Justin Trudeau has just about managed to cling on to a second term as Canada’s prime minister, although is expected to go into a minority government.
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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called the election in Trudeau’s favour at about 10pm local time.
UPDATE: CBC News is projecting a Liberal minority government.
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) October 22, 2019
It comes after a brief election campaign during which multiple brown/blackface photos emerged from Trudeau’s youth, which he explained as being a result of his over-enthusiastic love of costumes.
“I am asking Canadians to forgive me for what I did,” he told reporters in a press conference from a plane.
“The fact of the matter is that I’ve always — and you’ll know this — been more enthusiastic about costumes than is sometimes appropriate.”
Results are still coming in, but it’s likely Trudeau will fail to win the 170 seats needed to form majority government, meaning he’ll either need to form a coalition with the minor parties, or use a slightly less formal agreement in order to actually govern.
It’s a big fall from his 2015 landslide win, when Trudeau swept to victory as the young and exciting new progressive leader in a world where several right-wing parties were forming government.
Trudeau presented himself as a champion of women and Indigenous people, and formed a friendship with Barack Obama.
However, his popularity, once the second highest in Canadian history, has been slipping due to a multitude of political disasters, including the SNC-Lavalin scandal, ongoing tensions with Canada’s Indigenous population, and his handling of the environment.
The multiple blackface photos – again, multiple – can’t have helped much here, either.
