Trudeau Faces Mounting Pressure To Resign After Montreal Defeat

(Bloomberg) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suffered a major political setback after his Liberal Party lost a by-election in a Montreal district that until recently was considered safe territory for him.

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The defeat increases pressure on the 52-year-old leader to step down before the next election, which is scheduled for October 2025 but could be held earlier.

It is the second major defeat at the ballot box in just a few months for his party. In June, voters chose a Conservative candidate to represent an area of Toronto that had previously been a Liberal stronghold. Now they have rejected the Liberals again in the LaSalle-Emard-Verdun constituency in Montreal, Trudeau’s hometown.

The losses in the country’s two largest cities are a clear sign of doom for the prime minister, whose political base is heavily concentrated in urban centres.

The by-election was won by Louis-Philippe Sauve of Bloc Quebecois, a political party that represents Quebec’s interests in Ottawa and only runs candidates in that province.

Like the Toronto special election just over two months ago, this one was a close one, with Sauve winning by just 248 votes, according to preliminary results released by Elections Canada. He finished with 28%, compared to Liberal candidate Laura Palestini’s 27.2%. New Democratic Party candidate Craig Sauve got 26.1%.

In 2021, the Liberals won LaSalle-Emard-Verdun with a handshake, with a lead of more than 20 percentage points over the Bloc Quebecois. The seat became vacant when former Justice Minister David Lametti, who had been ousted from Trudeau’s cabinet, decided to leave politics.

With Trudeau out of favor with voters, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have seized the momentum in national polls. Most surveys over the past year have shown the Conservatives leading by a wide margin — as much as 20 percentage points — which would give Poilievre a large majority government if allowed to go to election day.

But so far, there’s no sign that Trudeau plans to step down. The prime minister appears to have the support of a majority of his 154-member party, and ahead of Monday’s by-elections he brushed aside repeated questions about leaving office, insisting he’s eager to take on Poilievre in a national contest.

–With assistance from Brian Platt.

(Updated with preliminary vote count in sixth paragraph.)