Election time has come and gone and by now people know that the Liberals retained power by a slim majority. The new Member of Parliment for the Abitibi region is Liberal candidate Guy St-Julien. He defeated the incumbent BLOC candidate by 2,643 votes.
An interesting aspect of this is that 4,470 Natives voted. Of those 3,380 voted for the Liberal candidate. That means the Native vote made the difference in winning or losing the Abitibi region. It should be interesting to see if Guy St-Julien’s action in parliment reflect the trust that Native people in the Abitibi region put in him.
The Liberals got 16,779 votes followed by the BLOC with 14,166. Third place went to the revived Progressive Conservative Party with 6,529 votes and the NDP walked away with a pitiful 912 votes. Only 1,450 ballots were rejected.
Nunavik and Cree voters gave the Liberals the 3,388 votes mentioned above, the BLOC received 569, the PC took 513 and the NDP received almost half of their total for the Abitibi region with 449 votes.
Absent this year were Rhinosaurus Party. This is the first election that the new $1000 deposit per candidate was in force. Past federal elections only required a $250 deposit.
