Conservative candidate Don Stewart has won the closely-watched Toronto-St. Paul’s federal byelection, delivering a stunning upset to Justin Trudeau’s candidate Leslie Church, who was fighting to hold the long-time Liberal riding for her party.
After a late night of tallying historically long ballots carried on into the early morning, the stronger early Liberal vote count faded into the Conservatives taking the lead and maintaining it by more than 500 votes by the time all Elections Canada polls had reported.
The news has left the war rooms for both the Conservatives and Liberals in shock. Senior sources from both parties seem to have been surprised by the outcome, and already wheels are turning about what’s next.
According to the preliminary results, Stewart secured 42.1 per cent of the vote with 15,555 votes cast for him, while Church received 40.5 per cent of the vote, with 14,965 ballots cast for her. The NDP candidate Amrit Parhar came a distant third, and Green Party candidate Christian Cullis placed fourth.
Liberal sources speaking to CTV News on Tuesday said that they didn’t think the gap would close as much as it did, but the view that Church was closely tied to a deeply unpopular prime minister was clear at the doors.
The Conservatives did not expect to win, according to the sources CTV News spoke with. Their internals had Stewart winning about 36 or 37 per cent of the vote, with the campaign team hoping for a five-point gap, to be able to make the case that voters sent Trudeau a message.
For several weeks, political pundits and pollsters have speculated that the outcome could be consequential for the political summer ahead, with the consensus being that if Trudeau’s party showed signs of slipping, it could spark a bigger conversation.
Now that it has been confirmed that not only did the Liberal support slip, but the party has lost what has been a textbook definition of a Liberal stronghold for three decades to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, the prime minister is likely to face more tough questions about his future.
When asked what they think this could mean for the question of whether the time has come for Trudeau to step down after 11 years as Liberal leader, early indications from the Liberals CTV News spoke to were that it’s ultimately up to him.
But, as pollster Nik Nanos said on CTV News Channel’s Power Play with Vassy Kapelos on Monday night, a Liberal loss or even a narrow win would be “completely devastating for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and for the Liberal Party of Canada.”
“Because that means that every Liberal riding is in play,” Nanos said. “If the Conservatives can be competitive in downtown Toronto, that means basically, there’s not really a safe seat in the country.”
Reacting early Tuesday, CTV News political commentator Scott Reid said in a post on social media that “this changes everything for the Liberals and for the PM,” echoing Nanos’ analysis about the uncertainty now of other Liberal strongholds.
“I feel sick for Leslie. She poured everything into this, uprooting her life and campaigning endlessly. This isn’t really her loss. But it will still hurt,” Reid said.
Cracking the Liberal fortress
For the Conservatives, cracking Liberal fortress Toronto for the first time since 2011 is a major win, set to only bolster the party’s backing of Poilievre, who has been running double digits ahead of the Liberals in opinion polling for some time.
Heading into election night the Conservatives seemed to be trying to temper electoral expectations, with Poilievre continuing his RV roadtrip through Quebec with his family.
Now, they’re feeling buoyed about the prospect of other safe Liberal seats opening for them, according to the sources CTV News spoke with. There are nearly a handful of other federal byelections that will have to be called in the coming months, including a few seats where other Liberal MPs have vacated ahead of the next general election.
Celebrating the win, Poilievre’s deputy Melissa Lantsman welcomed the party’s newest addition in a coveted area code, who will take his seat in the House of Commons as a member of Parliament in September.
“Congratulations to the team… and to the unwavering leadership of Pierre Poilievre,” Lantsman posted on social media. “Thank you most of all to the voters of Toronto – St. Paul’s.”
Speaking to supporters at his campaign office before midnight, Stewart told his backers to “not give it up,” and “bring it home,” to cheers, according to The Canadian Press.
At the Liberal election-night gathering, Church said her team felt “great about the result,” but noted they were “not quite there yet.”
Stewart has an engineering and business background, and has spent time working on Bay Street, as well as a former associate former associate of top Poilievre adviser Jenni Byrne.
Church previously worked as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s chief of staff. Church has also worked at Google and the University of Toronto, between political staffer positions.
‘Two visions of Canada’
During an event on Monday, Freeland – who represents a neighbouring riding – framed the vote as “a choice between two visions of Canada, two sets of values.”
“I’m really calling on the people of St. Paul’s to go out there and vote for [Church] because the alternative is really cold, and cruel, and small. The alternative is cuts and austerity, not believing in ourselves as a country, not believing in our communities and in our neighbors,” Freeland said.
Conservative sources pointed to Freeland’s comments as the Liberals’ so-called “Hillary moment,” a reference to when former U.S. democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton called her opponent Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.”
Both candidates had help over the last few months from party heavyweights, seeing droves of Liberal ministers and MPs lace up their runners and knock on doors for Church, while Stewart had support from Poilievre and many on his party’s front bench.
As CTV News reported from the riding, growing political discontent with Trudeau and preoccupation over big issues such as affordability, housing and the Israel-Hamas war, played out at the doorsteps.
The riding opened up after Carolyn Bennett stepped down, and has since been appointed as Canada’s ambassador to Denmark.
In her last election in 2021, the margin of victory between Bennett and the runner-up Conservative opponent was considerable, but not as wide as it had been in 2019. Bennett secured the seat with 49.2 per cent of the vote in 2021, with 26,429 of the 53,698 valid ballots cast, while the Conservative candidate took about 25 per cent of the vote.
Byelection turnouts are historically lower than in general elections. In this race, turnout was 43.5 per cent.
With files from CTV News’ Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos