(Ottawa) The loss of the Liberal stronghold of LaSalle–Émard–Verdun does not change anything, Justin Trudeau intends to stay in office and roll up his sleeves in preparation for the next general election. The riding went to the Bloc Québécois in a by-election on Monday.
“Obviously, it’s never fun to come so close and not win a by-election, but we know that we have a lot of work to do to regain the confidence of people in LaSalle and people across the country who are concerned about the situation they find themselves in,” the Prime Minister reacted upon his arrival in Parliament on Tuesday.
“We have a lot of work to do, but I continue to do the work,” he replied when a journalist asked him if this defeat called his leadership into question.
Bloc Québécois member Louis-Philippe Sauvé won this Montreal riding from the Liberals by a margin of 248 votes. A true three-way race emerged during the vote count between the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party.
The young Bloc candidate ended up obtaining 28% of the vote against 27.2% for Liberal Laura Palestini and 26.1% for New Democrat Craig Sauvé.
For comparison, the outgoing MP and former minister, David Lametti, won the last three elections decisively with more than 40% of the vote.
Mr. Trudeau attributed the defeat to the fact that less than half of the electorate turned out to vote. “We still see a certain level of engagement, but there are a lot of people who stayed home,” he noted. “So we are thinking about how we are going to be able to activate people more to understand the extent to which there is an important and fundamental choice to be made in the next election.”
The turnout in this riding was close to 40%, as was the case in the riding of Elmwood-Transcona in Manitoba, where the New Democrats managed to keep their seat, not without a tough battle with the Conservatives.
With Mélanie Marquis, The Press