Liberal incumbent Michael McLeod waited so long to speak on election night, it wasn’t election night anymore.
“It wouldn’t be election day without (my) lucky boots,” he said to a small group of supporters, reporters and family at the Stanton Suites Hotel early Sept. 21.
It took that long for the result to be clear enough for McLeod to feel comfortable speaking as the victor. His total of 4,979 votes (as of 7 a.m. Sept. 21, unofficially, according to the Elections Canada website) was enough for a third term in the House of Commons. His only real challenger according to the result was New Democrat Kelvin Kotchilea, who was watching the results from home and informed the media shortly before midnight he was turning in and would provide a statement in the morning.
Kotchilea earned 4,301 votes, followed by parachute Conservative candidate Lea Mollison, who took 1,848, indepdendent Jane Groenewegen, who took 1,681 and Green Roland Lafleur, who collected 334 votes.
Despite that result, it was a mostly positive atmosphere at the Northwest Territories Green Party headquarters in Old Town Monday night.
About five weeks after accepting the party’s nomination Aug. 26, Lafleur joined a small band of supporters around a fire to watch the national election coverage.
Lafleur finished safely in last place with 2.5 per cent of the NWT vote. McLeod had 15 times that number.
“For a lifelong politician, he’s still quite down to earth,” Laufer said of McLeod. “He’s connected to the people.”
Ze was philosophical about the result.
“We really had only two weeks of campaign, two weeks to educate and to learn from people,” said Laufer. “So, that we have this, personally, for me it’s a victory. Two seats is a victory. I’m pretty sure in the next few years, the next few elections, more seats are going to be there.”
Lafleur plans to run again.
“I will always be available to be the next candidate, because touring this whole time, through the two weeks, I actually realized more and more things that are very important for the North,” Lafleur said. “Which, I kind of knew before, but I didn’t really know the deeper importance.”
Nationally, next to nothing changed in terms of the composition of the House. The Liberals, who won 157 seats in 2019 and held 155 at dissolution, today are leading or elected in 157 ridings. The Conservatives retain status as the Official Opposition with 119 seats and the Bloc Quebecois maintained their fresh batch of seats from 2015 in that province with a showing of 34, outclassing the New Democrats who won 25 seats and embarassing the Green Party, which won just two, excluding leader Annamie Paul, who came a distant fourth in her own riding of Toronto Centre.
- with reporting from Alyssa Smith, Simon Whitehouse and Craig Gilbert