5 hours Ago By Andrew Duffy
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will sit in the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Nepean – the first time in more than 130 years that a sitting prime minister will represent an Ottawa riding. Carney put an exclamation mark on his party’s election night success Monday – the Liberals will again form government – by defeating his nearest rival, Conservative candidate Barbara Bal, in Nepean. It was a runaway victory.
Contesting his first-ever election, Carney, 60, a central banker-turned-politician, captured 63.3 per cent of the popular vote in Nepean. With 26 per cent of polls reporting, Carney held an 4,001-vote lead over Bal, a veteran police officer who ran an energetic, grassroots campaign.
Carney’s victory in Nepean means an Ottawa riding will host the prime minister for the first time since 1887 , when Canada’s founding prime minster, John A. Macdonald, last sat in Parliament as MP for Carleton. The former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, Carney officially entered the race for Nepean on March 23 – the same day he triggered a federal election.
By then, Carney had been prime minister for just nine days and Liberal leader for two weeks. His rapid and unlikely ascension to power made was possible only by a revolt within the Liberal caucus against Justin Trudeau’s leadership. Prime minister for nine years, Trudeau resigned on Jan.
6 in the face of a political crisis touched off by the shock resignation of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. A longtime Trudeau loyalist, Freeland resigned in December 2024 after being asked to accept a cabinet demotion and to present an economic statement she thought misguided. Carney’s candidacy in Nepean was also a function of an unusual political drama.
Incumbent Nepean MP Chandra Arya was disqualified as a candidate by the Liberal Party on March 20. The backbench Liberal MP had held the seat for a decade, but party officials removed him from contention at the eleventh hour, reportedly because of his close ties to the Indian government. Carney, in search of a safe riding that would ensure him a seat in Parliament, stepped into the breach in Nepean.
A Rockcliffe resident, Carney, had only a passing familiarity with the riding of Nepean, and he relied on a Liberal team that included his wife, Diana Fox Carney, and close friend and Harvard University hockey teammate, Peter Chiarelli, to campaign for him locally. During his one major campaign stop in Nepean, Carney told supporters he was a pragmatic and crisis-tested leader who could stand up to U.S.
President Donald Trump and defend Canada during the ongoing trade war. “Canada has given me everything: my family, my education and my values,” he said, “and in return, I’m ready to give everything for Canada.” Conservate candidate Barbara Bal, an Ottawa police staff sergeant, had been campaigning in the riding for a year-and-a-half by the time Carney entered the race.
A mother of three with deep roots in the community, Bal billed herself as “the local candidate” while characterizing Carney as a parachutist who expected votes by virtue of his position. She canvassed widely and used by-invitation meet-and-greets in private homes to spread her campaign message, which emphasized a crackdown on illegal guns and fentanyl, new affordable housing measures and a “strategic approach” to downsizing the public service. A former Canadian Forces reservist, Bal defined herself during the campaign in sharp contrast to Carney, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker educated at Harvard and Oxford universities.
“Like most Nepean residents, I worked my way up through hard work, perseverance and service to my community and country,” said Bal, who grew up on a dairy farm in southern Ontario, the oldest of 10 children. During the campaign, Green Party candidate Greg Hopkins, a child and youth counsellor, offered to donate his MP’s salary to the community in the unlikely event he was elected. Hopkins said he opposed the government’s return-to-work mandate for public servants — it makes no environmental sense, he said — and called for a ban on “wasteful” election signage on public property .
The other declared candidates in Nepean were New Democrat Shyam Shukla, an information technology specialist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and project manager Eric Fleury of the People’s Party of Canada. SEE MORE OTTAWA-AREA RESULTS Please check back as we update results live. Carleton Nepean Ottawa West-Nepean Kanata Ottawa South Ottawa—Vanier—Gloucester Orléans Ottawa Centre Outaouais roundup: Gatineau, Hull-Aylmer, Pontiac-Kitigan Zibi Rural Ottawa roundup: Lanark-Frontenac, Algonquin-Renfrew-Pembroke, and Prescott-Russell-Cumberland RelatedFederal election results LIVE: Mark Carney wins seat in Nepean, Liberals will form governmentFederal election 2025: Liberal Jenna Sudds leading in Kanata.
