Liberal Party’s Anna Gainey wins Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount federal byelection

The Liberals declared victorious once again in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount federal byelection on Monday, maintaining their seat after former Liberal MP Marc Garneau resigned in March.

Anna Gainey elected with 11,034 votes (50.8 per cent). She is a former Liberal party president and former policy adviser to cabinet ministers.

“I’ve been involved for a very long time and now I have the opportunity to truly represent my community. I was born here, I’m raising my family here, I’m at home here, and with Mr. Garneau’s retirement, this is my opportunity to make that leap,” Gainey said.

There was a three-way race for second, with the NDP’s Jean-François Filion receiving 2,995 votes (13.8 per cent) to edge out, Matthew Kaminski with 2,926 votes for the Conservatives (13.5 per cent), and Jonathan Pedneault of the Green Party who garnered 2,898 votes (13.3 per cent). The Bloc’s Laurence Massey in fifth with 985 votes (4.5 per cent).

Voter turnout for the riding was at 29.69 per cent of the 73,152 registered.

It’s an absolute privilege to serve as the Member of Parliament for NDG—Westmount.

Thank you to our relentless volunteers & team for starting thousands of new conversations across our community. I’m excited to get to work! pic.twitter.com/4zdETmTBjn

— Anna Gainey (@annamgainey) June 20, 2023

The Liberals upheld seats in many areas of the riding even before its creation in 2012, having won Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) and Westmount — when it was still part of Saint-Antoine—Westmount until the riding’s dissolution in 1968 — for over six decades.

There were four byelections total held on Monday in Canada – returning seats back to the Liberals and Conservatives in strongholds many observers expected to remain status quo.

The federal Conservatives’ Branden Leslie cruised to victory in the southern Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar over People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier. Leslie captured nearly 65 per cent of the vote. Bernier, whose fledgling party had its best showing yet in the riding during the 2021 federal election, came up short in his effort to regain a seat in the House of Commons, getting only 17.2 per cent of votes.

The race for Winnipeg South Centre saw Ben Carr, son of the late Jim Carr who held the riding for the Liberals and had served in cabinet, easily recapture the seat with a little more than 54 per cent support from voters.

The tightest byelection race was in the rural Ontario Conservative stronghold of Oxford, which elected Arpan Khanna as its new member of Parliament with more than 43 per cent of votes tallied.

However, a stronger-than-usual Liberal vote emerged after controversy erupted when David MacKenzie, the riding’s former Tory MP, announced he was backing the Liberal candidate, following his disapproval of the party’s handling of Khanna, who he said parachuted into the community.

In the 2021 federal election, the Conservatives nabbed about 47 per cent of the vote, compared to the Liberals’ roughly 20 per cent.

-With files from The Canadian Press