Incumbent Marc Dalton was poised to reclaim his seat as the Conservative MP of Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge as election night came to an end.
He celebrated with volunteers at their party headquarters in downtown Maple Ridge. There are still more than 4,000 outstanding mail-in and other ballots, but his lead was strong enough that the Conservatives were confident of victory.
With 180 out of 181 polls having reported, Dalton had a lead of about 2,400 votes.
“I’m optimistic, but it’s not in the bag yet,” said Dalton. “I’m hopeful to be re-elected, and it would be a tremendous honour to represent this community, and I want to do so to my best possible capacity.”
As he was being interviewed, a party worker came up with a phone to show him that he had been declared by a television outlet, and walked away whooping.
“I’ve now been declared…” said Dalton.
He expected the trend of him taking some 37 per cent of the vote to hold as the remaining votes are counted.
“I’ve been to 5,000-6,000 doors personally, and our team has been to 20,000 doors, and we had a good sense of where things are at,” said Dalton. “The numbers are pretty much what I expected.”
“It was a competitive race,” he said. “It was tough. It’s was a grind.”
Dalton had 18,026 votes, and in second place was the NDP’s Phil Klapwyk with 15,602, for 32 per cent of the vote. Liberal candidate Ahmed Yousef was sitting in third with 12,112, for 25 per cent of the vote. All results are preliminary.
Klapwyk was not conceding late Monday.
“We feel really good,” he said. “It’s really important that every vote gets counted.”
“Congratulations to the other candidates.”
He said the country is in the same position after this election as it was before, as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party will again form government.
“Locally, I thought there was a lot more impetus to change than was shown in the local results,” said Klapwyk.
The local results may not be known until Tuesday or later, as there were 4,031 voting kids still to be counted. Counting of those votes cannot begin until Tuesday afternoon. Elections Canada has said it could take four days before the final vote tallies are in.
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Even without a Green Party candidate this election, it is still a six-way race in the riding.
PPC candidate Juliuss Hoffmann (2,784) had six per cent of the vote, Independent Steven Ranta (422) one per cent, and Peter Buddle (154) of the Rhinoceros Party 0.3 per cent.
Dalton had been a provincial politician, and the former two-term Liberal MLA for Maple Ridge-Mission was first elected to federal Parliament in the October 2019 election.
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