The Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova—The Peninsulas has flipped to the Conservatives following a judicial recount, giving the party a third seat in the province.
A recount in the riding completed on May 23 found that Conservative Jonathan Rowe defeated Liberal Anthony Germain by 12 votes. The final tally showed Rowe received 19,605 votes, Germain received 19,593 votes, and NDP candidate Liam Ryan received 1,677 votes. A total of 819 ballots were rejected.
The results have brought the Liberal Party’s seat count down to 169, which is three short of a majority, while the Conservatives have 144 seats, the Bloc Québécois has 22, the NDP has seven, and the Green Party has one.
The initial tally on election night had Germain ahead by 12 votes, with the margin of victory being narrow enough to trigger an automatic judicial recount. These happen when the margin of victory for a candidate is less than 0.1 percent of the valid votes cast.
In a statement on social media, Germain said the recount “did not result in the outcome we had hoped,” but he thanked his campaign’s volunteers and supporters. Germain also said he had spoken with Rowe to congratulate him.
“I’m so proud of what our campaign accomplished, I’m thankful to all who believed in our positive message, and I’m energized to keep working to make our community a better place,” he said.
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The news about the riding of Terra Nova—The Peninsulas came hours after the results of a judicial recount in an Ontario riding were released. In the riding of Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, the judicial recount found that Conservative candidate Kathy Borrelli beat the Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk by just four votes.
After a three-day recount, the final results showed Borrelli with 32,090 votes, Kusmierczyk with 32,086 votes, and NDP candidate Alex Ilijoski with 4,240 votes. Borrelli had initially beat Kusmierczyk by 233 votes on election night on April 28, but an initial Elections Canada validation count reduced Borrelli’s lead to 77.
While this was seven votes short of triggering an automatic recount, Kusmierczyk’s team identified some ballots that had been mistakenly rejected, and a judge accepted their request for a recount.
In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois recently announced it will be challenging the results in the riding of Terrebonne, where the Liberals won by a single vote. It was revealed that a Terrebonne resident had mailed in a vote supporting the Bloc weeks ahead of the April 28 election, but the ballot was returned to the voter on May 2 because Elections Canada had put the wrong return address on the envelope.
Elections Canada previously told The Epoch Times that five mail-in ballots that were received late at the local office in Quebec’s Terrebonne riding were not able to be counted. Each of the five late ballots contained a postal code error.
Sixteen other ballots were not sent to the local office and were instead returned to the elector because of an addressing error, Elections Canada said. Another nine electors who had originally requested a mail-in ballot opted to cast their votes in person instead.
