The Liberals easily secured seats in all three contests, including the rural Conservative Quebec riding of Chicoutimi–Le Fjord, where the Tories placed third behind the Bloc Québécois.
The Liberals held onto their slim majority in the House after sweeping three byelections on Aug. 31—something strategists say is “no surprise” as two of the seats were Liberals strongholds, with the loser of the night being the Conservatives, who decreased their vote share across all three ridings.
“Pierre Poilievre had a very bad night,” Brad Lavigne, former NDP national campaign director and president and partner of Counsel Public Affairs, said of the Conservative leader.
“They came in second in Beaches–East York last time. Here, they fell way back into the mid-teens. They didn’t do anything interesting. They were behind in North Vancouver–Capilano, and they absolutely collapsed in Chicoutimi[–Le Fjord], when they were very competitive.”
Those results are sending three new MPs to the House of Commons this September: former Liberal constituency office staffer Tanveer Shahnawaz; the prime minister’s former deputy chief of staff Braeden Caley; and dairy farmer Daniel Gobeil.
Two of the byelections were in Liberal-held seats where the Conservatives weren’t expected to break though, but their most disappointing result was in Chicoutimi–Le Fjord, Que., a seat which had been held by now-former Conservative MP Richard Martel since 2018.
Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) freed up the seat by appointing Martel to the Senate over the summer. In the 2025 general election, Martel—then a three-time MP—held the seat with 34.14 per cent of the vote, with the Liberal candidate coming in third behind the Bloc Québécois.
But, on Aug. 31, the Conservatives came a distant third, taking only 12.53 per cent of the vote share, according to preliminary results, with new Liberal MP-elect Gobeil picking up a resounding 51.33 per cent of the vote while the Bloc garnered 32.89 per cent.
“There is very little appetite in that riding,” Lavigne noted. “This is a rural northern Quebec riding where things like supply management, aluminum, lumber are core issues.”
“If [Poilievre’s] losing by this much in these key areas, then the question is where can he pick up support to become prime minister? … He certainly doesn’t get it in downtown Toronto. He certainly didn’t get it in Chicoutimi–Le Fjord.”
In Beaches–East York, Ont.—the east Toronto riding previously held by former Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith, who attempted another foray into provincial politics—Shahnawaz won the seat with 55.68 per cent of the vote, according to the preliminary results from Elections Canada. The NDP improved its results over 2025 and came second with 25.82 per cent, but the Tories picked up just 15.52 per cent—down more than eight per cent in the riding since the last election.
In British Columbia’s North Vancouver–Capilano, the Conservatives came a distant second to Caley, who secured 58.6 per cent of the vote, with preliminary results reporting their candidate picked up just 29.2 per cent.
Still, the voter turnout across all three byelections was substantially lower than in the general election, sitting at below 50 per cent across the board. North Vancouver–Capilano saw a turnout of 45.6 per cent; Chicoutimi–Le Fjord 42.2 per cent; and Beaches–East York 40.39 per cent. In the 2025 general election, overall turnout across the country was 69 per cent.
The wins put Carney’s Liberals back up to 173 seats—one more than is needed for a majority in a full House, which Carney first achieved in April byelection wins thanks to floor-crossings from the Conservatives, and one from the NDP. The Conservatives hold 139 seats, the NDP have five, and the Green Party has one held by party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich–Gulf Islands, B.C.).
Muhammad Ali, a former Liberal staffer and now partner at Crestview Strategy, called the byelections a “big signal” for the Liberals, but noted they demonstrate that voters “aren’t buying” what Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (Battle River–Crowfoot, Alta.) is selling.
“Not only did they lose a seat they held, but they also were not even noteworthy in any of the results,” he said in an interview with The Hill Times.
“At some point the snapshots are telling the story,” Ali said, highlighting that Poilievre has lost seats through elections, retirements, and floor crossings to the Liberals.
“This is just a reminder—and this is going to be more fuel of fire for people internally—that they don’t have any direction. They have a leader who can’t land a message, doesn’t know what he wants to do, and I think that voters are also seeing that very clearly.”
Still, not all agree the Conservative loss spells trouble for Poilievre, who, despite remaining popular within his party, is trailing in the polls behind Carney.
“It was going to be a very steep uphill climb against very, very stiff odds,” said Conservative strategist Jordan Paquet, vice-president of Bluesky Strategy Group, highlighting that the Ontario and B.C. races were “Liberal strongholds,” and not expected to “flip too much.”
He said there are upcoming byelections in “much more” Conservative seats that he expects the party will hold.
“But if not, then obviously people will start, probably, asking more questions,” Paquet said. “But after this round, I think he’s still fine.”
Carney has yet to call byelections in three Quebec ridings: Saint-Hyacinthe–Bagot–Acton, previously held by Bloc MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, who stepped down for a run with the Parti Québécois in the province’s October election; Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, the seat of longtime former NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, who also stepped down for a provincial run; and Laurier–Sainte-Marie, a riding given up by former Liberal minister Steven Guilbeault, who resigned over Carney’s approach to environmental policy.
Former Liberal MP Shaun Chen’s Scarborough North, Ont., riding will soon be up for grabs after his Aug. 15 resignation, as will that of Conservative Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton–Melville, Sask.) who said her last day would be Aug. 31. Conservative MP Larry Brock (Brantford–Brant South–Six Nations, Ont.) is also expected to resign his seat shortly.
Paquet said the dynamic of the ongoing trade war with the United States played to the Liberals’ strengths in the byelections, just as it did in the general election.
“That’s what the prime minister has made his brand about, that he’s the one that’s going to stand up with the U.S. and get a deal. And I think Canadians have shown now in both the general election and in some subsequent byelections, polling, that right now he’s seen favourably to do that.”
Only a week before the byelections, trade talks with the U.S. collapsed on Aug. 21, with Carney pulling Ottawa’s negotiators out of Washington, D.C., as President Donald Trump levied new 50-per-cent tariffs on $28-billion of Canadian goods. Ottawa responded with “dollar-for-dollar” counter-tariffs, which will go into effect on Sept. 8.
The move has been met with broad support, with 76 per cent of the Canadian public in favour of the move, according to polling by the Angus Reid Institute, as well as from Liberal MPs within caucus.
But, Paquet said, if the trade war continues into the fall and winter, there will be a “different conversation” if Canadians start feeling its harsh effects on the economy.
“It’s an easy platform for the prime minister right now, so it’s really tough for the opposition in this space to punch through,” he said.
Lavigne said the trade war had a “significant impact” on the byelection results, noting that in the general election, Chicoutimi–Le Fjord was a tight three-way race, but was an easy win for the Liberals more than a year later.
“It’s proof positive that this trade war is benefiting Carney and hurting Poilievre tremendously,” said Lavigne.
Ali said the recent trade talk collapse had “some impact” on the results, but was not the only reason the Liberals did so well, highlighting that prior to Aug. 21, Canadians still saw Carney as the “most trustworthy leader” to deal with the U.S. and grow the economy.
But Lavigne also pointed to the NDP’s gain in Beaches–East York, where the party tripled its vote share since the general election, as a “positive step” for new and as-yet unelected NDP Leader Avi Lewis.
“Obviously, a very strong ground game, really tapping into a lot of former Liberal voters who voted for Carney in 2025, who have been disenchanted with the outcome, a little bit of buyer’s remorse by some former Liberal voters who found the NDP,” Lavigne said.
“They didn’t go Conservative in Beaches, they didn’t go Green, but they went to the NDP.”
The general election saw the federal NDP reduced to its lowest seat count in the party’s history, decimated by a vote-split from progressive voters grappling with the ballot-box question of Trump. New Democrats won only seven seats and 17.82 per cent of the vote, but lost two MPs after one resignation and one floor crossing. Lewis has yet to indicate where he will seek a seat.
Lavigne said that, going forward, the NDP needs to keep “chipping away” at the vulnerabilities of Carney’s government, such as his actions on climate change. Carney has faced criticism for his environmental policy—both within and from outside his caucus—after dismantling some key climate policy planks put forward by former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
“Climate change, I know, is a big issue in Beaches–East York,” Lavigne said.
“That’s one example of an area where I think that [the Aug. 31] byelection results in [Beaches–East York] proves that there is an audience for those centre-left voters who want to pull the Carney Liberals back to a positioning that they committed to in the last general election.”
The Hill Times