Election updates: Fights brewing in Atlantic Canada ridings

This composite image shows, left to right, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in Toronto on March 25, 2025; Liberal Leader Mark Carney in Winnipeg on April 1, 2025; and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in Kingston, Ont., on April 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette, Adrian Wyld, Sean Kilpatrick

HALIFAX — The fortunes of the federal Liberals in Atlantic Canada are likely to stay strong after election night, although maintaining the party’s dominance won’t come without a fight, say political observers.

At dissolution, the Liberals held 23 of 32 seats, the Conservatives held eight; one seat was vacant.

“I feel like Atlantic Canada could provide a snapshot for how the Liberals and the Conservatives end up duking it out,” said Dalhousie University political scientist Lori Turnbull. “I would think that it’s a very representative competition that will resonate across much of the country.”

Still, Turnbull sees the Liberals prevailing across the region’s four provinces after having won 24 seats in the 2021 election, 26 seats in 2019 — and sweeping all 32 seats in 2015.

“It’s not like 2015, I don’t get that feeling from it,” Turnbull said, noting the Liberals “ace card” is leader Mark Carney, mainly because he can appeal to the political middle as well as to some traditional Progressive Conservatives, who make up much of the political right in the region.

In New Brunswick, the Liberals held six of 10 seats ahead of the April 28 vote, while the Conservatives held four. Political scientist Donald Wright, at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, believes the races in the province are competitive outside the province’s north, where the Liberals usually tip the scale because they traditionally dominate in French-speaking Acadian areas.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Wright said, “is running a good campaign, largely mistake-free, and they are packing auditoriums even here in Fredericton.”

One of the New Brunswick ridings expected to produce a close race is Saint John-Kennebecasis, where veteran Liberal incumbent candidate Wayne Long is slugging it out with Conservative Melissa Young, who was hand-picked by her party. The riding has been redrawn, with Long losing part of his power base in the west of the port city; he’s trying to win over more politically conservative areas that have been added, such as Quispamsis.

“It’s going to be a battle for sure, every vote is going to count in this election and in this riding,” Long said in an interview. “I don’t have the blinders on — that there’s this big red wave that’s going to turn every seat red. I think every seat in this province is competitive.”

Long, a three-term MP, was the first Liberal backbencher to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in June 2024. He announced last March he wouldn’t run again, but changed his mind after a phone call earlier this year from Carney.

“I think he commands respect, and at door after door I’m hearing the same thing: that Mark Carney is the right guy at the right time,” he said.

But in neighbouring Nova Scotia where the Liberals hold seven of 11 seats, Conservative incumbent Rick Perkins is dismissive of the Carney effect in his riding of South Shore-St. Margarets. The Liberal government’s management of the fishery has turned many in the industry against the party, he said.

“It’s the Number 1 issue in this riding and it was in the last election in 2021 when I ran against the Liberal fisheries minister (Bernadette Jordan) and defeated her,” Perkins said in a recent interview.

Just up the coast in the Halifax riding, NDP candidate and former provincial legislature member Lisa Roberts is taking a second shot at trying to re-establish her party in a district that was formerly held by party stalwarts Alexa McDonough and Megan Leslie.

“I’m the closest thing to an incumbent on the ballot in that I’m a former MLA and got 40 per cent of the vote when I ran against (Liberal) Andy Filmore in 2021,” Roberts said. She said she realizes, however, that the political landscape has changed because of the economic threat posed to Canada by U.S. President Donald Trump’s mercurial trade policies, with the NDP seemingly getting squeezed by anxious voters looking at the Liberals.

“I certainly understand folks who don’t want Poilievre to be the prime minister, but that does not mean that the only option in every riding is to vote Liberal, and here in Halifax I’m pointing out that Mark Carney is not on the ballot.”

Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador and its seven seats could be among the more interesting provinces to watch on election night, mainly because five of the six Liberal incumbents aren’t running this time around.

Conservative Clifford Small and Liberal Joanne Thompson are the only incumbent candidates, with Thompson in for another battle in her riding of St. John’s East with the NDPs Mary Shortall, a popular labour advocate who finished second in the 2021 election.

Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island, has four seats and all are currently held by the Liberals.

However, Don Desserud, a political scientist at U.P.E.I., says the Island’s rural-urban split could make for competitive races outside more Liberal Charlottetown.

“Rural Prince Edward Island is not progressively liberal, it basically supports the person,” Desserud said.

And while Atlantic Canada is not typically seen as key to the overall national election results, Desserud said there’s a possibility the region will garner attention on election night.

“If the Conservatives do well in Atlantic Canada that’s definitely a harbinger of what’s to come, and if the Liberals do well it could very well be a sign that Quebec and Ontario will rekindle their support for the Liberals,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 18, 2025.

Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press