Trudeau’s party wins Canada election

ABOVE: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, photo via his Facebook page.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party won the country’s election that took place on Monday.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported Trudeau’s party won 157 seats in the House of Commons, but failed to secure the 170 seats necessary to have a majority government. Erin O’Toole of the Conservative Party was Trudeau’s main challenger.

“You are sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get Canada through this pandemic into the brighter days ahead,” Trudeau told supporters on Montreal after the election. “My friends that’s exactly what we are ready to do.”

“Millions of Canadians have chosen a progressive plan,” he added.

Trudeau has been prime minister since 2015.

He won re-election in 2019, even though a picture of him in blackface emerged a few weeks before the vote. His party lost its majority in Parliament.

Trudeau last month called a snap election in the hopes his party could once again have a majority government.

The prime minister in 2017 formally apologized to those who suffered persecution and discrimination under Canada’s anti-LGBTQ laws and policies and announced the Canadian government would settle a class-action lawsuit filed by those who were forced to leave the military and civil service because of their sexual orientation.

A law that added gender identity to Canada’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes also law took effect in 2017. Trudeau supports a bill that would ban so-called conversion therapy in the country.

Canada in 2018 joined the Global Equality Fund, a public-private partnership the U.S. launched in order to promote LGBTQ rights around the world. Canada has also said it would offer refuge to LGBTQ Afghans who are fleeing their country after the Taliban regained control of it in August.

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