Progressive Conservatives Oust Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador, Winning Narrow Majority

Three hours after the polls closed in Newfoundland and Labrador on Tuesday night, the Progressive Conservatives had won 21 of the legislature's 40 ridings, enough for a slim majority and an end to ten years of Liberal government. It was a gain of seven seats for the Tories under Tony Wakeham, and a loss of six for the Liberals of Premier John Hogan, who finished with 15.

The count was tight for much of the evening. Wakeham's party edged into a small lead as the final ballots came in, after a back-and-forth contest, then steadily pulled ahead. The popular vote was nearly as close as the early count: the Tories took 44.37 per cent and the Liberals 43.43 per cent. The smallest margin of victory was in Lewisporte-Twillingate, where Tory candidate Mark Butt beat Liberal Derek Bennett by 18 votes. That is outside the 10-vote threshold that triggers an automatic recount under provincial law.

The smaller parties had a night of their own. The New Democrats, led by Jim Dinn, doubled their seat count to two. Dinn, a 65-year-old former teacher, was re-elected in his St. John's riding. The NDP had not been expected to be a contender, having never held more than five seats in the legislature. Two well-known Independents were also returned.

In his victory speech, Wakeham turned on the pundits who had predicted another Liberal win. He said he had spent more than 30 years coaching basketball, and that no statistic matters less than the halftime score. A couple of months earlier, he said, many people had looked at that halftime score and thought the election was over. He told supporters there is nothing quite like a comeback.

Wakeham, a former health-care bureaucrat, said he won voters over by sticking to health care, crime and pocketbook issues. Throughout the campaign he asked voters whether they were better off under the Liberals, who were seeking a fourth consecutive term. The result also fits a pattern from the spring, when federal Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre won three rural Newfoundland seats, a gain of two, even as Mark Carney's Liberals won nationally. On Tuesday the provincial Tories picked up seats in rural Newfoundland and across Labrador.

The Liberal campaign had been partly hobbled by departures before the race began. Cabinet ministers Siobhan Coady, John Haggie, Gerry Byrne, Andrew Parsons and Tom Osborne all quit.

The central issue was a proposed multibillion-dollar energy deal with Quebec. Hogan, a 47-year-old lawyer, called it the election issue. The memorandum of understanding between Hydro-Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, he argued, could bring $225 billion into the provincial treasury over 50 years. Under the tentative agreement, Hydro-Québec would pay much more for power from the Churchill Falls plant in Labrador, which Quebec's government helped build in the late 1960s. It would also lead to new hydroelectric projects along the Churchill River and end the existing Churchill Falls contract 16 years early, correcting the long-standing arrangement in which Hydro-Québec buys most of the electricity at rock-bottom prices.

Wakeham said the draft was not good enough. He promised an independent third-party review, citing lessons from the province's earlier energy project failures, and said its conclusions would be made public. He said he would use it to fix the deal or demand a better one, and that he would not sign anything the province's residents had not approved in a referendum. In his own speech, Hogan urged Wakeham to stay the course, calling it the best opportunity to secure the province's future and saying there is no better deal.

Wakeham also inherits a debt expected to reach almost $20 billion next year, the largest per capita provincial debt in the country. The independent review of the Churchill Falls agreement, and how the new government handles that debt, are the first things to watch.