Justin Trudeau, the embattled Canadian prime minister, looks likely to head a minority government, following elections on Monday.
Trudeau’s party, the Liberals, won 157 seats in this week’s election – 170 seats are needed for a majority in Canada’s House of Commons. This represented a decline of 27 seats from the 184 in the previous Canadian election. The Conservative Party, led by Andrew Scheer, won 121 seats, up from 95.
Other parties to win seats in Canada’s first-past-the-post parliament ballot were the Bloc Québécois, which won 32 seats, the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) with 24, and the Greens, three seats. An independent also won a seat
The Conservatives actually emerged as the most popular party in the country with 34.4% of the vote, compared to the Liberals’ 33.1%, but, because of the vagaries of the Canadian electoral system, Trudeau’s party still emerged as the largest.
The NDP is likely to support Trudeau’s government and allow him to continue as prime minister.
Trudeau, whose father, Pierre, was also prime minister, has faced a number of scandals of late. Photographs emerged of him as a young man in ‘blackface’, leading to accusations of racism. Trudeau had also been found to have improperly influenced the Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould in intervening in a criminal matter against a Quebec-based construction company. Wilson-Raybould resigned over the matter and was subsequently expelled from the Liberal Party. However, she ran as an independent in her constituency and was subsequently re-elected to the House of Commons.