P.E.I. Progressive Conservatives projected to win majority government | 24CA News
Voters in Prince Edward Island had been projected to ship a majority win to the incumbent Progressive Conservatives on Monday after an election marketing campaign dominated by debate over heath care and housing.
An hour after polls closed, Premier Dennis King’s Tories had captured 56 per cent of the votes counted and had been main in 22 of the province’s 27 ridings. King was simply re-elected in his driving of Brackley-Hunter River.
The Liberals had been forward in three ridings and the Greens in two.
King’s first 4 years in workplace had been marked by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, two main post-tropical storms and mounting health-care woes.
His occasion’s foremost challengers had been the Green Party, led by Scottish-born dentist Peter Bevan-Baker, and the Liberals, led by former bureaucrat Sharon Cameron, who was acclaimed chief lower than 5 months in the past.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held a slight majority with 15 seats. The Greens had eight seats, most of them within the Charlottetown and Summerside areas. And the Liberals held 4 seats, having misplaced their majority to the Tories in 2019.
The vote in April 2019 noticed P.E.I. turn out to be the primary province in Canada the place the Green Party shaped the official Opposition.
Despite the Green breakthrough virtually 4 years in the past, political observers on the Island stated the citizens didn’t look like in a temper for extra change when the marketing campaign started on March 6. And there have been indications the occasion was not prepared for an election. At one level, a former Green member of the legislature, Hannah Bell, stated the occasion didn’t do sufficient planning or grassroots work.
The Greens nominated 25 candidates, two wanting a full slate. The Liberals additionally fell brief by the identical margin.
Some observers stated the Greens’ poor exhibiting is also attributed to inexperience. None of the Green members of the legislature had been elected in P.E.I. earlier than 2015.
On Monday evening, Green volunteers on the Trailside Music Hall in Charlottetown fell silent as early election outcomes confirmed Bevan-Baker in a useless warmth for his seat. Other outcomes confirmed Green incumbents in a battle for his or her political lives.
Nate Hood, director of coverage with the Greens, stated he was hopeful the occasion would have the ability to maintain on to a few of its seats.
“There was a lot of talk at the start of the campaign that there potentially might be a clean sweep for the PCs, like 27-0, and I don’t think we’re going to see that tonight,” Hood stated. “I think we’ve grown some momentum in the campaign and I think we’ll see us hold a solid base of support.”
As the marketing campaign began final month, King cited the challenges his occasion confronted: two hurricane-force storms — Dorian in 2019 and Fiona final September — and the financial fallout brought on by a potato fungus that halted exports of the Island’s most essential crop.
A former journalist and spokesman for former premier Pat Binns, King referred to as the election six months earlier than the province’s fastened election date, and fewer than two weeks after the province landed a 10-year health-care funding cope with Ottawa price $966 million.
As anticipated, health-care was the main focus of a televised leaders debate on March 27, throughout which King was on the defensive. As he did in the course of the earlier election marketing campaign, King responded to his opponents’ assaults by remaining optimistic and collegial.
“There are some wonderful ideas in the other three party platforms,” King stated in the course of the remarkably tame occasion.
Still, Bevan-Baker accused King of failing Islanders on well being care. “Let’s remember who created the problems in the first place: it’s the old parties,” Bevan-Baker stated.
The Liberal platform was targeted on health-care, promising a seven-point plan to be carried out in the course of the occasion’s first 180 days in workplace.
On the housing entrance, Bevan-Baker stated poor authorities planning was guilty for the Island’s lack of inexpensive houses. In response, the Tories have promised a rent-to-own program aimed toward serving to folks purchase a home with authorities help over two years.
The Green chief additionally accused King of failing Islanders by not calling for a public inquiry after post-tropical storm Fiona precipitated widespread harm and energy outages final fall. The Greens have argued that the federal government’s response to the storm demonstrated the Tories don’t understand how to answer local weather change — the Greens’ signature situation.
—With information from Michael MacDonald in Halifax
© 2023 The Canadian Press
