A week after his historic win made headlines, MP-elect Bruce Fanjoy says he’s ready to get to work on representing the people of Carleton, who on election night chose not to re-elect Pierre Poilievre for the first time since 2004.
Fanjoy won in the early hours of the morning following election night as Elections Canada counted the ballots in Carleton, which had the highest voter turnout in the country.
He had been campaigning for about two years, before the election was called, after he said he saw a need for better leadership in Carleton.
Poilievre had held the seat for two decades, but on the night the Conservatives lost the election under his leadership, he also lost his own seat.
Liberal strategist John O’Leary said Fanjoy’s is a story of faith and possibility, and serves of a reminder of the power of voter.
“Very often in a race like this, where you’re running against the leader of the party or against a well-known incumbent, and you’re clearly the underdog, very often, you will pick up on something locally that has happened and that has perhaps leading to some, some discontent, and could give you an opening,” he told Ottawa Compass.
“In a case like in Carleton, Pierre Poilievre was the leader, and had been the leader for some time now,” he continued. “He would have responsibilities that could take him out of the riding very often, and there may have been a sense that he wasn’t there enough.”
On April 28, Fanjoy spent the day meeting with various supporters and volunteers before watching the results with close friends and family.
“I wanted to make sure they knew how proud I was of each and every one of them because it had been a remarkable campaign,” Fanjoy told Ottawa Compass. “Regardless of how the vote would have turned out, winning is a process.
“I had been watching our volunteers winning for a long time and particularly during the campaign, so I was very much at peace,” he continued. “I felt confident that we had done everything that we could, and it was now up to the voters in Carleton to tell us how we did.”
Fanjoy achieved 50.8 per cent of the vote, while Poilievre won 45.8 per cent. In the end, Fanjoy won by 4,315 ballots.
Strategists have suggested that Fanjoy will be given a strong role in the House of Commons as recognition for flipping the seat, but he said it was “too premature” to speculate on this; he said he met with Prime Minister Mark Carney last week, but that for now, he’s focussed on representing Carleton as an MP.
“I’ll be talking to people across the riding, talking to community associations, not-for-profits, business associations, farmers. I want to make sure that I take to Parliament a strong sense of the priorities of the riding,” he said.
One of the priorities that is top-of-mind for him is Canada’s relationship with United States President Donald Trump, he said, who met Tuesday with Carney in Washington for the first time since the election.
“We’re determined to stand up to the United States administration on this matter, and defend Canadian sovereignty, expand our trading relationships with reliable partners and support Canadian industry and workers and families in the meantime,” said Fanjoy.
O’Leary said part of Fanjoy’s success could be attributed to the national message that Carney represented.
“If the ballot question overall was who was the best to stand up to Donald Trump, the voters of Carleton actually had to make that decision on their own ballot. And it they had a choice to vote for Pierre poilievre for someone else, and more than 50 per cent of them chose Bruce Vanjoy and, by proxy, Mark Carney,” he said. “It’s more of a direct endorsement of Mark Carney.
“I think that there is a lot to do with that national issue being confronted by people at the ballot box.”
He said the daily door-knocking and “boots-on-the-ground” campaigning that Fanjoy had taken on were also responsible in securing the seat as the volunteers and campaign team’s hard work paid off.
An “underdog politician” like Fanjoy “defies conventional politics,” he added, and can achieve victories that were previously “unthinkable’ with the right volunteers, message, “grit’ and hard work.
“At the beginning of the campaign, Bruce would have seen it coming, but a lot of other people would have thought that this would be an incredibly difficult lift, certainly until a few months ago,” said O’Leary. “The idea of Pierre Poilievre losing his own seat in an election would be almost unthinkable.
“But I think that as the campaign progressed and as the national numbers were holding well, and as Mark Carney got through a successful debate performance, they started to have faith and belief in Bruce Fanjoy.”
