Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a pair of 2024 Canadian byelections for September 16. Voters in one Quebec and one Manitoba riding will head to the polls.
This will be the first federal byelection date since the governing Liberals’ disastrous loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s to the Conservatives. The prime minister has withstood heavy criticism since that June defeat, but has refused calls to re-evaluate his Liberal Party leadership.
These byelections will take place in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, Quebec and Elmwood-Transcona, Manitoba.
2024 Canadian Byelections: LaSalle-Émard-Verdun
Located in the southern portions of the Île de Montréal, LaSalle-Émard-Verdun was a Liberal seat. The former MP, David Lametti, resigned in February to take a position in the private sector. He had been shuffled out of cabinet and decided not to remain an MP.
One of the predecessors to this riding, LaSalle—Émard, was held for many years by former prime minister Paul Martin.
Short of something very shocking, unlike the situation in Toronto-St. Paul’s, this is not a riding in which the Conservatives will contend. Not only does the CPC not win here, but they are not even competitive – however, several parties aside from the Liberals are. The main challenges to the Liberals holding this seat will be from the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois.
The NDP won the prior iteration of this seat in their 2011 Quebec sweep, but lost it four years later to Trudeau’s Liberals.
This will be a crowded race to succeed Lametti. The Liberal candidate is Laura Palestini, while the NDP have recruited city councilor Craig Sauvé to stand. Louis-Philippe Sauvé is the Bloc Québécois candidate. At least five other parties are expected to nominate for this September byelection.
2024 Canadian Byelections: Elmwood-Transcona
Elmwood-Transcona, located in Winnipeg, has been a Blaikie family affair for decades. Both members of the NDP, the late Bill Blaikie held this seat from 1988 until 2008. Then, in 2015, his son, Daniel Blaikie, was elected to the House of Commons from the same riding.
The younger Blaikie resigned from Parliament in March of this year to move to provincial politics as an advisor to Premier Wab Kinew.
Despite its long history of supporting the New Democratic Party, and the Blaikie family specifically, expect the NDP to get pushed by the Conservatives here. Elections in this riding tend to be binary NDP vs. Conservative races, with the exception being in the 2015 Liberal surge year.
The NDP candidate this time is Leila Dance, while the Conservatives are running Colin Reynolds. The Liberals, Greens, and People’s Party are also expected to nominate candidates.
Potential Outcomes of the Byelections
The Liberals are only defending one of the two ridings, but after what happened in June, they will be on high alert. Though the Liberals won the 2021 federal election in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun by about 20 points, this is a wounded government which appears to be approaching the end of its longevity. Expect their vote share to fall, but by how much?
A very good outcome for the Liberals in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun would be holding it with close to the same margins they had in 2021. That, however, is unlikely. They will settle for winning the riding however it comes, but hanging on by a few points will still be taken as a sign of weakness on their part. The Bloc and NDP will both target this seat, but there is no indication yet as to whether one particular party or another is breaking through against the Liberals. This riding is reliably Liberal at the federal and provincial levels, and the southern Île de Montréal is not fertile Bloc territory in general. If the Liberals lose, it might be the NDP that causes it.
As for the NDP, might they go two-for-two in these 2024 Canadian byelections? The irony is that they could give the Liberals a black eye in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun but lose Elmwood-Transcona. In the only election where the Conservatives won a majority, they snuck by to win the Winnipeg riding. The CPC is soaring in the opinion polls and hoping to win a majority next year, and a win here would be another step towards assembling their path.
Nevertheless, it will be difficult for the Conservatives to win in Elmwood-Transcona given its long-term NDP bent. Engrained voting patterns did not stop the CPC from shocking the world in Toronto-St. Paul’s, but they are not facing an unpopular Liberal Party here. The Liberals will run a candidate, but it’s the NDP’s to lose. A CPC win would show that they are ready to take ridings from anyone en route to a 2025 election victory. The NDP would be happy to hold this, and any sort of comfortable win would be a reassuring sign of viability in the post-Blaikie era.
