Pierre Poilievre heads back to Parliament with Alberta byelection win

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s nearly four-month absence from the House of Commons was widely expected to come to an end Monday night. 

By Raisa PatelOttawa Bureau

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will return to the House of Commons after a nearly four-month absence.

The longtime MP, who lost that title back in April following a bruising election defeat and the loss of his Ottawa-area seat, won a closely-watched Alberta byelection late Monday night, cementing his return to the lower chamber this fall.

As the clock stretched into the early hours of Tuesday morning, Poilievre was leading the race with 79.6 per cent of the vote with 224 out of 286 polls reporting. Independent candidate Bonnie Critchley followed behind with 10 per cent of the vote, followed by Liberal candidate Darcy Spady with 4.6 per cent.

The Conservative leader spent the evening in Camrose, a city in the central Alberta riding of Battle River—Crowfoot, where he chose to make his political comeback.

In a speech at a local restaurant, he thanked the voters of Battle River—Crowfoot, “for whom I am grateful that I will have the chance to be their humble servant, to fight every day and in every way for the people in this region who feed, power and protect all of Canada.”

Poilievre, who called running in the riding “the privilege of his life,” said his new constituents “reinforced a lot of lessons that all of us in politics have to learn and relearn and relearn again: humility and hard work, loyalty and love.”

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/pierre-poilievre-heads-back-to-parliament-with-alberta-byelection-win/article_42b66505-77b8-4088-aeb1-747da834e3c3.html