By Pepper Parr
April 29th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Emily Brown speaking to her supporters at the Hilton hotel.
It was a campaign Emily Brown had to win and a campaign she was certain she would win.
It didn’t work out that way.
What we are seeing in Burlington is being replicated across the country.
Losing is never easy. A lot of people who believed in Emily Brown will look for the reasons why the Conservatives lost. There are already people putting together their plans to win the nomination for the next federal election.
The biggest problem for the Conservatives was their leader, who lost his own seat and may well lose the leadership of the Conservative party.
It will take some time for the disappointment to work itself out.
While it wasn’t an evening to celebrate, the Conservatives did gather at the Hilton hotel to make the best of the occasion.
The Liberals were confident going into the race; it was never an event where they felt it was going to get away from them.
The Gould team had every reason to celebrate, and celebrate they did.
Burlington is a very different community than it was when Bill Kempling was the automatic choice, and so is Canada. I choose not to be a member of any political party, and I find that many of my friends make the same decision. Had Justin Trudeau remained in power, I would not have voted Liberal. Although the NDP and Green people are generally very nice and knowledgeable, a vote for either is a wasted vote. The Conservatives whine too much for my liking. The Gazette gets spirited comment from the old Kempling people, but “that was then, this is now”. We will do well with Mark Carney in very difficult times.
The Liberals, of late, have proven to be a party who are much better at campaigning than governing. Let’s hope Mark Carney can turn that around, and soon, for the sake of Canada’s ultimate future.
Reader Observation:
Poilievre received more votes in Ontario than did Ford. In any other election (sans Trump) we would have seen a huge CPC majority.
The ball is in Carneys court and he has maybe 3 years to prove the electorate picked the right guy as most of his cabinet are the reason they were going to lose.
Well said Lynn.
Canadians voted against divisiveness and negativity. They voted for a love of Canada and Canadian pride and a good, decent person to lead us. They voted against the cruelty we see daily in the US. Carney has vowed to work for all Canadians. Now we will see if the opposition parties and Premiers will respect what voters have told them, and work for all Canadians too, in a positive and honest way. We can do a lot of good working together for the common goal of a strong and prosperous and compassionate country for all.
“divisiveness and negativity”, really??? Only in your world could criticism of the Liberals’ record of the past 10 years be construed as negativity. This record of multiple broken election promises, multiple examples of corruption with hundreds of millions of dollars going to Liberal insiders, economic and fiscal policies that could be at best described as raw incompetence, and social policies relating to criminal justice, addiction, and immigration that were ill-conceived. All this amounted to a decade of failure.
Yes Carney has vowed to work for all Canadians–we’ll see just how honest and decent he is. Or will he revert to climate extremism as detailed in his book, will he fail to develop new markets because he is fundamentally focused on keeping oil & gas in the ground; I’m betting that Trump knows this is who Carney really is and it makes it easier for Trump to maintain market control over Canadian resources. Would an honest and decent man have lied as much as Carney already has? Fortunately, Carney has a minority built on the temporary and fleeting support of NDP and Bloc voters–I give him two years at the most and the honeymoon with opposition parties will be long gone and he’ll be back in London or New York where he really longs to be.