Elections in Canada: Greater Toronto Area Gives Liberals Path to Victory in Repeat 2019 | The Canadian News

TORONTO – The Greater Toronto Area has done it again, propelling the Liberals to victory.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals paved a path to their minority victory directly in the Toronto area, as early results showed that their victory was due in large part to a sweep, or near sweep, of the city and much of the region. surrounding.

Ontario’s electoral map changed little since 2019 in the greater Toronto area, showing a red sea, although Davenport switched between the Liberals and the NDP with tiny margins making it too close to call.

“It’s not just Ontario, I think it’s pretty much the whole country, it’s the same electoral map as last time,” said Jonathan Rose, professor of political science at Queen’s University.

“Of course the question arises: well, why do they have the elections? But maybe the goal of the election was some kind of Goldilocks response. Voters weren’t as excited about Justin Trudeau. They weren’t that great on him, but they thought he was fine. It is not a resounding endorsement. “

Genevieve Tellier, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, said it was a “copy and paste choice,” but the Liberals’ $ 10-a-day child care plan was likely a factor in their victories in the GTA, where parents pay some of the highest fees in the country.

“Also, the victory of the Liberals is a blessing for (Prime Minister) Doug Ford: he will be able to negotiate an agreement on the child care service with the federal government, so this will not be a problem for the next provincial elections,” Tellier said. said.

In the 2019 election, Ford became Trudeau’s punching bag, but during this campaign, the prime ministers of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where COVID-19 cases have risen, served as the liberal leader’s conservative ghosts.

Still, Ford’s popularity has fallen since the early months of the pandemic, and Trudeau tried to appeal to voters who would be concerned about the prospect of conservative leaders at both levels.

“None of this happens if Erin O’Toole is sitting across the table from Doug Ford,” Trudeau said multiple times about her child care plan and vaccine policies.

Although much of the province remained in the status quo, there were some notable changes.

Green Party candidate Mike Morrice won the Kitchener Center, where current liberal Raj Saini resigned during the campaign over allegations that he harassed a female employee, he claims he strongly denies.

But Green Party leader Annamie Paul ranked fourth at the Toronto Center, where she spent most of the election campaign.

That leadership was retained by the former liberal broadcaster Marci Ien. In fact, only a handful of constituencies in the province saw incumbents lose their seats.

In the Peterborough-Kawartha baseline, which has rarely bucked the trend to elect a government MP, current liberal Maryam Monsef lost to her conservative rival.

The Conservatives won the race from Thornhill, north of Toronto, but the rest of the GTA electoral map was shown in red from Whitby to Burlington. Elsewhere in the province, the Conservatives won 37 seats, much of their support coming from rural and suburban districts.

Leslyn Lewis, who ran for Conservative leadership last year, won Haldimand-Norfolk, which was vacated after veteran Tory Diane Finley retired.

The Popular Party obtained six percent of the votes, although it did not obtain any seats.

There were reports of long lines at some polling stations, with voters waiting several hours to cast their ballot.

Riley Galapon waited two hours to vote on the Toronto Spadina-Fort York circuit, where in previous elections it took less than 10 minutes.

“I knew there were lineups, but I didn’t expect to be there for two hours,” he said.

There were fewer voting centers open as many schools were not used as polling places due to the pandemic.

Galapon said that she and her fiancé tried to keep busy while waiting in line.

“We broadcast a little bit of the Blue Jays game,” he said. “We talked to a few people in line here and there. Some were really frustrated, while others, like us, weren’t too fussy and just enjoyed being outside. “

Both the Liberals and the NDP had been leading in Spadina-Fort York, even though the Liberals cut ties with their candidate days before the vote after learning that he had previously faced a sexual assault charge that was later dropped. However, that came too late for the ballots to be changed, so Kevin Vuong was still listed as a liberal.

Liberals have said that if he is elected he will not be a member of the Liberal caucus.

Several prominent liberal cabinet ministers in Ontario, such as Chrystia Freeland, Bill Blair and Patty Hajdu, retained their seats.