Carney Says Byelection in Nullified Quebec Riding Coming ‘Soon,’ Toronto Byelections Happening This Summer

Prime Minister Mark Carney says a byelection will “soon” be held in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, where the Supreme Court of Canada recently overturned the April 2025 election outcome that saw a Liberal MP win by a single vote.

Carney told reporters on Feb. 17 that in addition to the byelection being held in Terrebonne, byelections will also be held in Toronto this summer after two Liberal MPs vacated their seats.

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned the election outcome in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne on Feb. 13, requiring a byelection to be scheduled. Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste was declared the winner in the riding by a single vote last spring over Bloc MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné.

The Bloc filed a legal challenge and asked the courts to invalidate the results after reports that a voter had their mail-in ballot sent back because of a misprint on the return envelope. Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bossé told several media outlets she mailed in her vote supporting Sinclair-Desgagné weeks before the April 28 election, but it was returned to her on May 2 because Elections Canada placed the wrong return address on the envelope.

Auguste was initially declared the winner in Terrebonne on April 28 by 35 votes, but the final vote tabulation later determined on May 1 that incumbent Sinclair-Desgagné had won re-election beating Auguste by 44 votes.

Elections Canada announced on May 7 that a judicial recount would take place for the riding, a process that is required when the vote difference between two candidates in a riding is less than 1/1,000 of the total votes cast. The recount led to a May 10 announcement that Auguste won the riding by a single vote.

The upcoming byelection in Terrebonne will by followed by two others this year. Former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned as an MP on Jan. 9 after accepting a role as an adviser to the government of Ukraine. Freeland had held the now-vacant seat for the Liberals since 2013.

Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Bill Blair has also stepped down after holding the riding of Scarborough Southwest since 2015. He resigned from his seat on Feb. 2 after Carney announced his appointment as Canada’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Carney has not yet called byelections for the three ridings. Elections Canada said in a Jan. 9 news release that the byelection for the University-Rosedale riding needed to be announced between Jan. 20 and July 8. The elections agency recently said the byelection for Terrebonne needed to be announced between Feb. 27 and Aug. 15.

The Liberals are down to 168 seats in the House of Commons—four seats away from the 172 seats needed to form a majority government. This is despite two Conservative MPs crossing the floor to join the Liberals late last year, which originally put the party one seat away from a majority.

The ridings of University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest are considered “safe” Liberal seats, while Terrebonne is a “toss-up” between the Bloc and Liberals, according to polling aggregator 338 Canada.