Liberals, Conservatives take 2 seats apiece in 4 federal byelections

Voters in four federal ridings are sticking with the status quo, returning two Liberals and two Conservatives to Parliament after byelections in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

CBC News projects Liberals Ben Carr in Winnipeg South Centre and Anna Gainey inNotre-Dame-de-GrceWestmount and Conservatives Arpan Khanna in Oxford and Branden Leslie in Portage-Lisgar will win their respective races.

That means the party standings in the House of Commons are unchangedafter Monday's vote.

The four seats in questionhave long been considered safefor the parties that currently hold them.

Ifany of these ridings hadchangedhands, itwould have been a major upset.

But the resultsmayserve as a barometerreading on how votersin four geographically diverse ridings perceive the current state of affairs and the leaders of Canada's two major political parties.

Liberal candidates defy polls to win 2 seats

While national polls say support for the Liberal government has slumped after eight years in power, Trudeau's candidates handily won in two seats and came closer than expectedin a third.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's candidate in the rural Manitoba riding ofPortage-Lisgarbeat back a challenge fromMaxime Bernier, the leader of the far-right People's Party, but the Conservativecontender,Damir Stipanovic, in a Winnipeg-area seat that has gone Tory beforefloundered in Monday's vote.

The result in Oxford, a southwestern Ontario riding near London, was also closer than some Conservative party operatives had expected with Liberal candidate David Hilderley registering a vote share not seen by that party in a long time.

As of 12:50a.m. ET, Khannahad42.5per cent of the vote compared to 36.5per cent forHilderley.

The seat has had a conservative-leaning MP for the last 70 years except for a period in the 1990s and early 2000s when the right-of-centre vote was split between the Progressive Conservative and Reform/Canadian Alliance parties.

Tory who stepped down backedLiberal candidate

Longtime Conservative MP Dave MacKenzie triggered the byelection when he stepped down in January.

His daughter Deb Tait ran for the party's nomination and lost to Khanna, a lawyer who previously ran for the party in Brampton, Ont. a result that prompted accusations by Tait of wrongdoing, which the party has denied.

Tait, a Woodstock city-county councillor, claimed the party favoured her rival and she raised questions about voter ID verification during thenomination race.

In an unusual move, MacKenzie and Tait endorsed Hilderley, a retired principal and real estate agent, over Khanna, who has been called a "parachute candidate" for his tenuous connection to the riding.

The party infighting ultimately didn't cost the Conservatives the seat but a sizeable swing to the Liberals in a long-held seat may prompt some soul-searching at Tory headquarters.

"One thing is clear people believe in Pierre Poilievre'spositive vision for our country. We need more freedom in Canada," Khanna said in his victory speech.

"For the farmer who's putting food on our tables but is having trouble putting food on his own table because of the carbon tax, for the senior who's on a fixed pension struggling to make ends meet, we hear you and I'll fight for you every single day," Khanna said.

The Liberal candidates in two party strongholds in Manitoba and Quebec have also won their respective seats and so too has a Conservative in rural Manitoba, CBC News projects.

Voters in the Montreal-area riding of Notre-Dame-de-GrceWestmount have elected Liberal Anna Gainey to Parliament.

The result is not unexpected given that the seat is among the safest Liberal ridings in the country.

As of 11:55p.m. ET, Gainey had roughly50 per cent of the vote about the same as what former cabinet minister and astronaut Marc Garneau fetched in the 2021 election.

While it's considered a Liberal stronghold, manyanglophonesin the riding were angered bythe government's recent overhaul of the Official Languages Act.

Gainey is a personal friend of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau andpreviously served as the party's president. Given those close ties, Gainey is a contender for a cabinet post in a future shuffle.

Gainey beat Green Party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault, a political neophyte who was elected along with MP Elizabeth May last year to lead the party. Pedneault was poised to finish fourth.

Tory on track to defeat Maxime Bernier in Portage-Lisgar

Further west, voters in the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar have elected Conservative Branden Leslie to the House of Commons, CBC News projects.

Leslie had a commanding 65per cent of the vote cast as of 12:55 a.m. ET a tally that suggests he's likely to trounce his main opponent, People's Party Leader Maxime Bernier.

The former Quebec MP parachuted into the riding to try to win his party's first seat.

That effort appears to have failed with voters choosing Leslie, a former political staffer who worked for a grain farmers' advocacy group, instead.

Bernier chose to run in the riding because it'sone where the People's Party performed best in the COVID-era 2021 federal election. The party's electoral future is in question after Bernier's poor showing.

Despite the lopsidedloss, Bernier vowed to run again in the riding in the next general election.

"I'll be back here," hesaid in an interview with CBC News at his election watch party.

"It's the beginning of a quiet, peaceful, commonsense revolution and you don't do that in one election," he said.

"For me, the most important thing is to grow our support and that's happening and I will build from there for the next election."

Bernier said the People's Party is "the only national political party thinking about important issues" like relitigating the legal status of abortion, stoppingwhat he calls "toxic transgender ideology," andending the country'soverreaction toclimate change.

"Our opponent and the establishment try to say, 'Oh no, those issues are settled.' Well, they're not," he said.

Leslieand Berniertraded barbs throughout the campaign.Bernier has calledhis opponent a "fake" conservative. Leslie, in turn, has called Bernier"an opportunist from Quebec who will say or do anything he thinks people want to hear."

To take on the far-right Bernier, Conservative Leader PierrePoilievre visited the riding and used rhetoric targeting the World Economic Forum an international organization that has become a focusof many right-wingconspiracy theories online during a stump speech.

The riding,long held by former interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen, is among the safest Conservative seats in the country.

Liberal Ben Carr takes Winnipeg South Centre

Also in Manitoba, voters have returned school principal and former political staffer Ben Carr to represent Winnipeg South Centrethe House of Commons, CBC News projects.

Carr was running to replace his late father, Jim, who died of cancer in December.

The urban riding has been in the Liberal win column for decades except for a four-year gap period after the 2011 election that produced a Conservative majority.

As of 12:50 a.m., Carrhad about half of the vote roughlysix points better than what his father achieved in the 2021 election.