Dougald Lamont concedes to NDP in St. Boniface, stepping down as Manitoba Liberal leader

Manitoba Liberal Party Leader Dougald Lamont has conceded to his NDP challenger in the race for St. Boniface seat in the legislature and stepped down as leader of the party.

Lamont conceded around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday to the NDP’s Robert Loiselle, a francophone Métis teacher who was born and raised in St. Boniface. CBC has also projected Loiselle as the winner in St. Boniface.

The Liberals held only three seats heading into Tuesday’s election.

CBC also projects that Jon Gerrard has lost the Liberal stronghold of River Heights.

Liberal Cindy Lamoureux will hold her seat in the Tyndall Park riding, according to CBC’s projection.

“Unfortunately, we are basically wiped out,” Lamont told CBC shortly after his concession on Tuesday.

“It’s not pleasant, but we all have to move on,” he said.

The Manitoba Liberals were up against strategic voters this election, which the New Democrats pushed heavily for in St. Boniface.

The St. Boniface constituency in central Winnipeg has swung between Manitoba’s NDP and Liberals for nearly 50 years.

From 1999 until 2018, the seat was held by the NDP’s Greg Selinger, who also served as Manitoba’s premier from 2009 to 2016.

Lamont, who became the Manitoba Liberal leader in 2017, won St. Boniface in a 2018 byelection, briefly giving the Liberals four seats that qualified them for official party status in the legislature.

Four seats was the best showing for the Manitoba Liberals since 1990, when they won seven seats.

While Lamont held on to St. Boniface in 2019, the Liberals dropped to three seats in that election, losing party status. Official party status brings benefits such as more funding, more money to employ staff and more time to speak in question period.

Throughout the 2023 election campaign, Lamont attempted to sell the Liberals as an alternative to the province’s two main parties, urging voters not to cast ballots for the NDP as a strategic ploy against the PCs.

Christopher Adams, a political science professor at the University of Manitoba, says the NDP put in a lot of work to win St. Boniface, including “a very prominent campaign office on Marion Avenue, which is one of the major arteries through St. Boniface.”

Lamont “ran a tough campaign and he worked very hard,” said Adams.

Winnipeg’s Tyndall Park riding has been held by Cindy Lamoureux since 2019.

Lamoureux first entered the legislature in 2016 as an MLA for the city’s Burrows riding after winning the seat in that year’s election. Her father, Kevin Lamoureux, is an MP and a former MLA.

Winnipeg’s River Heights riding has been a Liberal stronghold since 1999 under Jon Gerrard.

Gerrard led the Manitoba Liberals from 1998 until 2013, and also served as a secretary of state for Jean Chrétien’s federal Liberal government from 1993 to 1997.

The River Heights riding has flip-flopped between the Liberals and the PCs since the late 1950s.