Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party will form a minority government, public broadcaster CBC is projecting, after an election race dominated by concerns over United States President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada.
CBC said on Tuesday afternoon that the Liberals had won enough of the 343 seats in the House of Commons to form a government but would fall short of the 172-seat threshold needed for a majority.
According to the latest projections from Monday’s vote, the Liberals have won 169 seats compared with 144 for the main opposition Conservative Party.
The Liberals’ victory gives them a stunning fourth consecutive mandate after the party had been trailing the Tories by as much as 25-percentage points as recently as January.
But Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian goods coupled with the Republican leader’s repeated threats to make Canada into the US’s “51st state” helped rally many Canadian voters behind Carney and the Liberals.
The resignation of Carney’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also helped the party regain support after facing months of widespread criticism for its handling of a housing crisis and other affordability issues.
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Reporting from Canada’s capital Ottawa on Tuesday, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said many voters had said they “wanted to make sure that they were picking a leader who could combat Trump, the one major threat facing the country”.
“Canadians looked at this election and they saw an existential crisis – that crisis being the fact that 80 percent of their exports go to the United States, their biggest trading partner, and those tariffs were making it hard to do business,” Hendren said.
Carney’s top priority now will be to address the Trump administration’s tariffs, he added.
“And if he can’t do that in short order, his honeymoon might be short-lived,” Hendren said.
In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Carney said he had spoken to Trump and the US president congratulated him on the Liberal victory.
“The leaders agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment. To that end, the leaders agreed to meet in person in the near future,” the statement from Carney’s office read.
With a minority government, the Liberals will need the support of an opposition party to pass legislation and survive no-confidence votes in Parliament.
The left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), which had until late last year been propping up the Trudeau government, appears poised to play that role.
The NDP is projected to have secured seven seats in Monday’s election, according to CBC’s tally – enough to push the Liberals past the 172 threshold needed in the House of Commons.
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During his victory speech after Monday’s vote, Carney had urged Canadians to remain united in the face of Trump’s threats.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” he said. “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us; that will never … ever happen.”
Meanwhile, the head of the opposition Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, congratulated Carney on his victory and said his party would “do our job to hold the government to account”.
Poilievre, who is projected to lose his seat in Ottawa, had been widely expected to be Canada’s next prime minister before Trump’s threats and the Liberal Party leadership shakeup upended the race.
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