Conservatives win HLA, as Liberals earn third term

September 21, 2021

By Nate Smelle

On Sunday, Aug. 15 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered Canada’s 44th federal election when Governor General Mary Simon approved his request to dissolve Parliament. While the Prime Minister’s decision to force an election amid the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn a great deal of criticism from his opponents, on Monday, Sept. 20 Canadians went to the polls to have their voices heard.

At the start of the 36-day campaign the Liberals held 155 seats in the House of Commons. By Tuesday morning the Trudeau and the Liberals had picked up three more seats, earning the opportunity to lead their second consecutive minority government.

Although the Liberals were projected to win by 10:30 p.m. on election night, with thousands of Canadians still waiting to vote an hour and a half after the polls closed across the country the final results of the 2021 federal election did not become available until early Tuesday morning.

Once all the votes were tallied, the Liberals were elected in 158 of the 338 ridings across Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada came in second, earning 119 seats. All in all, the political landscape in Canada looks very similiar to how it did prior to the election. The Bloc Québécois brought home 34 seats; the New Democratic Party earned 25 seats, and the Green Party two. Despite the noise manufactured by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier and his team at the People’s Party of Canada during the campaign, the entire party was shut out, and did not earn a single seat.

Although the local race in Hastings–Lennox and Addington was expected to be a close one, the Conservative Party of Canada’s candidate Shelby Kramp-Neuman won handily, collecting 23,361 votes and 46 per cent of the vote share. The Liberal’s Mike Bossio placed second with 17,372 votes and 34 per cent of the vote in HLA. The NDP’s Matilda DeBues acquired 5,807 votes (11 per cent); the People’s Party of Canada candidate James Babcock gathered 3,042 votes (six per cent); the Green Party’s Reg Wilson ended up with 921 votes (two per cent); and, Independent candidate Jennifer Sloan – wife of HLA’s former Conservative turned Independent MP Derek Sloan – tallied 807 votes (approximately two per cent).

D. Sloan also had a poor showing in Alberta’s riding of Banff-Airdrie earning 1,831 votes (two and a half per cent of the overall vote in the riding); losing to Conservative incumbent MP Blake Richards.

Catching up with HLA’s newly elected Member of Parliament the morning after, Kramp-Neuman told Bancroft This Week she was thrilled by the outcome of the election in the riding. Expressing her gratitude to all those who supported her during the campaign, Kramp-Neuman said, “Wow! What a night! Im thrilled with the results locally in Hasttings Lennox and Addington. Thankyou to all of the voters for their support and confidence in me. To my family … unprecedented support from my family … providing me with the love and flexibility for me to pursue my dream. To my volunteers who gave up so much of their time to make it all possible. There is a big challenge ahead. If we work together respectfully we will stay focused on task at hand. The work starts now – after a wee bit of sleep. Lastly, thankyou to my parents … my mentors. Their strength, wisdom and energy inspire me.”

Check out next week’s edition of The Bancroft Times for a special feature on HLA’s newly elected MP Kramp-Neuman.