Election 2021: Here's how the parties fared in B.C.

Vancouver -

Polls have now closed across the country in Canada's 44th federal election, with the CTV News Decision Desk projecting a Liberal minority.

With thousands of votes still to be counted in British Columbia, most of the province's 42 ridings have already been called, with the Conservatives taking 13, the Liberals winning 13, the NDP winning 12 and the Greens winning one. Three seats were still too close to call as of 11 p.m.

Among the victorious New Democrats was party leader Jagmeet Singh, who held his Burnaby South riding.

In a speech to supporters at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Singh promised to continue fighting.

"I want to let Canadians know that you can count on the New Democrats to continue fighting for you," Singh said. "We are going to continue fighting for you just the same way we fought for you during the pandemic."

Former Green Party leader Elizabeth May was re-elected in her Saanich-Gulf Islands riding, but Green incumbent Paul Manly was trailing in Nanaimo-Ladysmith as of 10:15 p.m.

At that time, only two of the victorious candidates were from a party that wasn't the incumbent party in the riding.

The CTV News Decision Desk has declared Liberal Parm Bains the winner of Steveston-Richmond East, defeating Conservative incumbent Kenny Chiu.

In Port Moody-Coquitlam, NDP candidate Bonita Zarrillo unseated incumbent Conservative MP Nelly Shin. 

Zarrillo, a business analyst and three-term Coquitlam city councillor, also ran against Shin in the last election, when only 1,160 votes separated the first-place Conservatives from the third-place Liberals.

Other battleground ridings were called for the incumbent party, with Liberal Terry Beech holding onto his Burnaby North-Seymour riding, which has been the site of protests over the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project for years.

Beech famously bucked his party in 2017 by voting against the pipeline.  

Results in B.C. will go a long way toward determining the size of the Liberals' minority government caucus.

At dissolution, B.C. had 17 Conservative MPs, 11 Liberals, 11 New Democrats, two Greens and one Independent: former Liberal cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who did not seek re-election.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau gambled that a pandemic election would restore his party to a majority government, as it had after the 2015 election. That gamble ultimately failed to pay off, with the Liberals returned to Parliament with a similar minority.

The party's platform includes $78 billion in new spending over the next five years, much of it going to Canada's post-pandemic recovery. There's also $2 billion promised towards Indigenous reconciliation efforts, a climate plan that aims to bring the oil and gas sector to net-zero emissions by 2050, and a housing affordability plan that includes a ban on new foreign ownership for two years. 

With another minority Parliament on the way, the Liberals' ability to implement that platform will rely on them finding support from other parties. A comparison of all the parties' platforms can be found here. 

The COVID-19 pandemic loomed large over the 36-day campaign. When Trudeau called the election, he argued that Canadians deserved a chance to weigh in on how the country would "finish the fight against COVID-19." 

Opposition parties slammed the Liberal leader for calling an election they felt was unnecessary, and the election itself became a key issue throughout the campaign.

As time went on, polls showed a tight race, with the Liberals and Conservatives deadlocked at just above 30 per cent support in the final poll by Nanos Research for CTV News and the Globe and Mail. 

Support for smaller parties diverged over the course of the campaign, with support for the Green Party declining and the People's Party of Canada gaining ground.

The NDP was at 17.5 per cent support in the final Nanos poll, with the Bloc Quebecois at 7.5 per cent, the PPC at 6.6 and the Greens at 4.5.