How Justin Trudeau's Liberal majority swept across Canada
Canadians swing from Harper's 'strong, stable' Conservative majority to a truly national Liberal one
The Liberal Party sent to the woodshed in 2006and told, decisively,to stay there in 2008 and 2011 has been welcomed back to the government side of the House of Commons.
Not just conditionally invited, but embraced, with a bigger, broader majority than pollsters or even themost optimistic Liberal strategistspredicted.
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Surprising as it might have seemed at first, the majority streamedin from both old and new directions on Monday night,built on foundations from governmentspast, butsupported with fresh seats from places unaccustomedto voting for Trudeau's party in recent memory.
No worries aboutbuilding a properly representative national cabinet for this new prime minister: every province and all three territories are sendingat least oneLiberalto the 42nd Parliament.
Atlantic Canada sweep
The flood of red seatsrose first in the East, a region pollsters had predicted would favour the Liberals, but not in this magnitude. Only Liberals were left standing.
Outgoing cabinet minister Peter MacKay's Central Nova riding went Liberal by the kind of margin MacKay used to enjoy as a Conservative. He called it a "sea of change."
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"We're used to high tides here in Atlantic Canada. This is not what we had hoped for at all," MacKaysaid on the CBC News election special. "People were looking for something different."
Lost in the tide wereNDP team anchorslike Nova Scotia's Megan Leslie, the party's deputy leader,and Peter Stoffer, viewedas one of the most popular, constituency-first MPs on the Hill.
Butwhen even faithful New Brunswick Conservative seats turned red, thehints of broad change truly materialized.
"When people wanted to change the Harper government in Atlantic Canada they saw a dynamic, new-generation leader with new ideas, who was positive," said Liberal Dominic LeBlanc, a longtime family friend of Trudeau's dating back to their fathers' political careers, andlikely to be a senior New Brunswick cabinet minister.
Francophone Quebec returns
Liberals breezed to victory on their traditionallyfriendly turf on the Island of Montreal, even giving NDP Leader Tom Mulcair a bit of ascare in Outremont earlier in the evening.
But perhaps the most extraordinary story of the Trudeau majority is a return to the kind of support his father Pierre used to pull in Quebec. Francophones, always an integral part of a credible national government, have, if not forgotten, then at least forgiven past Liberal sins. Compared with the 2015 alternatives, they've decided to sign back on.
The much-discussed three- and four-way races anticipatedin Quebec appeared to break often in the Liberals' favour, with 40seats in total, more than three-quarters of which represented gains much more support than the party enjoyed during its previous Liberal governments under Jean Chrtien in the '90s, when the Bloc Qubcois held a lock on the vast majority of francophone seats.
The BQ staged a modestbut incomplete comeback: its 10 seats going forward are more than its four after 2011, and two at dissolution, but leader Gilles Duceppe's personal comeback failed in his downtown Montreal riding, and the party still won't have official party status in the Commons.
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The New Democrats' orange wave of 2011 which came at the expense of the BQcrashed across Quebecin 2015, with all but 16of the 58 seats won thenslipping from their hands.
Former leader and party elder Stephen Lewis said he thought the niqab controversy did real damage in Quebec.
"It's a testament to Tom Mulcair, he didn't move, he showed he had real integrity and principle, but somewhere, somewhere, we went slightly off the rails," Lewis said.
On a rough night elsewhere in Canada, the Conservative campaign's relative emphasis on the ridings around Quebec City earned it modest success, with its best-ever finish during Stephen Harper's tenure: 12 seats.
FortressOntario's red bricks
Jean Chrtien'smajority governments in the '90s were built around Ontario most famously, his 101-seat-strong Ontario caucus after the 1997 vote.
Pollsters forecasta strong performance and the Ontario returns did not disappoint: 80seats at the end of the night, in comparison with the Conservatives' 33 and the NDP'seight.
Trudeau's caucus is not only urban and stretches far beyond Toronto although as expected, the Greater Toronto Area did overwhelmingly swing toLiberal candidates, at the expense of Tory cabinet ministers like Joe Oliver and Julian Fantino.
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Former finance minister Jim Flaherty's Whitby seat also switched sides.
NDP veterans like Peggy Nash andOlivia Chow failed to buckthe currentof progressive voters decamping en masse.
Northern and eastern Ontario seats, including many in Ottawa, turned Liberal, as did a handful of urban seats in 519 centres like London and Kitchener-Waterloo.
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"They have received a clear mandate to govern from the people of Canada," said Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, whopersonally endorsedTrudeau and is expected to benefit politically from the federal party's electionin key areas like pension reform.
"I look forward to working in co-operation with our new federal partner," Wynne said in a statement, as Trudeau's seat count exceeded her provincial majority tally from 2014.
Winnipeg, Calgary breakthroughs
While rural seats across the Prairies remained elusive for the Liberals, the futurecabinet will not be built without the West.
The city of Winnipeg marched decisively into the fold, contributing six urban seats to a Prairie caucus with close to the number of MPs from the West his father enjoyed when Justin was born in the early '70s.
Saskatchewan's Ralph Goodale, a former finance minister likely to return to the Commons front row, remains a lone strawberry in the blueberry patch of Saskatchewan's seat count, although the NDP had small breakthroughs in Saskatoon West and the province's northernseat.
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Highly symbolic victories in urban Alberta also boost the regional credibility of Trudeau's future government.
The large rallies in Edmonton and Calgary in the campaign's dying days are now explained: not only Anne McLellan's former seat in downtown Edmonton and a second, latesqueaker of a win in Edmonton Mill Woods, but also two (nearly three)ridings in Calgary have broken thestereotype and parted from the Conservatives.
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Helped by Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi's enthusiasm for positive, inclusive politics, the Liberals found the progressive, urban Albertan audience they always hoped lay dormant through their long exile from Canada's energy heartland.
Greater Vancouver'sfinal wave
Trudeau may feel a sense of personal pride at having his party now represent once morehis maternal grandfather JimmySinclair's seat of North Vancouver, the site of his final rally and the place he calls his "second home."
Eighteen seats in B.C., coveringplenty of new ground inGreater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, sealed the deal for his majority.
Andup the Fraser Canyon and skipping over to Kelowna, rookie Liberals are heading to Ottawa.
Only on Vancouver Island where a NDP sweepwas avertedonly by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May's seat were the Liberalsthwarted.
Nevertheless, B.C. divided its loyalties across all threemainfederal parties, with the Conservatives retaining some strength in the centre and north of the province.
But by the end of the night,Conservative strength in Greater Vancouver hadslipped over the horizon, with only a couple ofsuburban seats spared in the sunset's red glow.
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