2021 Canadian federal election

The table below lists parties represented and seats held in the House of Commons after the 2019 federal election, at dissolution, and after the 2021 federal election. An expected by-election in Haldimand—Norfolk to fill the vacant seat was rendered moot by the commencement of the general election.

A polling station on election day

Below are the 31 MPs who chose not to run in the 2021 federal election.

One MP was not renominated by his party:

• November 4, 2019: Elizabeth May resigns as leader of the Green Party of Canada, triggering a leadership election scheduled for October 2020.
• December 12, 2019: Andrew Scheer announces his intention to step down as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, triggering a leadership election scheduled for August 2020.

• August 23–24, 2020: Erin O'Toole is elected leader of the Conservative Party.
• October 3, 2020: Annamie Paul is elected leader of the Green Party.

• August 15, 2021: Parliament is dissolved and writs of election are dropped.[72]
• September 2, 2021: 1st French language leaders' debate, organized by TVA Nouvelles.
• September 8, 2021: 2nd French language leaders' debate, organized by the Leaders' Debate Commission.
• September 9, 2021: English language leaders' debate, organized by the Leaders' Debate Commission.
• September 10–13, 2021: Advance polling.
• September 14, 2021: Last day to apply online for mail-in voting. Last day to vote by Special Ballot at a Returning Office.
• September 20, 2021: Election Day.

Election signs on the street in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie

The election call occurred at the same time as the fall of Kabul, on August 15.[92] Trudeau thus received criticism for not acting fast enough in the face of the 2021 Taliban offensive to evacuate Canadians from Afghanistan, as well as Afghans who supported Canada's military and diplomatic efforts during the War.[93]

Criticism of Trudeau's decision to call an early election, particularly amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, was a major theme of his opponents' campaigns, and commentators noted a lack of support for a snap election amongst the public.[94][95][96]

The beginning of the campaign proved difficult for the Liberals, who slightly fell behind the Conservatives in the polls of voting intentions.[93] The Conservative released their platform on the second day of the campaign. The party tried to change its image with this document by putting more focus on the environment, mental health, and LGBTQ+ rights issues.[97] Meanwhile, Trudeau attacked the new Conservative leader Erin O'Toole on the topics of compulsory vaccination for federal officials, abortion and the privatization of health care.[98]

On August 25, Minister for Women and Gender Equality Maryam Monsef referred to the Taliban as "our brothers". Many on social media shared the video of this statement, and saw this as an indication that she felt sympathetic to the terrorist group. Monsef said that this was false, and further stated that she only chose those words because Muslims tend to refer to each other as "brothers".[99]

On August 27, 2021, Trudeau was forced to cancel a campaign rally set for Bolton, Ontario, over security concerns arising from groups of protestors yelling obscenities at Trudeau. There were previous incidents of protesters showing up at his rallies criticizing COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures.[100]

Foreign policy debates focused on China and the situation in Afghanistan. For Afghanistan, discussions focused on ways to mitigate the immediate humanitarian crisis facing the country.[101][102] The group Canadian Campaign for Afghan Peace launched an open letter on August 17 calling on political parties to take position of the new situation in Afghanistan.[103]

The campaign took place during the extradition case of Meng Wanzhou, which had exacerbated tensions between Canada and China. O'Toole accused Trudeau of being "weak on China", and promised to scale up Canada's hostility towards the country if elected.[104][105]

According to Shadwick Martin, the tendency to relegate defence and foreign policy to minor appearances continued in 2021. He argues that the Liberals did not deviate from their government's existing foreign policy, while the Conservatives produced a lengthy list of reforms that one commentator described as "scattered and unfocused". The NDP's propositions were essentially unchanged from 2019.[106]

As in 2019, Climate change was a major issue in the campaign. In March 2021, Conservative leader O'Toole announced a carbon pricing plan to replace the current Liberal carbon tax, despite previous Conservative opposition to any form of a carbon tax.[107] There was thus a broad consensus among all represented parties for policies to mitigate climate change, although they differed in the emissions targets, the level of the carbon tax, and the transition path to a clean economy. Only the People's Party opposed all climate change policies and vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.[108]

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major campaign issue. The Liberal party sought to defend its pandemic response, while trying to tie Erin O'Toole to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. O'Toole always sidestepped questions about his previous support for Kenney's pandemic response by saying he would work with any premier to face the pandemic regardless of their political stripes.[109] During the campaign, Alberta was experiencing its worst wave of the pandemic in terms of hospitalisations.[110]

Meanwhile other parties explained what they would have done differently had they been in a similar situation. The Bloc Québecois criticized the amount of money invested in Federal aid for workers, especially the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).[111] The NDP, on the other hand, criticized the government's "aggressive" crackdown on possibly fraudulent CERB claims, while calling for clawing back wage subsidy payments to companies who fired their workers while received this benefit.[112] The People's Party was the only party opposing vaccine passports, mask mandates and lockdowns.[113][114]

In September 2021, O'Toole changed his position on gun control. Reverting from his initial promise of repealing Prime Minister Trudeau's May 2020 ban on assault weapons, he changed his stance on the issue, promising that he would not repeal the ban.[115] Political commentators and analysts described O'Toole's leadership as shifting the Conservative Party to the political centre.[116]

The Green Party of Canada experienced a period of infighting beginning in June 2021, when Jenica Atwin, one of its three MPs, crossed the floor to join the Liberal Party over a dispute regarding the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis.[117] Although there were calls for the party leader Annamie Paul to resign, she stayed on as leader through the federal election. She spent the majority of the election campaigning in her chosen riding of Toronto Centre, but failed to win the seat.[118]

The campaign was also marked by a rise in support for the People's Party of Canada. Before the election, Mainstreet Research gave the party more than 8 per cent of the vote,[119] and Abacus Data noted particularly high scores among Canadians under the age of 60.[120] Justin Trudeau and Yves-François Blanchet indirectly accused the Conservatives for the rise of the PPC, with Trudeau notably criticizing Erin O'Toole for not requiring his party's candidates to be vaccinated.[121]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer provides a service to all parties for evaluating the financial impact of any of their proposals, but does not release details until the requesting party has done so as well.[132] After the election, the PBO revealed that 130 requests had been received from all parties, of which only 72 were made public.[133][134] It did release a report outlining various baselines that were used in its costing exercises.[135]

The Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa tested the Liberal, Conservative and NDP platforms for fiscal credibility, and assigned the following ratings:[136]

IFSD party platform rankings, 2021 (Good = Y, Pass = Y, Fail = N)

Party	Overall score	Realistic economic and fiscal assumptions	Responsible fiscal management	Transparency
█ Liberal	Y	Y	Y	Y
█ Conservative	Y	Y	N	Y
█ New Democratic	Y	Y	Y	N

In June 2020, the Leaders' Debates Commission released its report reviewing the 2019 election debates and making recommendations for future debates.[137][138] The report recommended a permanent and publicly funded commission be tasked with organizing two debates for every federal election. It also called for the commission, not the government, to set the criteria for participation in future election debates.[137][138]

The English-language debate gained notoriety when the moderator posed a question to Blanchet that characterized Quebec's law on secularism as "discriminatory". He challenged her use of that word, and the response was seen as a turning point in the Bloc's campaign, which saw an upsurge in the polls after the debate.[139]

On August 29, Ici Radio-Canada Télé hosted a special broadcast consisting of a series of solo interviews with each leader in turn, with questions posed by Patrice Roy, Céline Galipeau and Anne-Marie Dussault. This format was not attempted by any of the other broadcasters.[144]

The Liberals maintained their status as largest party in the House of Commons. The results were very close to those of the 2019 federal election.[5]

Summary of the 2021 Canadian federal election

Party		Party leader	Candidates	Seats					Popular vote
				2019	Dissol.	2021	Change from 2019	% seats	Votes	Vote change	%	pp change	% where running
	Liberal	Justin Trudeau	338[lower-alpha 5]	157	155	160[lower-alpha 6]	3	47.34%	5,556,629	462,099	32.62%	0.50pp	32.62%
	Conservative	Erin O'Toole	337[lower-alpha 7]	121	119	119	2	35.21%	5,747,410	491,817	33.74%	0.60pp	33.83%
	Bloc Québécois	Yves-François Blanchet	78	32	32	32		9.47%	1,301,615	85,415	7.64%	0.01pp	32.11%
	New Democratic	Jagmeet Singh	338[lower-alpha 8]	24	24	25	1	7.40%	3,036,348	132,626	17.82%	1.84pp	17.82%
	Green	Annamie Paul	252[lower-alpha 9]	3	2	2	1	0.59%	396,988	792,619	2.33%	4.22pp	3.07%
	People's	Maxime Bernier	312	–	–	–			840,993	546,901	4.94%	3.32pp	5.31%
	Free	Michel Leclerc	59	—	–	–			47,252	—	0.28%	—	1.49%
	Maverick	Jay D. Hill (interim)	29	—	–	–			35,178	—	0.21%	—	2.30%
	Independent and No Affiliation		91	1	5	–	1		32,481	41,810	0.19%	0.22pp	0.69%
	Christian Heritage	Rodney L. Taylor	25	–	–	–			8,985	9,916	0.05%	0.05pp	0.67%
	Rhinoceros	Sébastien CoRhino	27	–	–	–			6,085	3,453	0.04%	0.01pp	0.41%
	Libertarian	Jacques Boudreau	13	–	–	–			4,765	3,602	0.03%	0.02pp	0.71%
	Communist	Elizabeth Rowley	26	–	–	–			4,700	795	0.03%	0.01pp	0.36%
	Marxist–Leninist	Anna Di Carlo	36	–	–	–			4,532	408	0.03%	0.01pp	0.26%
	Pour l'Indépendance du Québec (D)	Michel Blondin	10	–	–	–			2,934	881	0.02%		0.51%
	Animal Protection	Liz White	10	–	–	–			2,546	1,862	0.01%	0.01pp	0.48%
	Marijuana	Blair T. Longley	9	–	–	–			2,031	1,111	0.01%		0.42%
	Veterans Coalition	Randy David Joy	7	–	–	–			1,246	5,054	0.01%	0.02pp	0.30%
	Centrist	A.Q. Rana	4	—	–	–			648	—	0.00%	—	0.40%
	National Citizens Alliance	Stephen J. Garvey	4	–	–	–			476	34	0.00%		0.22%
	Patriote (D)	Carl Brochu	2	—	–	–			244	—	0.00%	—	0.21%
	Canada's Fourth Front	Partap Dua	2	–	–	–			105	577	0.00%		0.09%
	Canadian Nationalist (D)	Gus Stefanis	1	–	–	–			52	229	0.00%		0.14%
	Vacant				1	—
Total valid votes									17,034,243	1,136,637	100.00%	–	–
Total rejected ballots									175,568	3,697	1.02%	0.04pp	–
Total			2,010	338	338	338	–	100.00%	17,209,811	1,140,334	100.00%	–	100.00%
Electorate/turnout									27,366,297	6,761	62.89%	4.14pp	–
Source: House of Commons,[152] validated and judicial recount results;[153] full results spreadsheet[154] (D) indicates a party deregistered before the next election

In a federal election, a judicial recount is automatically ordered in a riding where the margin of victory is less than 0.1 per cent (one one-thousandth) of the votes cast. In cases where there is a larger but still narrow margin of victory, an elector can request a judicial recount. While no validated results triggered an automatic recount in this election, judicial recounts were requested in four ridings: Brome—Missisquoi, Davenport, Châteauguay—Lacolle and Trois-Rivières. Only Châteauguay—Lacolle saw its initial result overturned: the recount had Liberal incumbent MP Brenda Shanahan proclaimed the ultimate winner over Bloc candidate Patrick O'Hara, by a margin of only 12 votes.[156] It was the first time validated results were reversed by a judicial recount since the 2008 election.[157] Recounts in Brome—Missiquoi and Davenport began on October 12; however, in both ridings the early count appeared to confirm the initial validated results, leading both challengers to concede defeat and the recount to be terminated.[158][159]

Initially, the preliminary results of Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley in the province of Manitoba were so close that the Liberal former MP Doug Eyolfson had just 24 votes less than the Conservative incumbent MP Marty Morantz, and that margin would trigger an automatic recount.[167] On September 28, Eyolfson conceded after the validated results had widened the gap to 460 votes, which is approximately 1 per cent of the total vote.[168]

Incumbents are denoted in bold and followed by (I).

Several factors were quickly identified as having had a significant influence on the results. Some political scientists and commentators debated whether the PPC's better performance, compared to the 2019 federal election, contributed to the Conservatives under Erin O'Toole losing to the Liberals. Mainstreet Research CEO Quito Maggi and University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman posited that the PPC may have cost the Conservatives at least ten ridings.[170][171][172] The votes obtained by PPC candidates were larger than the margin of victory in 21 ridings, where the Conservative candidate was in second place (12 in Ontario, five in BC, two in Alberta, one in Quebec and one in Newfoundland). Of those seats, 14 went to the Liberals, six to the NDP, and one to the Bloc; however, it has been described as not a simple generalization, as a significant amount of PPC support arose from non-Conservative voters.[173]

Important vote swings to the Liberals were also noted in ridings with significant Chinese-Canadian populations, with especially large ones arising in Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill and Richmond Centre.[174] This was predicted early on in the campaign in polling by Mainstreet Research, which observed that they "were not supporting Conservative candidates in the same way they did in the last couple of elections."[174] While some commentators believed that this may have arisen because of the manner the Tories were handling China-Canada issues,[174] others wondered whether the abnormally large changes were due to disinformation activity occurring in the local Chinese-language media.[175][176]

Even before the mail-in ballots were counted, the Liberals were projected as leading in 158 seats despite seeing their vote share fall from 33.1 per cent to 32.3 per cent. Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Trudeau, praised the result as a "smart campaign" that prioritized "vote efficiency"; this view was criticized as detracting from other essential aspects of an election campaign.[177] Other commentators questioned whether the Liberal vote has reached its effective limit, commenting that minority governments have occurred with greater frequency since the Unite the Right movement and the formation of the Conservative Party in 2003.[178]

Had he not been ousted by his caucus, O'Toole would have faced a mandatory leadership review at the next Conservative national conference in 2023. A member of the national council quickly called for a petition to accelerate the process.[179] Other Conservatives urged continued support of O'Toole, and called for the party to unify around him.[180] Most party and caucus members seemed to have appeared to favour a post-mortem review along the lines conducted by the party after the 2004 federal election.[181]

The Green Party saw its share of the vote collapse to 2.3 per cent, its lowest level since the 2000 federal election. Internal dissension and poor morale contributed to the decline, and Elizabeth May has called for an inquiry to determine the underlying reasons for it.[182] Paul announced her resignation as party leader on September 27.[183]

Commentators at The Conversation noted that for a second election in a row the Liberals won the greatest number of seats but lost the popular vote to the Conservatives under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system.[184] During the campaign, Trudeau said he remains open to getting rid of Canada's FPTP if re-elected, provided there is consensus on the issue; he also expressed his preference for ranked voting over proportional representation. Trudeau had promised during the 2015 campaign that the 2015 federal election would be the last federal election to use FPTP.[185][184]

Forty-nine MPs were elected for the first time, and two more (Randy Boissonnault and John Aldag) returned after having been defeated in 2019. The number of female MPs—103, up from 100 in 2019—is a record high for the House, and 22 of the first-time MPs are women.[186]

Kevin Vuong, whose candidacy was disavowed by the Liberals after nominations had closed, still won the riding of Spadina—Fort York. Vuong announced that he would take his seat as an independent upon being sworn in.[187] Adam Vaughan, the previous incumbent, called on Vuong to resign as his victory was "compromised".[188] In a radio interview in November, Vuong apologized to his supporters, and he later said, "Of the many, many people who have reached out since my interview, they've encouraged me to move forward. And that's what I'm going to be doing."[189]

George Chahal, elected in Calgary Skyview, was the subject of several complaints concerning the removal of campaign flyers of another candidate, substituting them with his own. In January 2022, he accepted and paid a $500 administrative monetary penalty assessed by the Commissioner of Canada Elections in the matter,[190] saying, "It's just a late night on an election campaign. Call it a dumb mistake or brain fog—it really doesn't matter why I did what I did. I think what matters is I did it. And I acknowledged it fully, openly, publicly."[191]

A year following the election, Conservative Party politicians including former leader Erin O'Toole blamed Chinese government interference as a factor behind the loss for the party. In a 2022 interview on the UnCommons podcast with Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, O'Toole opined that media outfits linked to the Chinese Communist Party could have cost the Conservatives up to "eight or nine seats.".[192]

O'Toole's beliefs were supported by Conservative MP and foreign affairs critic Michael Chong who stated that while the party was initially hesitant to blame China for influencing the vote due to inconclusive evidence at the time, he now believed "The communist leadership in Beijing did interfere in the last federal election by spreading disinformation through proxies on Chinese-language social media platforms that contributed to the defeat of a number of Conservative MPs" citing a report by McGill University. Similar views were shared by O'Toole's director of parliamentary affairs Mitch Heimpel who claimed Canadian national security officers had contacted the Conservatives around election day to express concerns about potential foreign interference. Heimpel also cited the example of former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu who had been targeted by a misinformation campaign by the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Research into alleged electoral interference by McGill University indicated that there was no specific riding specific data to draw a full conclusion on the impact of potential interference and noted "Canadian-Chinese issues were not central to the campaign nor were they top of mind for voters" but concurred researchers had found Chinese state media had worked "with an apparent aim to convince Canadians of Chinese origin to vote against the Conservative Party."[193][194]