Voters head to polls in four by-elections in Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario

Voters in Quebec, Manitoba and Ontario will go to the polls in four midterm elections on June 19 to elect four new MPs.

The by-elections are held at the equestrian centers of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount in Quebec, Oxford in Ontario, Winnipeg South Center in Manitoba and Portage-Lisgar in Manitoba. In recent elections, all four rounds have been relative strongholds for the incumbent parties.

Driving in the Manitoba from Portage-LisgarBranden Leslie – the campaign manager of former horseback riding MP Candice Bergen – is seeking to maintain the party’s nearly two-decade hold on horseback riding, from 2008 to 2023. Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), who fights for a seat for his party in parliament.

During the Elections 2021, the PPC found its strongest support in Portage-Lisgar, with 21.6 percent of the vote compared to the Conservatives’ 52.5 percent. Ahead of the midterm elections, Conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre has accused Bernier of being “just like” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while Bernier claimed that Poilièvre was “terrified” of having a “genuine Conservative opponent” in the driving seat.

While the Oxford Riding School was run by Conservative MP Dave MacKenzie for 19 years until his retirement, from 2004 to 2023, a recent bearing by Mainstreet Research showed that the Liberals and Tories are deadlocked, likely due to controversies surrounding the Conservative nomination process.

MacKenzie’s daughter Deb Tait ran in the nomination for the Conservatives, but Pierre Poilievre’s Ontario leadership campaign co-chair Arpan Khanna won the nomination instead.

Gerrit Van Dorland, an executive aide to Saskatchewan MP Leslyn Lewis, was also abruptly disqualified by the party’s national council just over a week before the nomination meeting, with some claiming his pro-life beliefs led to his removal .

Amid revelations of foreign interference in the Canadian election, the federal government has introduced new measures to protect against interference in the midterm elections. These include “enhanced monitoring and assessment” of potential security and intelligence threats Task Forcewhich consists of CSIS, the RCMP, Global Affairs Canada and the Communications Security Establishment.