Zimpapers Logo

Justin Trudeau

Montreal — Canada’s Liberal Party beat the incumbent Conservatives of Stephen Harper, election results showed on Tuesday.

“The Canadians have chosen change — real change,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, the eldest son of former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, told his supporters at a rally broadcast live by several television channels.

The Liberals had 173 confirmed seats, and were leading in another 11, giving them a likely total of 184, comfortably above the 170 needed for a majority, CBC reported online.

Some pollsters had predicted they would fall short and need to form a coalition.

The Conservatives were second with 94 confirmed, and leading in another 8 for a total of 102 seats. Harper resigned as party leader but kept his own seat.

A jubilant crowd at the Liberal Party election headquarters at Montreal’s Montreal’l Fairmount Queen Elizabeth Hotel, famous for John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s Bed-in for Peace in 1969, cheered as CTV News, CBC and Global called in the Liberal victory.

A third contender, The New Democratic Party (NDP) had been expected to challenge the traditional dominance of the Conservatives and the Liberals, but ended up with 31 confirmed and another 11 predicted seats, for a predicted total of just 42. About 25 million voters were eligible to cast their ballots across the six time zones from Halifax to Vancouver.

The leftist NDP, under leader Tom Mulcair, had won many seats off the Liberals in 2011, notably in the French-speaking province of Quebec, to become the official opposition in the House of Commons.

Trudeau, 43, has promised to run three consecutive deficits of a “modest” 10 billion Canadian dollars a year to kick-start the sputtering economy.

Harper campaigned on a traditional Conservative platform of balancing the budget, tax cuts for the middle class and security both at home and internationally.

It has been a difficult slog for the 56-year-old Conservative leader, whose 10-year stint as prime minister coincided with the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression and led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Even more troubling for Harper, whose political support is based in oil- and gas-rich Western Canada, has been the steep decline in oil prices and other commodities that were fuelling Canada’s growth until recently.

Mulcair, 60, had promised “true change,” including a national childcare system, investment in public transport, education and Aboriginal communities, and pulling out of military engagement against the Islamic State group.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama on Tuesday called Trudeau to congratulate him on his election victory, the White House say, with both men vowing closer cooperation on trade and climate change.

Obama and the youthful Liberal leader “agreed on the importance of deepening the already strong United States-Canada relationship,” White House officials said.

“They committed to work together to achieve an ambitious and durable global climate agreement in Paris in December.

“The president wished the prime minister-designate well and noted that he looks forward to meeting with him in the near future.”

The White House had been frustrated by the climate skepticism of outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who also lobbied strongly for the transborder Keystone pipeline.

Earlier, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Canada had made “a substantial and important commitment in advance of the Paris climate talks,” adding however, “we believe that it’s possible that there is more that Canada can do in this regard.” — AFP