Liberal Charles Sousa takes early lead in Mississauga-Lakeshore byelection

OTTAWA — Former Ontario Liberal finance minister Charles Sousa took an early lead in Monday’s federal byelection in Mississauga-Lakeshore, after a campaign that has been seen as a stress test for the two main federal party leaders.

Early results suggested Sousa was on track to beat the Conservative candidate Ron Chhinzer, with the NDP in a distant third.

The election saw the Liberals fight hard to hold onto the riding in the face of tepid national support for their minority government.

It was also the first electoral contest under the Conservative party’s new leader, Pierre Poilievre, who won the job just this past September on a promise that he could woo new voters to the party’s cause.

That appeared to fall flat Monday night, with Sousa commanding a lead in the vote count early on, and hanging onto it throughout the night.

As of 10:20 p.m., Sousa had 55.9 per cent of the vote, compared to Chhinzer’s 29.5 per cent.

The final results were not available by press time.

The byelection was called in November, after Liberal MP Sven Spengemann resigned the seat in May to take a job with the United Nations.

It’s been a relatively safe Liberal outpost for years, save for 2011-2015 when the riding was held by Conservative MP Stella Ambler. She picked it up from the Tories in the same election that saw that party win its first majority government.

But she lost out to Spengemann in 2015 who won the seat again in 2019 and in last year’s vote as well.

Still, in the 2021 federal election, the Liberals saw their vote share in the riding drop by four points, with gains for the Conservatives, New Democrats and the People’s Party of Canada.

All three parties fielded candidates in this race as well, as did the Rhinoceros party. Rounding out the ballot were 34 other people running as independents.

The independents were part of a movement organized by the Longest Ballot Committee, a grassroots group created to draw attention to the Liberals’ failed promise to enact electoral reform and do away with the current first-past-the-post system.

Though the riding is a federal Liberal stronghold, provincially it is held by the Progressive Conservatives — who snatched the seat away from Sousa when he ran in the 2018 provincial election. The Conservatives also won the riding in this year’s provincial vote.

During the byelection, the federal Conservatives had tried to remind voters of Sousa’s provincial ties, attacking his connection to former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne as a reason he ought not be trusted to carry the riding’s banner in Ottawa. Sousa was the Ontario Minister of Finance from 2013-2018.

The federal Tories had a number of high-profile MPs make the trip from Ottawa to the riding to help with Chhinzer’s campaign, but Poilievre himself wasn’t among them.

The Tories had downplayed any expectations they could win the seat ahead of the vote Monday, despite the fact that nationally, their party is ahead of the Liberals in some polls.

Meanwhile, Sousa had assists from several Liberal heavy-hitters, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a number of cabinet ministers who held fundraisers and went door knocking on Sousa’s behalf.

Green Party candidate Mary Kidnew also welcomed her party’s leadership to the riding over the weekend, with leaders Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault, as well as other leadership candidates hitting the riding in a last-minute show of support.

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