Liberal Brendan Hanley projected to win re-election in Yukon
Conservative Ryan Leef hoped to reclaim seat he lost in 2015
Brendan Hanley is projected to handily win a second term as Yukon’s Liberal MP, with all but one of the territory’s polls yet to report results.
“I’m really honoured and humbled to have earned the trust of Yukoners once again,” Hanley told a crowd of supporters celebrating in Whitehorse on Monday night.
With 104 of the territory’s 105 polls reporting, Hanley held a solid lead with 11,687 votes, or 52.8 per cent. Conservative Ryan Leef followed with 8,573 votes, or 38.7 per cent.
NDP candidate Katherine McCallum was in third with 1,417 votes, or 6.4 per cent, and Green candidate Gabrielle Dupont trailed in fourth, with 464 votes or 2.1 per cent.
There were 30,764 registered electors in the territory, according to Elections Canada.
Yukon was the only province or territory where the number of advance poll voters decreased from last election. In the Yukon, an estimated 4,748 voters turned out at advance polls — down 570 votes from 2021.
Hanley was first elected in 2021 after he stepped down as Yukon’s chief medical officer to run. He succeeded Yukon’s longtime Liberal MP Larry Bagnell, who decided not to run again that year.
In his speech on Monday night, Hanley said he never took his re-election for granted.
“Even a few months ago, a win seemed like a distant prospect for either myself, or our party. How dramatically circumstances have changed over the last few months,” he said.
He referred to the “strange and troubling new relationship with the United States,” and said that he was determined to ensure that Yukoners’ voices are heard in Ottawa.
He also said that despite the tariff threat from the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to Canadian sovereignty, other challenges facing the country “have not melted away.”
The campaign in Yukon saw voters, and candidates, focused on many of the same things being talking about across the country: housing, the cost of living, the U.S. trade war, national sovereignty and Arctic defence.
“Being a governing party at this time of multiple threats and crises is something that perhaps few would envy,” Hanley said.
“We’re still in a climate emergency. We need urgently to catch up on housing supply.”
‘We put up a great fight’
Leef was also seeking a second term as MP, a decade after he last ran. Leef was first elected the territory’s MP in 2011, unseating Bagnell, only to lose to Bagnell in 2015. Leef then sat out the next two federal campaigns.
Speaking to his supporters as the results came in on Monday night, Leef conceded his loss to Hanley.
“The results tonight aren’t what we wanted, but the sun will rise tomorrow and we will still be here and our values will remain unchanged,” he said.
“That is the steady, stable and predictable part of being a Conservative.”
Leef said he had no regrets about the campaign he ran.
“We did what we could do with the time we had,” he said. “We put up a great fight and we can be really, really proud of that. And there’ll be another time.”
He also had warm words for the other candidates, and urged his supporters to help Hanley be an effective representative for the Yukon.
“We need our MP to succeed so we all succeed. If he fails, we fail with him,” he said.
“I know we wish we were here tonight celebrating. I know we wish we had a different result, but the one thing we’ve always been good at is being gracious in victory, and being gracious in defeat.”
Katherine McCallum of the NDP and Gabrielle Dupont of the Greens were running their first campaigns as federal candidates.
The last time Yukoners elected an NDP MP was in 1997 when Louise Hardy won the seat. She succeeded former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin who had held the seat for a decade.
Yukoners have never elected a Green Party candidate, in either a federal or territorial election. The party’s best showing in the territory was in 2011, when candidate John Streicker came in third, ahead of the NDP, with 18 per cent of the vote.
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