Photo credit: CTV News
Prime Minister Mark Carney will have a majority government after the Liberals were projected to sweep all three federal byelections that were held on Monday.
Global News projects Danielle Martin will keep the Toronto-area riding of University-Rosedale in Liberal hands, while Liberal candidate Dolly Begum will win Scarborough Southwest.
Liberal Tatiana Auguste is also projected to hold onto the Quebec riding of Terrebonne with a wider lead over the Bloc Québécois than her one-vote general election win that was nullified earlier this year.
That puts the party at 174 seats in the House of Commons, giving Carney a majority – something not enjoyed by the Liberals since 2019.
Carney offered congratulations to Begum and Martin on social media, saying the country would benefit from their experience. He did not acknowledge his newfound majority government in either statement.
The win in Terrebonne came after midnight Eastern on Tuesday, with Auguste winning by over 700 votes with all polls reporting.
The results mean that the Liberals will be able to pass legislation without any opposition MPs or tie-breaking votes from the Speaker of the House of Commons if all Liberal MPs vote together.
The Liberals were elected to a fourth straight government mandate last April with 169 seats, just shy of the 172 needed for a majority.
Several Liberal MPs have retired since then, fluctuating the seat count. Two of those retirees, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair, prompted Wednesday’s byelection in their respective former ridings of University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest.
The byelection in Terrebonne was triggered after the Supreme Court of Canada nullified Auguste’s one-vote win for the Liberals over incumbent Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagne in last year’s general election. The court sided with a Bloc challenge that highlighted a mail-in ballot processing error.
Several MP defections to the Liberals from other political parties set the stage for the government to cross the majority threshold Monday.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social media statement, “The Carney Liberals did not win a majority through a general election or today’s byelections.
“Instead, it was through backroom deals with politicians who betrayed the people who voted for them.”
