Voters gave Trudeau a third term but denied him a parliamentary majority (Photo: Dave Chan / Getty Images)
Canadians woke up in a country whose political landscape was virtually unchanged on Tuesday after a costly election held amid the Covid-19 pandemic many of them did not want, and expressed their fury at a cost of $ 612 million of dollars ($ 477.6 million) to proceed with the election.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won the election, but it has been unpopular from the start for now, two years ahead of schedule and during a growing fourth wave of Covid-19.
Voters gave Trudeau a third term, but denied him a parliamentary majority. Majority-seeking was the reason Trudeau pushed the election forward. Liberals are leading or elected in 158 of 338 districts, just three more than before the election – a majority requires 170 seats.
The other parties didn’t do much better, ending up with essentially the same number of seats they already had.
“Six hundred million Canadian dollars and all I got was that damn pen,” tweeted a Calgary citizen, referring to the pen used to write on the ballots.
The term “waste of money” was trending on social media as voters questioned the timing and costs involved. Elections Canada, which organizes the polls, predicted that the consultation would cost C $ 110 million more than the 2019 election.
Holding the elections during a pandemic came with additional costs, such as counting an avalanche of postal votes and providing single-use pens, masks and antiseptic gel, the election agency said.
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