Conservatives win federal seats comfortably

Incumbent Conservative MP’s Tracy Gray and Dan Albas are reflecting on their re-election. Both secured comfortable victories in a general election that saw the Liberals secure another minority government.

“I think it’s very clear in this election that Canadians did not give a blank cheque to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to govern this country with a majority,” Gray said.

“I think that’s clear in the results we saw.”

Preliminary results for Kelowna-Lake Country riding show Gray accumulated over 45% of the vote for a total of 30,183 votes. Her main challengers, Liberal candidate Tim Krupa and NDP candidate Cade Desjarlais had 17,557 and 12,093 respectively.

The PPC’s Brian Rogers had 4,641 votes while Green Party candidate Imre Szeman had 2,055.

Gray thanked the community for trusting her to be their voice in parliament.

“To have the confidence of our residents here, I really look forward to getting back to work and advocating on behalf of our community in Ottawa, and also at our constituency office,” she said.

She added while on the campaign trail, many residents were not thrilled about having the election, especially during these difficult times.

“The day the election was called, we literally had ash falling from the sky and people were evacuated and houses were burning in our neighbouring riding. A lot of people were not happy that we were put into this over $600 million election during the pandemic.”

Part of the Conservative Party’s platform included balancing the budget, recovering one million jobs and accountability.

“I’m proud of the platform we put together, it obviously resonated with a lot of people. The feedback I got was overwhelming where people were concerned about affordability, they were concerned about inflation, cost of housing, the rising debt that we’re incurring [and] how we’re going to pay that off.”

In Central Okanagan Similkameen Nicola, incumbent MP Dan Albas reclaimed his spot in parliament after preliminary results show his totals with almost 46% of the vote at 28,099. The Liberal’s Sarah Eves secured 14,356 votes while the NDP’s Joan Phillip has 12,640.

The PPC’s Kathryn Mcdonald had 4,490 and the Green Party’s Brennan Wauters has 1,646 votes.

In a Facebook video, Albas expressed his gratitude to voters.

“It’s a big responsibility because we have a lot of issues facing our country right now, and whether it be on focusing on the fourth wave pandemic and dealing with the issues that are coming from that and getting us onto a proper recovery, so we can return to normalcy.”

The Liberals won the election with preliminary results showing 158 seats securing Justin Trudeau another minority government.

The Conservatives secured 119 seats. The NDP won 25 seats.