ELECTION 2025: Conservative Zimmer holds Northern BC; party leader not so lucky
Incumbent Conservative Party of Canada candidate Bob Zimmer was re-elected on April 28 as the MP for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, after receiving 71 percent of the votes. The Liberal Party of Canada candidate, Peter Njenga, took second place with just 18.8 percent of the votes, while the NDP’s Cory Grizz Longley rounded out the top three with six percent of the votes.
At the time of writing, votes were still being counted in Carleton, the riding of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who was trailing his Liberal opponent, Bruce Fanjoy by 3,076 votes.
Carleton had the distinction of seeing 91 candidates running in the riding during this election.
Of those candidates, all but six of the candidates listed on the ballot were part of the Longest Ballot initiative, a tactic created to protest the first-past-the-post system currently used and highlight their belief in a need for electoral reform.
This led to the ballot in Poilievre’s riding being almost a metre long. The group had planned to do the same thing in Prime Minister-elect Mark Carney’s riding of Nepean as well, but according to an article in the Ottawa Citizen, were unable to collect enough signatures in time.
Meanwhile, in British Columbia, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh came in third in his Burnaby riding and subsequently resigned the leadership of the party, which by the end of the night had been reduced to a mere 7 seats, and losing official party status.
The Green Party faced a similar fate, with its seats cut in half, leaving party leader Elizabeth May the sole Green in parliament, as the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
On Tuesday morning, Canadians woke up to a minority Liberal government with a Prime Minister who finally has a seat in parliament. Although the Conservatives remain the Official Opposition, the party made great gains on Monday night, picking up 25 more seats than they previously held.
Now, we wait for an interim NDP leader to be appointed so Singh can officially step down and wait to see what Poilievre and the Conservatives do about their seat-less leader.