Liberals win Chateauguay-Lacolle riding by 12 votes after judicial recount

A voter casts a ballot in the 2011 federal election in Toronto on May 2, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Montreal — The Liberal Party of Canada says it has finally won the riding of Châteauguay-Lacolle after a very close recount. The incumbent MP, Brenda Shanahan, will take back her seat in the House of Commons.

The National Co-Chair of the Liberal campaign, Mélanie Joly, immediately rejoiced at the news on Twitter.

"It was a close race that reminds us all that every vote counts! So it's official, the Liberal party has held all 35 seats in Quebec and won 160 in Canada," she wrote.

Early election results indicated that Shanahan was 286 votes behind her Bloc Québécois rival Patrick O'Hara. She ended up winning the seat by only 12 votes.

The Liberals had requested a judicial recount in the riding after discovering a "potential anomaly" with a ballot box. Elections Canada had confirmed that a returning officer had identified a typing error in the number of ballots recorded at the polling station in the riding, where 40 votes for one candidate were recorded as 410. The error was corrected.

This result leaves the electoral picture in Quebec unchanged from 2019 to 2021 in terms of seat numbers. The Liberal Party has 35 MPs, the Bloc Québécois has 32, the Conservatives have 10 and NDP has one.

-- This is a developing story. More to come.