'A fresh wound': Federal Conservatives crush Liberals in Cloverdale-Langley City byelection

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a bad day Monday.

In the morning his deputy and finance minister Chrystia Freeland unexpectedly quit from cabinet. In the afternoon, his government unveiled a fall economic statement showing a deficit of more than $60 billion. And, on Monday night, the Liberal Party of Canada lost the riding of Cloverdale-Langley City by a wide margin in a byelection.

The riding became vacant after Liberal incumbent John Aldag resigned in May so he could run for the B.C. NDP in Langley-Abbotsford in October. Aldag lost that race to B.C. Conservative Harman Bhangu.

On Monday, federal Conservative candidate Tamara Jansen won the riding comfortably, returning for the second time. Jansen represented the riding from 2019 to 2021, after which she was narrowly defeated by Aldag.?Aldag was also the Liberal MP in Cloverdale-Langley City from 2015 to 2019.

This time around Jansen was competing against Liberal candidate Madison Fleischer.

Several messages from Postmedia to Jansen’s team were not returned on Monday evening or on Tuesday. When reached by the Langley Advance Times on Monday, Jansen said through a campaign spokesperson that interviews would not be granted.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre celebrated the win in a post to social media.

“Congratulations to common sense Conservative Tamara Jansen on winning the former Liberal riding of Cloverdale-Langley City, with twice as many votes as all the other candidates combined,” he wrote on X.

Elections Canada says Jansen won 66.3 per cent of the vote, with Liberal Madison Fleischer a distant second on 16 per cent and New Democrat Vanessa Sharma in third with 12.5 per cent.

“This is a fresh wound for the Liberals who are bleeding on several fronts,” said UBC political scientist Stewart Prest. “It was not unexpected.”

Prest said the Liberals won the seat in 2021 by only a handful of votes when overall Liberal popularity was around 32 per cent. This time the Liberals had the support of just 22 per cent of Canadians according to recent polls.

The loss also came after the Liberals lost two long-held seats in byelections in the last several months — in Toronto and Montreal.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre applauded the decisive British Columbia byelection victory in Cloverdale-Langley City in a social media post Tuesday.

“The message is clear, Canadians want an axe the tax election now.”

Cloverdale-Langley City covers an area of Surrey as well as the entire City of Langley. The 2021 census showed there were around 130,665 residents. As of Nov. 10, there were 92,061 voters on the electors list.

On Monday night, with votes reported from 122 of 122 polling stations, Jansen had 9,255 votes compared to 2,321 for Fleischer and 1,834 for federal NDP candidate Vanessa Sharma.

Fewer than 17 per cent of registered voters turned out for this byelection.

With files from The Canadian Press.

dcarrigg@postmedia.com