On Monday, June 24, voters in an urban Toronto riding delivered devastating news to Justin Trudeau, as the Conservatives won an upset in the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election.
This seat, previously in Liberal hands for decades, is no longer. This by-election loss could not have come at a worse time for the governing Liberals, as their poll numbers continue to sink ahead of an expected 2025 federal election.
Toronto-St. Paul’s By-Election Results
Conservative candidate Don Stewart won the by-election by a narrow margin, taking about 42.1 percent. Liberal candidate Leslie Church finished in second with 40.5 percent. The NDP was well behind in third place with 10.9 percent, while the Greens registered just under three percent.
This by-election had dozens of other candidates. In total, 84 people ran, the vast majority of which were independents. This was because the Longest Ballot Committee, a pro-proportional representation organization, flooded the zone and helped create a meter-long ballot paper. The intent was to show what they believe are the flaws of first-past-the-post, Canada’s electoral system.
About Toronto-St. Paul’s
This riding is as smack in the middle of Toronto as it gets, forming parts of Midtown. It is urban, and historically votes Liberal – this by-election being an obvious exception. The former MP, Carolyn Bennett, was swept into office in 1993 during Jean Chrétien’s landslide. Prior to that, it bounced back and forth between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives.
The last time a party other than the Liberals won this riding was 1988. It is now the CPC’s only seat within Toronto itself.
What Does The Toronto-St. Paul’s By-Election Mean?
If you are in or around the Liberal Party of Canada today, one cannot assume you are having a wonderful time. This by-election defeat is a huge blow, and we would go so far to say that this is a disaster. The Liberals losing an urban Toronto seat that they had held for over 30 years is about as bad as it gets. What makes it worse is that the NDP and Green vote declined, but the Liberals still were not able to consolidate enough votes on the left to stop the CPC from winning.
There is no way to spin this for either the Liberals or Justin Trudeau. A loss like this, for example, is reminiscent of recent by-elections in the United Kingdom, like Blackpool South. The longtime Conservative government in Britain, in its apparent dying days, started losing by-elections, and in some of them, where they were defending huge margins.
Toronto-St. Paul’s was among the safest Liberal seats one might find outside of parts of Montreal. In the three prior federal elections, the Conservative vote there averaged about 24.6 percent. That this is a CPC seat today is a very, very bad sign for the Liberals.
Likewise, this is an impossibly good result for the Conservative opposition. Even the most wide-eyed CPC supporter might have thought a Toronto riding like this was too far out of reach. Pierre Poilievre is no doubt a happy man on Tuesday, and his party are dreaming out loud that a result like this is a great sign for their prospects of winning a majority in 2025.
And What About Trudeau?
The prime minister may not resign, and he may not do anything at all in response to this by-election loss. However, the voices questioning him from both inside and outside his own party will get much louder. Trudeau has seemed to be on borrowed political time for a while, but what figure in the Liberal Party could or would step forward to replace him? That is part of the Liberals’ problem, as there is no obvious successor to Trudeau, and even if there were, why would they want a poisoned chalice?
Whatever happens to Justin Trudeau, there will be a great deal of hand-wringing and soul-searching within the party of government. The Liberals have been handed a devastating result, and how, or if, they respond to it now will be worth watching.
