby North-Seymour.

“How we step up on the crisis that we’re facing in housing, the crisis of reconciliation, the crisis of affordability, the crisis of climate change.”

The unparalleled 35-day campaign began for the Liberals under the shadow of Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban.

The crisis quickly forced the party to fend off accusations on two fronts: that Canada’s evacuation efforts of Canadians and Afghan nationals were slow and unco-ordinated, and that it was selfish of Trudeau to trigger an election many viewed as unnecessary.

As both issues circled the party, any early expectations of a runaway majority began to fizzle as the gap between the Liberals and Conservatives narrowed and the two parties found themselves locked in a dead heat.

Yet Trudeau sought to differentiate himself from the Tories at every turn, pushing hard on his party’s stance on vaccination mandates and passports, the Liberals’ $30-billion national child-care program, its climate policy and an aggressive housing plan. Trudeau also took shots at the NDP, telling progressive voters that the Liberals were the only party with a serious and realistic vision for the country.

Like both the Conservatives and the NDP, the Liberals were dealt losses before election day unfolded: the party ousted two candidates in ridings considered to be Liberal locks, losing key seats in a race where every win counts.

Kitchener Centre incumbent Raj Saini suspended his campaign after the Liberal party reviewed allegations facing the two-time MP, which he denied, accusing Saini of inappropriate behaviour toward female staffers.

And in the final days of the contest, the party suspended the campaign of Spadina-Fort York candidate Kevin Vuong, who was trying to succeed Liberal MP Adam Vaughan when the Star reported that Vuong was charged with sexual assault in 2019 (the charge was dropped later that year).

On the bumpy road to victory for Trudeau, the tone of this campaign was unlike any other.

The Liberal leader found himself facing off against a faction of anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protesters who tailed the leader on the election trail, prompting the shutdown of one rally northwest of Toronto and resulting in gravel being thrown at Trudeau at another.