Lamoureux maintains hold on Winnipeg North

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This article was published 20/09/2021 (1517 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux easily won the Winnipeg North seat he’s held since 2010 and, despite Monday’s mid-pandemic election resulting in another Liberal minority, he says it was worth it.

“It proves a great deal,” Lamoureux said at his Maples campaign headquarters where music blared and masked supporters cheered and posed for photos with him. “I’m feeling good,” he said.

Lamoureux had garnered about 52 per cent of the votes with 176 out of 177 polls reporting.

“At the end of the day, when we called the election, we were looking for a new mandate,” Lamoureux told reporters.  “Canadians from coast to coast to coast know what it is that we want to accomplish over the next couple of years,”  he said.

“Canadians want political parties to stop fighting and work together,” said Lamoureux, who expressed satisfaction with Justin Trudeau remaining at the helm of the party. “I don’t think there’s any need for a leadership review.”

NDP strategists had believed winning Winnipeg North was key to unseating the Liberals as the party people associate with social programs, particularly after the Trudeau government became the face of COVID-19 supports for economically stressed Canadians.

“This wasn’t the outcome that we were hoping for,” the Liberals’ main rival, NDP candidate Melissa Chung-Mowat said Monday night, conceding defeat and congratulating Lamoureux. She had received 28 per cent of the vote with 176 polls reporting.

“We have work to do and the work will continue,” said Chung-Mowat, who tried appealing to the grassroots to loosen Lamoureux’s hold on the riding that includes the North End, with a large Indigenous population, blocks of overcrowded apartments and some of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada. 

The political novice took on a strong incumbent MP; Lamoureux is a seasoned politician known for his weekly availability at the McDonald’s restaurant on Keewatin Street, where he’s met constituents since 1989, including during his term as a Manitoba MLA.

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The NDP and its predecessors had held the area for most of the past century, and it pushed hard to get it back with Chung-Mowat, who is of Chinese and Métis ancestry.

Chung-Mowat vowed to run again and encouraged more women and underrepresented groups to run for elected office.

Winnipeg North attracted six candidates from across the political spectrum, including Robert Crooks (Communist Party of Canada), Angela Brydges (Green), Anas Kassem (Conservatives), and Patrick Neilan (People’s Party of Canada).

At press time, the Conservative candidate was a distance third, followed by the PPC, the Green party and the Communist party. 

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.