The Liberals swept a trio of federal byelections on Monday night, adding one more member to the ranks of their majority government and picking up a seat that had been held by the Conservatives since 2018.
The Tories posted a disappointing showing in all three races, but none more than the loss of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, where the party was relegated to a distant third-place finish.
“It’s a great time to be a Liberal in Canada and in Beaches-East York,” MP-elect Tanveer Shahnawaz told supporters in the east Toronto riding late Monday.
The Liberals’ strong showing comes in the shadow of an increasingly tense trade war with the United States.
Carney ended trade talks Aug. 21, pulling the pin on negotiations that appeared close to a deal to lower sectoral tariffs that have caused uncertainty in Canada for over 18 months.
Instead, both sides have pledged tariffs and counter-tariffs. Senior members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have traded barbs in the media with the likes of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and former Quebec premier Jean Charest.
“At this consequential time for Canada, voters have placed their trust in our government’s plan. We accept their support with humility and determination,” Carney said in a statement Monday.
Liberal Tanveer Shahnawaz has won the byelection in the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York.
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Shahnawaz managed the constituency office for former Liberal cabinet minister Nate Erskine-Smith, whose departure from federal politics prompted the vote.
And The Canadian Press is projecting that longtime Liberal political staffer Braeden Caley will win the federal byelection in North-Vancouver Capilano.
Voters in the Saguenay region of Quebec, which includes Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, know all too well the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Aluminum, forestry and dairy farming make up a significant portion of the regional economy.
The Liberals chose Daniel Gobeil, a dairy farmer and a former head of the provincial dairy producers’ association, to carry their banner in the byelection.
Addressing supporters in French late Monday, Gobeil said the government would take care of people in the aluminum and forestry sector, and be a strong voice for supply management.
The Quebec riding last elected a Liberal in 2015. Richard Martel has won four times since a 2018 byelection. The former junior hockey coach won a very close race in the 2025 federal election.
On Monday, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet effectively declared the Tories irrelevant.
Blanchet told supporters of second-place candidate Caroline Dubé that while Canada has a two-party system with the Liberals and Conservatives, “there are two political parties in Quebec: the Liberal Party of Canada and the Bloc Québécois.”
Martel was the fifth Conservative to leave Pierre Poilievre’s caucus since the April 2025 election. Chris d’Entremont, Matt Jeneroux, Michael Ma and Marilyn Gladu all crossed the floor between November 2025 and last April, effectively handing Carney’s Liberals the majority they had been unable to secure the year before.
Martel, also thought to cross to the Liberals, instead accepted a seat in the Senate.
Daniel Béland, a political-science professor at McGill University, said ahead of the byelection that a Liberal victory in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord would be evidence of a “masterful strategy” on the part of Carney’s team to name Martel to the Senate and open up a race in a close riding.
The New Democrats, whose disastrous 2025 election results saw the party lose official party status in the House of Commons, gained some ground in Beaches-East York to finish in second place.
“We’ve proved that the sting of last election was a one-time injury,’ NDP Leader Avi Lewis said in a statement.
“Tonight we more than tripled our vote share from last election, and did better than we have in any election since 2015.”
Still, the NDP was left thousands of votes behind the Liberals.
The east Toronto riding’s new representative, Shahnawaz, was the manager of Nate Erskine-Smith’s constituency office. Erskine-Smith left federal politics to run for the leadership of the provincial Liberals.
That plan was foiled when he failed to secure the party’s nomination.
Unreal how this country is spiraling down hill and yet the Canadians im the big cities cant see past the sidewalk
12 Years with negative results, whatever, keep suffering. Don’t care
I might suggest the largest portion of liberal voters are retires who are sheltered from the bad policies they vote for, because none of the younger people like the liberals or what they did during or since the covid era. These younger people, myself included, do no identify as conservatives, but we already know we cannot carry the weight of the debt, the damage to society, nor the surveillance that this liberal government is pushing for. We can’t even get ahead.
The Liberal brand is really strong right now and voters preferred the Liberal candidates to the others running in these byelections. That’s not giving the finger to the rest of Canada. Far from it. Didn’t Polly run in a safe Conservative riding after failing to win his own riding in the general election? Of course that was after he lost a huge poling lead.
Right wing talking points aren’t the same as sound policy and competency. The provincial and territorial premiers are also standing with the federal government. And that’s across party lines and political philosophies. The right wing fringe movement is very over represented in online comments sections. None of their cheap slogans are catching on with reasonable people.
Purse First continues to try to change the subject offering no context for his references or any reason to think that the Conservatives would handle any of our country’s challenges better than the Liberal government.
Once again the citizens of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver give the middle finger to the rest of Canadians, no surprise there
Anonymous. “This is from early August not the last war”
I named my sources. CD Howe ran that report just today. Its as recent as it gets.
Enjoy the facts that I gave you. Truth taste good when its a belly full of lies
Carney is better at doing what Conservatives want done than they are.
“Canada since Mark Carney became prime minister in 2025, has outperformed everyone in America and also the Eurozone and anywhere in the world.” – Matt Winkler
This is from early August not the last war. You’ll have to search to find out who he is. Global does not like it when you name competitors.
C.D. Howe Institute – June 22, 2026
Canada Ranks Near Bottom of OECD and G7 for Income Growth
C.D. Howe Institute – August 31, 2026
Canada’s Fiscal Room is Shrinking as Government Debt Rises
The Economist – Oct 2024. Canada is poorer than Alabama.
Quote, ‘Were Canada’s ten provinces and three territories an American state, they would have gone from being slightly richer than Montana — America’s ninth poorest state — to being a bit worse off than Alabama, the fourth poorest,”
And that was before tariffs, and 42 percent of our manufacturers considering moving from Canada.
Two tier system for food in future, meat, seafood become luxury food for the few, the other 70% get processed slop
Anonymous “Still 3.3% GDP growth in Q2,”
3.3 percent is nothing to brag about. The average person’s investment portfolio grows at a better rate.
You are quoting one stat, and poorly for that matter. While others are giving you handfuls of stats.
Anonymous “Not second last anymore”
We sure are, and getting worse.
If Polliviere was so bad then why were the 3 first policy announcements made by Carney stolen from Pierre’s platform, during the race to replace Trudeau?
Abolish the Carbon tax, that Carney himself had lobbied for.
Reverse the announced changed to capital gains
And the housing initiative for houses under 1m.
And that was before he stole credit from the late Jim Flaherty for his work in the 2008 recession.
Carney ran on lies and stolen ideas and schmucks lapped it up. Meanwhile we are losing residents and companies in droves.
RIP Canada
@ Trudeau holding her purse – Still 3.3% GDP growth in Q2, Poilievre still -22% net approval, still 3 by-election victories tonight. Maybe Conservatives like you should fix your own flaws instead of fighting yesterday’s battles. Justin has moved on. You folks should too.
Anonymous ‘Ask Trudeau holds the purse if you can use his tissue.”
Well it certainly won’t be a Kleenex brand since they left Canada three years ago due to “unique economic issues”. We lost a tissue company when we have runny noses and colds half the year in Canada.
Cons/bots claiming ‘rigged’ election….gee, where have we all heard that one before, lol!
Lost Liberal Decade
According to Statistics Canada, an estimated 106,134 people emigrated from Canada in 2024, marking the highest annual departure total since 1967.
That new record was broken in 2025.
Kleenex, Lowes, Nordstrom, Disney Store, Hudson Bay, Zellers, Target, all closed shop before any tariffs.
August 07, 2024 Frasier Institute
Corporate head offices are fleeing Canada
KPMG July 2026, 42% of Canadian manufacturing companies have moved to the U.S. or are considering it.
Companies that were stunted before tariffs because Carbon Pricing Carney was advising Trudeau. They turned away Germany and Japan who wanted to buy our LNG. Now Japan buys LNG from the USA, and Carney travels the globe trying to secure deals that just four years ago he turned down.
@ Elbows up boomers – Canadians in 3 ridings gave each of the Liberal candidates over 50% of the votes tonight.
Ask Trudeau holds the purse if you can use his tissue.
By rigged election. Payouts behind closed doors . Nobody wants liberals
@ Trudeau holds the purse – Not second last anymore. Too bad the Conservatives put such limp challengers up against the Liberals during the years you mention. The Liberals were ecstatic when the Conservatives stacked their leadership convention to keep Poilievre. His net favourability is -22%. You have to win seats in Quebec to win a federal election in Canada.
Need a tissue?
Brace yourself for a tweet tantrum from the petulant child tonight, lol!
Putting the 🍊 on notice, lol!!
Sad day for MAGA !!!
Sad day for Canada !!!
Can’t wait till ontario, quebec see 100% unemployment rate, rot in hell!
Anonymous “3.3% GDP growth in Q2. ”
We had nowhere to go but up after the Lost Liberal Decade. “Growth in real GDP per Capita, OCED countries 2015 to 2024” Canada experienced the second-lowest GDP per capita growth in the OECD at 1.7 percent.
Second last from a list of 40 countries
That just proves ya can’t get any dumber than a lib, they’re bottom feeders
@ Katy Perry’s Purse – 3.3% GDP growth in Q2. You detractors liked to point out what is now flat growth in the 2 quarters prior so get used to having these results called up.
Que the incoming garbage from MAGAcons, lol!
We deserve everything we get from our government. Elections have consequences. And people are blinded by this faux patriotism that the LPC is wrapping itself with. People apparently don’t remember when Justin prorogued parliament, for no reason other than to save the LPC from oblivion, and it was Ford as head of the association of premiers as the only person negotiating with the then incoming Trump administration about his intent to tariff the world. We had no federal negotiators. Ministers, the ones who hadn’t announced they weren’t running again, were busy campaigning in their ridings.
A few months earlier to those events the country saw a record 100k people emigrate away from Canada due to the economic impact of the Lost Liberal Decade. Yet parliament was shut and the opposition was not able to question the government.
@Elbows Up – People like the results that Carney is providing so the country is gathering behind him.
Nothing succeeds like success.
These people live hand to mouth so they vote for Carney.
Stupid frogs
Everything coming up Carney!
Do not understand why we nneed elections. Now for 10-15 years it is just like in eastern Europe ,in socialism. Stop wasting money in the name of democracy. We know the winners. If they do not win in a year they cross the floor.