Canadians go to polls as Trudeau seeks 2nd term

OTTAWA: Canadians began voting in a general election on Monday, with surveys predicting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party could return with a weakened minority government or lose his grip on power entirely.

The Liberals and the Conservatives, led by Andrew Scheer, were set for a near dead heat with pundits calling it one Canada’s closest elections ever.

Polls opened at 1100 GMT in the province of Newfoundland in eastern Canada, the first of the country’s six time zones—with some 27.4 million Canadians eligible to elect 338 members of parliament.

The first results are expected starting at 2300 GMT, a few hours before voting wraps up in westernmost British Columbia at 0200 GMT Tuesday.After 40 days of campaigning, neither of the parties—Liberal or Conservative—that have led Canada since Confederation in 1867 is expected to secure an absolute majority of seats in parliament.

At final campaign stops in westernmost British Columbia on Sunday, former golden boy Trudeau made an emotional appeal to voters to enable him to build on the achievements of his first term. He warned against Scheer’s pledged rollback of environmental protections including a federal carbon tax that discourages the use of large amounts of fossil fuels.Trudeau’s star has dimmed since winning in a 2015 landslide that echoed the wave of support that carried in his bullish, flamboyant late father Pierre in 1968.