Embattled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came under even more pressure to resign on Tuesday after his Liberal Party lost a “safe seat” in Montreal to the Bloc Quebecois.
Current polling suggests Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative Party would obliterate the Liberal Party if the election were held today. The Liberals fear a vote of no confidence could knock Trudeau out of office long before the next scheduled election in October 2025.
The Montreal vote was held to replace Liberal Party Minister David Lametti, who won the seat in 2015. Trudeau appointed Lametti federal justice minister and attorney general in 2019, but he lost that position to current Justice Minister Arif Virani in a July 2023 cabinet reshuffle.
Lametti said he was “surprise[d]” to get booted from Trudeau’s cabinet. In January 2024, Lametti announced he would resign his Montreal parliamentary seat “with some sadness,” in part because was still hurt from losing his position as justice minister, and his confidence had been shaken.
The Montreal district of LaSalle-Emard-Verdun was considered one of the safest Liberal seats in the land, handing Trudeau’s party a hefty 20-point victory as recently as 2021. When the last ballots were counted on Tuesday, however, the Liberals lost a tight three-way race to the Block Quebecois, whose candidate, Louis-Philippie Sauve, defeated Liberal Laura Palestini 28 percent to 27.2 percent, with the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) chugging into third place at 26.1 percent.
Montreal delivered the second cataclysmic loss to the Liberals in three months after the astounding victory by Conservative Don Stewart in Toronto. Stewart took a seat that the Liberals held for three decades, prompting a great deal of anxiety that Trudeau had become an albatross for his party.
Trudeau’s defenders argue that both the Toronto and Montreal losses were by very thin margins, with Sauve winning on Tuesday by just 248 votes. Losing races in two of Canada’s largest cities — including Trudeau’s hometown of Montreal — remains a grim omen to many Liberals.
Trudeau has repeatedly insisted he will not resign before the October 2025 election and, on Monday, simply refused to answer questions on the subject, claiming he was eager to clash with Poilievre.
That clash might come sooner than Trudeau and his party would like, as the loss of firm support from their coalition partners in the NDP makes Trudeau vulnerable to a vote of no confidence. The prime minister’s approval rating is currently just 28 percent. Polling shows the Conservatives with 45 percent support to a paltry 25 percent for the Liberals, an almost unprecedented lead in Canada’s multiparty system.
Although the Montreal special election was touted as a referendum on Trudeau and Liberal leadership, the prime minister essentially campaigned in the district with a bag over his head, keeping the media away from his few campaign stops.
Liberal candidate Palestini — whom Trudeau installed after he broke a promise to hold a primary contest for the seat — aggressively distanced herself from the radioactive leader of her party while Bloc Quebecois and NDP leaders energetically campaigned for their own candidates. Even voters in Montreal who professed some residual affection for Trudeau suggested it might be time for him to go after nine years in office.
Canada’s National Post did an electoral tarot reading for Trudeau on Wednesday and pulled nothing but skeletons, noting that every aspect of the Montreal special election was a historic disaster for the Liberals: The first by-election they ever lost to the Bloc Quebecois, the first Montreal by-election loss since 1990, the first time they notched less than five percent in Winnipeg (another election held on the same night), and the second time in 22 years that a cabinet minister’s seat flipped in a by-election — the first one having been the Toronto debacle three months ago.
Poilievre confirmed on Wednesday that he will table a motion of no confidence on Tuesday, with the vote to be held the next day. He asked the NDP and its leader, Jagmeet Singh, to help bring Trudeau’s government down:
Are they going to vote to keep this costly Carbon Tax Prime Minister in power? Are they going to sell out again, or are they going to vote to trigger a carbon tax election so that Canadians can choose to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, and stop the crime?”
In theory, the Liberals should be trying to woo the NDP back into their corner, but when Singh did not immediately reject Poilievre’s offer, many Liberal leaders became apoplectic. Some suggested he was a fool for tearing up his pledge of unconditional support for Trudeau.
“My folks are very disappointed at Jagmeet Singh right now in my community, I can tell you, because we are willing to continue working and putting forward progressive, liberal policies, and he’s backing away just for political reasons,” growled Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi.
