Federal byelection results: Liberals get their majority, and a tight win in Terrebonne

Federal Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste clinched victory in Terrebonne Monday night, winning back the traditional Bloc Québécois stronghold two months to the day after the Supreme Court cancelled her one-vote victory in last year’s general election.

Her victory this time around, though still narrow, was far more decisive.
With the last of 211 polls reporting just after midnight, Auguste had 22,445 votes, 731 votes ahead of Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné. Conservative Adrienne Charles was third with 1,551, while none of the remaining candidates had more than 250 votes.

Turnout in the race was 50.76 per cent of electors.

Toronto gives Carney his majority

The Terrebonne byelection was one of three federal byelections taking place Monday, with voters also casting ballots in the Toronto ridings of Scarborough Southwest and University-Rosedale.

Those two ridings were never in real doubt, with the news networks calling both of them about an hour after polls closed. Danielle Martin, a doctor and McGill University graduate, won University-Rosedale with 64 per cent of the vote, while Doly Begum won Scarborough Southwest with 70 per cent.

Liberals ‘waiting impatiently’

Liberals huddled in a Terrebonne restaurant, eyes glued to TV screens showing a razor-thin gap between Auguste and Sinclair-Desgagné.
“We’re waiting impatiently for the results,” MP Joël Lightbound, Government Transformation Minister and Quebec lieutenant, said in an interview.

“We’re in a bit of a yo-yo,” Health Minister Marjorie Michel told the crowd, predicting it would be a long night.

“We’ve been deeply impressed with Tatiana this last year,” said Lightbound, adding that her 2025 victory in Terrebonne, though later invalidated, “was not something that was in my tea leaves.”

Lightbound said he’d campaigned in Terrebonne ahead of the byelection, where he’d heard from voters eager to strengthen Carney’s mandate in Ottawa. “Mr. Carney’s leadership is the right one at this moment in history,” he said.

Bloc supporters ‘confident and optimistic’

Back in Terrebonne, Bloc supporters were energetic as they gathered watch results, with MP Christine Normandin, the party’s House leader, telling The Gazette she was “confident and optimistic” that Sinclair-Desgagné would come out on top.

Like other Bloc MPs, Normandin said she had spent recent days knocking on doors in Terrebonne. With recent floor crossings all but guaranteeing a majority government for Carney’s Liberals, voters were no longer thinking about how their decision might impact on the balance of power in Ottawa, she said.

“People wanted to talk about local issues,” Normandin said, asserting that the Bloc’s promise to defend against expropriations resulting from the planned high-speed rail project and focus on housing affordability made them “the only party to talk about local questions.”

Parties campaigned hard

Both parties’ electoral machines have in recent weeks descended on the riding on Montreal’s north shore, where hundreds of volunteers — including Liberal cabinet ministers and MPs from both parties — made their case to voters.

While the Bloc fought to take back the riding, the federal Liberals were hoping to add an extra MP to their government, which in recent months has been inching toward majority status. Since November, four Conservative and one NDP MP have left their parties to join Mark Carney’s Liberals.

Coming into Monday’s byelections, Carney’s government was just one MP shy of the 172 needed to form a majority. They end the night with 174 MPs in the 338-seat House of Commons.

One-vote win annulled

In last year’s general election, Auguste, 24, unseated incumbent MP Sinclair-Desgagné by just one vote, winning the traditional Bloc stronghold by just one vote after a judicial recount. But after a Bloc voter reported that an Elections Canada error had seen her ballot returned to her instead of being counted, Sinclair-Desgagné launched a legal challenge that in February resulted in the Supreme Court annulling Auguste’s victory, ending her brief tenure in Ottawa and requiring a repeat of the 2025 electoral contest.

Long ballot

The riding was targeted by the Longest Ballot Committee, which signed up dozens of independent candidates to protest the first-past-the-post electoral system. With the ballot listing a total of 48 candidates, of which 41 are officially independent, voters were given a write-in ballot and asked to write the name of their chosen candidate.

The 41 independents, and Mark Moutter of the Rhinoceros Party, managed only 114 votes total of the 46,369 valid votes cast.

Elections Canada warned that the high number of candidates could delay results for this riding. In an effort to expedite the process, the agency said it planned to begin counting votes cast in advance polls two hours before regular polls close, but would not release results until all voting is done.

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