Liberal incumbent Ken Hardie has been re-elected in Fleetwood-Port Kells for a second term as MP.
Hardie won with 18,149, or 33.7 per cent of the votes. Runner-up was Conservative Shinder Purewal (16,347 votes), followed by the NDP’s Annie Ohana (10,293), Green Party candidate Tanya Baertl (2,324) and Mike Poulin of the People’s Party (1,081).
The Fleetwood-Port Kells riding was formed in 2003 and was held by Conservative MP Nina Grewal, who won four consecutive elections until Liberal Ken Hardie defeated her in 2015, with 22,871 votes to her 14,275.
The NDP’s Gary Begg, who later ran sucessfully for the NDP provincially in the new riding of Surrey-Guildford in 2017, came in third with 10,463 votes, followed by the Green’s Richard Hosein, who received 1,154 votes.
In the 2015 election, in Fleetwood-Port Kells, 49,032 of 75,150 eligible voters turned out to vote.
In this 2019 election, there are 116,958 people living in this riding and 80,593 of them are on the voters’ list. Of those, 48,194 turned out to vote.
This riding contains Fleetwood, Clayton, Fraser Heights, Port Kells and East Newton, as well as Barnston Island.
Before venturing into politics, Hardie was a spokesman for TransLink and ICBC. He also worked as a radio and TV broadcaster and as a freelance print reporter. He and his wife live in the riding.
Purewal, who ranked second place, is a former citizenship judge who teaches political science at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He ran twice as a Liberal in the old Surrey-North riding, losing to the NDP’s Sandhu in 2011 and Canadian Alliance’s Chuck Cadman in 2000.
He explained early on in this election campaign why he switched teams. He said that while he is a fan of Paul Martin – Canada’s 21st prime minister – and Pierre Trudeau, he does not harbour the same admiration for Justin Trudeau.
“I belonged to the section of Paul Martin loyalists who were fiscally conservative. I’m not a fan of this Trudeau, although I admired his father. I think people had hopes in 2015. There was a lot of negative feedback on Harper, his style, and people were sort of, they had high hopes for Justin Trudeau. They looked at him as a young fellow with new ideas.”
But it hasn’t panned out, Purewal told the Now-Leader.
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