The 45th Parliament and 47
In which I commit some political science in analyzing vote shares and trade
Updated April 30, 9:15 to correct a data entry error. Thanks to readers for flagging it.
The final counts are in. Unless there are some floor-crossings (which would be neither unprecedented nor contrary to the national interest), the 45th Parliament will be a minority Liberal government again. The two leading parties competed for votes with the final share of all votes cast narrowly split 41.3% : 43.7% for the Conservatives and Liberals respectively. By any recent historical comparison, that is an incredibly positive outcome that, in a normal election, should lead to a crushing majority government. But just as in physics (see: destructive interference) two overlapping waves can cancel each other out.
The two parties also competed to define the ballot question with the Conservatives largely focusing on “affordability” (and then reverting to “change”) and the Liberals initially (but not consistently) focusing on the threat of tariffs and even annexation issued by Donald Trump, the 47th President of the United States.
As recently as April 25th (e-day minus three), Trump was assuring media that he “is not” trolling in talking about annexing Canada and Greenland, adding for Canada: “We're taking care of every aspect of their lives. […] We don't need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”
On election day itself, Trump appeared again, issuing a missive on social media that suggested Canadians should vote for him as our new leader, promising “Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!”
I don’t know what was going through his addled brain. I don’t know why he was yelling at Canadians in all-caps on our election day. It was genuinely bizarre and that was less than 100 days into his tenure. Just 1,361 days to go…
Meanwhile, the nonsensical tariffs and global trade war launched by one man continue. The auto tariffs are still on track to kick in Saturday this week (May 3), despite some token relief for some (but not all) car makers, on the shaky pretense that they can and will relocate their supply chains for parts as well as assembly to the U.S. .
The next government and the 45th Parliament will soon have to respond and mitigate the negative impacts of the Trumpcoaster.
As colleagues at the Institute for Research on Public Policy have documented, some communities in Canada are far more economically exposed to changes in exports to the U.S., particularly in energy, mining, lumber, and auto sectors. So were voters in those ridings more persuaded by the Liberal ballot issue (Trump)? In the next Parliament, who will speak as the representatives of workers displaced by trade disruptions and reorientations? Will the governing party hear clear voices in the privacy of its own caucus room, calling for measures to help constituents directly affected?
Please forgive me for committing a bit of political science to find some answers.
I’ve taken the IRPP’s excellent geospatial data and identified the ridings with one or more communities where the share of local employment tied to exports to the U.S. is 7% or more. This threshold was a bit arbitrary, but it means that if all trade-exposed workers were laid off in the community (because of some random executive order or social media post), the local unemployment rate would suddenly spike to a level well-above the national average. I found 36 federal ridings that fit this criterion. Among those, six have 10% or more of their local workforce in U.S. trade-exposed employment.
I’ve collected the final ballot counts from Elections Canada this afternoon (recognizing a few might be subject to revision or automatic judicial review). For comparison, I also went back to the 2021 results to see how the riding voted the last time, back when Joe Biden was the American President, or what I might call our salad days.
Yes, I’m aware of redistribution and changes to the riding boundaries since 2021. Happily, Elections Canada produces data transposing the 2021 results onto the new 2025 ridings. Among the 36 most U.S. trade-exposed ridings, seven saw their boundaries changed for the 2025 vote.
Here’s the data table I made:
All cells show the final share of the party vote in the riding. Cells in colour indicate the winning party (using party hues). Errors or omissions are my own, blah blah blah. This is a free blog folks, not a peer-reviewed study. You get what you pay for.
A few noteworthy things I see:
While the Conservatives tried not to talk too much about Trump and the relationship with the U.S., there will be more CPC MPs with a high concentration of U.S. trade-exposed constituents than in any other federal party caucus. That was also true in 2021.
Conservatives in ridings with trade-exposed communities outperform their national party average in vote share (by an average of 4.4% in 2021 and 2.9% in 2025). That kind of e-day security can dampen the seriousness with which caucus leadership is inclined to take the pleas of MPs asking for airtime in Question Period or other indicators that local issues are a priority. The political focus is usually on terrain for marginal growth, not protecting strongholds.
While AB is home to the one riding that is by far and away the most exposed on U.S. trade (17.1% of local employment in Division 16 within the Fort McMurray-Cold Lake riding is tied to U.S. exports), Quebec has a much higher count of MPs whose constituents might be directly impacted (14 out of the 36 listed above). Note: the CPC won Fort McMurray-Cold Lake with a just crazy 80.5% of the vote, up from 67.3% in 2021.
Like CPC MPs, BQ MPs who represent highly trade-exposed communities are likely to enjoy reasonably good margins versus their next best political competitor. The exception in 2025 though, is Shefford. There, the BQ’s 8 point margin over the LPC in 2021 was reduced to less than 1 point in 2025. The riding seems to be home to some high-end aerospace manufacturing, some aluminum, and maybe (it’s hard to tell for sure as sites aren’t loading fast enough for my patience ATM) part of a burgeoning IT and semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. But it is still a BQ hold in the 45th Parliament.
Liberals wanted to talk about Trump and about the need to have a plan to counter his animus towards our country. That paid off in just one riding with a high share of U.S. trade-exposed constituents flipping from blue to red yesterday. That was the riding of South Shore–St. Margarets in Nova Scotia. I believe the riding has pulp and paper milling, and my past travels in the region (it has been a long while), remind me that there was some not insignificant lumber milling, furniture manufacturing, and fish processing happening (again the Stat Can website with riding profile data is not loading ATM….). The LPC vote in trade-exposed ridings underperforms the national average vote share (by an average of -6.1% in 2021 and -6.6% in 2025).
Meanwhile, Conservatives flipped one LPC seat in Ontario that have high shares of the local workforce in sectors exposed to Trump’s policy whims: Kitchener South – Hespeler. This riding is deep inside one of Canada’s main manufacturing hubs, home to auto, aerospace, food processing, and advanced manufacturing (robotics, etc..). I do not, at the moment, have good access to data on income, housing, demographics or other proxy indicators of local affordability issues that might have fit in the CPC issue frame.
Prime Minister Carney has joked (ok, it’s a niche joke, but I like it) that he plans to “govern in econometrics”. The nerdy academic in me says “oh hell yes!”.
The pragmatic ex-staffer in me says “he will need to”.
The truth is that the party that was most willing to sound the alarm bells about the risks posed to Canada by Donald Trump has ended up with few MPs in caucus who will be most likely to have the qualitative, touchy-feely, front porch conversations with constituents who are directly affected by trade disruptions. The LPC government will need to find other ways to stay in touch with the individual Canadian workers, residents, and voters on the front lines of the ongoing U.S. trade crisis.
I don’t mean government public opinion research.
I mean making efforts to go places where Liberals may not immediately feel welcome. I mean reaching out to opposition MPs to consult, not just offer stage-managed technical briefings once policy choices are fully baked. Most of all, I mean welcoming diverse and sometimes contrarian views into the decision-making apparatus of government. Efficient decisions are desirable, sure, but not at the expense of effectiveness. The work of reconciling the conflicting views inside Canada — for example, communities that are highly exposed to Trump turmoil but vote for parties that don’t want to talk about it — is the eternal mission of government in our big, beautiful country.