NDP holds Nunavut after Elections Canada validates results

Lori Idlout, NDP MP for Nunavut, personally knows the challenges facing day school survivors who apply for compensation.
Incumbent NDP MP Lori Idlout was confirmed the winner of Nunavut on Friday evening after Elections Canada validated the election results of her riding. She beat Liberal Kilikvak Kabloona by 41 votes. (Dustin Patar/The Canadian Press via RCI)

By RCI, CBC News

After a delay due to a blizzard, Elections Canada has validated the results in Nunavut and confirmed NDP incumbent Lori Idlout has prevailed over Liberal challenger Kilikvak Kabloona.

The results were posted on Elections Canada’s website Friday evening. Validation is a procedure in which Elections Canada double-checks and verifies the numbers reported on election night.

It took more than two weeks for Elections Canada to validate the results because the final ballot box from the community of Naujaat was delayed. It was sent to Iqaluit but got stuck at the airline cargo facility in Rankin Inlet when a rare late-spring blizzard hit Iqaluit on Thursday.

Because of the delay, Idlout could not be sworn in as the Nunavut MP — something she told The Canadian Press was frustrating because constituents were reaching out to her for assistance but she could not officially act as an MP.

The validated results show Idlout beat Kabloona by 41 votes. That’s a thinner margin of victory than the preliminary results Elections Canada posted shortly after election night, which showed Idlout beat Kabloona by 77 votes.

The 41-vote difference is not enough to automatically trigger a judicial recount, which occurs when the number of votes separating a winner and a runner-up is less than 0.1 per cent of the total votes cast, according to Elections Canada’s rules.

There were a total of 7,868 valid votes in Nunavut, according to Elections Canada’s website. That means the difference would have needed to be seven votes or less to automatically trigger a judicial recount.

Two outstanding recounts

The current standings have the Liberals two seats shy of a majority government, with 170 MPs. The Conservatives have 143 seats, the Bloc Québécois 22, the NDP seven and the Green Party one.

There are still two outstanding judicial recounts, but the Liberals need to hold one riding and flip another, meaning the most seats they could have is 171.

The Liberals need to hold onto the seat they have in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova-The Peninsulas. A judicial recount there is still in progress. Before the recount, Liberal Anthony Germain led Conservative Jonathan Rowe by 12 votes.

On Friday, a judicial recount in the southern Ontario riding of Milton East-Halton Hills South confirmed that Liberal Kristina Tesser Derksen won the seat by a margin of 21 votes over Conservative Parm Gill.

Meanwhile, the The Bloc Québécois is calling on the Superior Court of Quebec to order a byelection in the riding of Terrebonne, where the party lost by one vote, as Elections Canada revealed issues with five more mail-in ballots.