Closing summary...
It has just gone 10.25am in Ottawa, Canada. Here is a roundup of the momentous results in Canada’s consequential federal election:
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals have staged a major political comeback to retain power in the parliamentary elections.
The polls are still being counted. But as things stand the Liberals are leading with 168 seats. They need 172 for a majority. If the party falls short of the magic number it would need the support of political rivals to govern as a minority government.
The Conservatives will likely remain in opposition as the second-largest party. The party have currently secured 144 seats, with 99% of polls having reported results.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost in Carleton, Ontario, a seat he had held for two decades, to a Liberal candidate. “Conservatives will work with the prime minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal that puts these tariffs behind us while protecting our sovereignty,” Poilievre told his supporters in a concession speech in Ottawa.
Even though he has lost his seat in the House of Commons, Poilievre remains the de facto Conservative leader for now.
The two main parties – Liberals and the Conservatives - saw a rise in their share of the national vote compared with four years ago as the smaller parties (Bloc Québécois, the New Democratic Party, the Green party and the People’s Party) got squeezed out.
In his victory speech, Carney said Donald Trump is “trying to break us so that America can own us” and vowed that his new government would not let that happen.
Carney, the former Bank of England governor who replaced Justin Trudeau as prime minister just last month, convinced voters that his experience managing economic crises made him the ideal candidate to defy Trump.
The left-leaning New Democratic party saw many of its supporters defect to Carney, and fell from 24 seats to fewer than 10; its leader, Jagmeet Singh, announced his resignation after being pushed into third place in his own seat. The separatist Bloc Québécois also saw its support collapse, falling from 32 seats to a projected 23 (you can read more in this summary of the election’s results).
Thanks for joining us. We are closing this blog now but will be restarting a new one shortly. You can find all our latest coverage on Canada here.
Updated
While campaigning, Mark Carney vowed that every dollar the government collects from counter-tariffs on US goods will go toward Canadian workers who are adversely affected by the trade war.
He also said he plans to keep dental care in place, offer a middle-class tax cut, return immigration to sustainable levels and increase funding to Canada’s public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
