PRINCE ALBERT — Buckley Belanger will be representing the Liberal Party in the House of Commons after a resounding victory in the Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River riding on Monday night.
Belanger, a longtime NDP MLA for the Cumberland riding, defeated Conservative candidate and former Saskatchewan Party MLA Jim Lemaigre and NDP candidate Doug Racine.
Belanger will be the lone Saskatchewan Liberal Member of Parliament, with the rest of the province electing Conservatives.
Belanger said in an interview with the Herald on Tuesday that the new boundary better reflected the voting intentions of the riding.
He said the old riding, which included Meadow Lake where former Conservative MP Gary Vidal resided, made voting awkward for Northern people to participate.
"In the last several elections, the northern part of the province has always voted Liberal or New Democrat,” Belanger said.
"Sometimes it is simply outvoted from the southern partners. Now that the boundaries have been realigned and properly reflect our region, it just shows that the riding was never conservative.”
With 86 of 88 polls reporting, Belanger received 5,680 votes for 65.2 per cent of the vote, Lemaigre received 2,226 votes for 25.6 per cent of the vote, and Racine was third with 802 votes for 9.2 per cent of the vote.
Belanger credited his ground team for the resounding victory.
“All I know is that we had a great team,” he said. “When we run in these elections, there's two things we don't do. We don't underestimate the opposition, and we don't take things for granted. It's clear that when you work hard in the campaign, people see that, the Northern people expect it. You have got to do what is required to win, and this time it certainly paid off.”
Going to Ottawa as a first-time Member of Parliament, Belanger said that he wants to act as an advocate and a navigator of the bureaucracy in Ottawa.
"We have just got to find our place and scheme of things and move the northern agenda from there. Obviously, it's great to have a Liberal MP with a Liberal government in power, and we are just going to make sure that we represent our people as best we can and put all our arguments forward,” Belanger said.
He explained that he wants to bring a new voice to Ottawa after eight years with only Conservative MPs.
"I think I'm going to bring a certain perspective to Saskatchewan that is much required,” he said. “The last eight years, we've only heard from Conservative MPs and that's unfortunate because they obviously have their agenda. They have their political lines, and they all speak the same language.”
Belanger said that eight years of the same message have confused people, and he can bring a different perspective.
Belanger said that the Liberals and progressive voters saw a huge surge in support in places like Saskatoon.
"All I would say to those folks is that it's going to get a lot better because we know that there's a lot of good, solid supports coming out of Ottawa to Saskatchewan, but we never hear about it because there's different ways that that the province responds to these announcements,” he said.
He gave the example of $10 a day Daycare and other Liberal initiatives from the past four years.
“Some of these little tricks and the continual dialogue from 14 conservative MP’s, you could see that it does create a bit of a one-view perspective and we want to bring as many views to the table as we can,” Belanger said.
As of press time, the Liberals and Prime Minister Mark Carney have 169 seats, the Conservatives have 142 seats, the Bloc Québécois have 22 seats, the NDP have seven seats and the Green Party has one seat with leader Elizabeth May winning her seat in Saanich—Gulf Islands.
The Liberals received 8,538,720 votes or 43.7 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives received 8,062,115 votes or 41.3 per cent of the vote, the Bloc received 1,232,291 votes or 6.3 per cent of the vote, the NDP received 1,231,623 or 6.3 per cent of the vote and the Green Party received 243,804 votes or 1.3 per cent of the vote. With only seven seats, the NDP lost official party status and leader Jagmeet Singh resigned after losing his seat of Burnaby South, BC.
Conservative leader Pierre Pollievre also lost his riding of Carleton to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy.
Belanger said the next four years will be a daunting task.
“The northern people have simply asked me to do four things, and that is to work very hard, which we intend to do,” he said.
“I'll be very aggressive in our strategy…. They told us you make sure you keep humble as well, which of course I have always done in all of my political career, and of course, the third or fourth thing is don't forget who got you there. These kinds of messages were continually in different ways, continually pushed upon me, and absolutely those are solid orders and we will follow through.” [email protected]
