95bFM What the Liberal’s win for Canada means heading forward
1 May 2025
Interview by Caeden Tipler, adapted by Yesenia Pineda
Recently, the Liberal Party won Canada’s 2025 federal election, with Mark Carney elected as the nation’s 25th Prime Minister.
This comes as former Prime Minister and party leader, Justin Trudeau, resigned in January 2025 over growing pressure from his own party. Trudeau’s position was taken over by Carney in March, just before the nation’s federal election.
The Liberal Party gained 169 of the 343 available seats in the House of Commons, just shy of the 172 seats needed for a majority ruling.
As Canada follows a first-past-the-post system for the lower house, this means the Liberal Party will form a minority government and will need to work with other parties to pass key legislation.
Co-organiser of Vote16 Canada and democracy advocate, Aleksi Toiviainen, told 95bFM’s International Desk that this is the most binary parliament the nation has seen in a while.
“I think the last time both the Conservative Party and Liberal Party pulled above 40% in an election was 1930, so in the past century, smaller parties like the New Democrats, the Greens, the Bloc Québécois; Quebec's Separatist Party, have all shared more of the power and shared more of the votes.”
The Green Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party (NDP), and Bloc Québécois have faced losses as voters aimed more towards the major parties.
In 2021, NDP had 24 seats in the House of Commons, with the Green Party having three. Since this year's election results, NDP has dropped to seven seats; losing party status in the process, with the Greens dropping to one seat. Bloc Québécois have lost ten seats since Canada’s 2021 federal election.
Toiviainen says such a binary parliament could potentially exacerbate polarisation in Canada.
“Social science research suggests Canada isn't quite like the US. We're not getting further apart ideologically, but we are getting more efficient; we're doing more sorting into categories and party groups. I think we'll see more of that as a result of this election.”
He says US President, Donald Trump, has impacted how Canadians have decided to vote, especially as the Conservative Party was previously leading in popularity polls.
“Everybody thought this would be a Conservative coronation with Pierre Poilievre, Conservative leader, becoming our new Prime Minister. 25 points ahead with an incredibly effective and persuasive message built around the cost-of-living, the cost of housing, [and] strongly populist rhetoric that led many to compare Pierre Poilievre to Donald Trump.”
However, Toiviainen says this changed as Trump announced he would aim to make Canada the 51st state in the US, and the implementation of tariffs on Canadian exports into the country.
“The Liberal campaign was able to adapt quite quickly and present a message of having the right vision to respond to Trump's threats.”
“Some people were worried about Trump's threats, and as a result, were deciding to make the strategic vote for the Liberals, who they thought had a more stabilising presence and were more likely to assert Canada's sovereignty than Pierre Poilievre, at least.”
Despite losing the majority, the Conservative Party made inroads with younger demographics.
A Nanos poll prior to the election showed 44% of 18 to 34-year-olds preferred the Conservatives as opposed to 31.2% for the Liberals.
Toiviainen says various factors contributed to the increase in support for the Conservatives in younger generations.
“There were a lot of rallies that young people attended and they were so energised by the messaging strategy that the Conservatives took on.”
“[The Conservatives] use[d] YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and all the traditional sites as well to get their message across. They are hitting all the boxes for meeting young people where they are.”
He says more needs to be done for young people to be politically engaged, such as lowering the voting age to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote.
“The median age is creeping ever outwards and youth voter turnout rates remain low pretty much across the board. I think we will see an increase in this election when those age-disaggregated results come in. But even if that does happen, the overall trend has declined.”
“With the combined force of institutional and systemic changes, along with the role of nonprofits and advocates to fill the gaps, I think we'll see a resurgence of youth engagement.”
