After losses, Fraser Valley candidates process election results

The Liberals are in power. The Conservatives are in opposition. The NDP have the balance of power. And Fraser Valley residents are represented by uniformly Conservative members of Parliament.

For an election many touted as the most important in a generation, not much has actually changed on the surface.

In reality, though, Monday’s election has taught established parties and politicians hard lessons, given individuals a new look at politics, and handed a new Prime Minister a mandate to change—and a long list of challenges to tackle.

The Tories

Re-elected Conservative MP Brad Vis said he and his party benefited from increased popularity among young blue-collar workers, but failed to persuade older voters that they were the best option to deal with US President Donald Trump.

"A lot of people in the trades really came out that would traditionally vote NDP, voted for me this election, and you saw that on Vancouver Island as well," Vis told The Current Wednesday.

But Vis said he also encountered baby boomers who shifted their vote from the Conservatives to the Liberals.

"Ultimately, we didn't convince enough Canadians that we were the right party to respond to Trump," he said. "You can't sugar coat it any other way."

Despite the political reversal this spring, Vis said he still has confidence in party leader Pierre Poilievre.

The Grits

In Abbotsford—South Langley, Liberal candidate Kevin Gillies endured the ups and downs of an election night for the first time. As early results were released, Gillies briefly led Conservative candidate by 10 votes.

"Let's take a screenshot and call it a night," he joked with a supporter. Shortly afterwards, Gillies told The Current the experience was like that of a sports fan frantically refreshing their phone to check on the score of a game. And the process was infinitely more stressful than covering elections, the former reporter noted.

“As a reporter, it was always exciting to be there and see what was going on. But as a candidate, my stomach feels like it's in knots at times.”

At the same time, he said it was rewarding to work toward a common goal with his friends and family.

“My friends are here, and they're all happy to be part of a process that they probably wouldn't have been a part of had I not been in it.”

Gillies had hoped that a potential split of conservative voters between CPC candidate Sukhman Gill and independent Mike de Jong would allow him to ride Mark Carney's popularity to victory. That didn't quite happen, with Gill easily winning and de Jong unable to claim more than 20% of the vote. By the end of the night, the mood had turned more somber, even as the Liberal party itself was returned to power.

“I feel bad for my team,” he said. “They really worked hard, and they really had high hopes and they were really optimistic.”

But the sting of defeat was coupled with pride—and a sense of completion.

"I have no regrets; I'm happy I did it," he said. "I've always been curious what it would be like. It was a challenge. It was fun. I'm exhausted.”

The Dippers

Across the country, the NDP failed to win enough seats to gain official party status. Polls suggested that NDP voters turned to the Liberals because they preferred Mark Carney over Pierre Poilievre.

Chilliwack—Hope NDP candidate Teri Westerby performed the best of all the NDP candidates in the Fraser Valley but was still only able to muster 7% of the vote.

“We had a lot of people say ‘we would have loved to vote NDP, we always vote NDP, but we had to put our efforts where we felt we could stop the Conservatives,’” he said. “I think a lot of people are going to kind of wake up from this moment to realize that we actually took a small loss in order to prevent a larger loss.”

With the Liberals falling just three seats short of a majority, the NDP itself, despite winning just seven seats, could still play a key role in Parliament. Westerby suggested he would like to see a focus on electoral reform to enable a form of proportional representation, but suggested that the public will need to be the one putting pressure on the government for such a change to happen.

“I think we need a louder local group of people to say, both in Ottawa, in the MP seats, and outside of it, to say ‘Our nation is getting more and more divided, and we have to rethink this. Our sovereignty is still technically at risk, especially if we're not unified.”

Westerby, who was running in his first federal election, said he was also appreciative of the ballots cast for the NDP and for himself.

“We should be really proud, because we had higher than the national average of NDP supporters, and in a day where ‘wokeism’ is in the center of everyone's thinking, and trans people are getting their rights stripped in America, we had thousands of people in Chilliwack who voted for a trans person, and that's something we should be really proud of.”