By Canadian Press

Amid poor showing by Chilliwack-Hope can

Amid poor showings by Chilliwack-Hope candidate, leader, NDP will not be granted official party status

May 26, 2025 | 8:08 AM

OTTAWA — Government House leader Steven MacKinnon says the NDP will not be granted official party status because the Parliament of Canada Act says a party needs at least 12 seats to be recognized.

The NDP was reduced to just seven seats in last month’s election, including the NDP candidate in Chilliwack-Hope who fared poorly in the April 28 election.

Four years ago, the New Democratic Party candidate in Chilliwack-Hope, DJ Pohl, garnered over 26 per cent of the vote as a viable second-place contestant in the 2021 federal election.

While longtime MP Mark Strahl still won with 46 per cent of the votes cast (25,421) in the election held four years ago, Pohl still received 14,603 votes as a respected figure in NDP circles around Chilliwack.

But with all 243 polls reporting results, the NDP candidate for Chilliwack-Hope in April’s election, Teri Westerby, saw his vote tally drop over 9,000 votes compared to Pohl’s from just four years ago, finishing with only 7.3 per cent of the vote share (4,779 votes) and a third-place showing.

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While Westerby ran a fairly robust campaign with multiple campaign events, including a meet and greet at a home and events at local venues, his repeated themes about corporate power and its deleterious impacts on housing and food prices failed to resonate with more voters in Chilliwack. He also advertised in three area newspapers, though that campaign expenditure did not pay dividends in terms of an expanded vote share.

For historical reference, the NDP candidate in the 2019 election for Chilliwack-Hope, Heather McQuillan, received 16.7 per cent of the vote, or 8,957 votes.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh lost his Burnaby Central seat by a double-digit margin to the Liberal Party candidate. The NDP as a national party was largely an afterthought in what became a two-party race between the Grits and the Conservatives. As a result, Singh’s party lost over 15 seats and led to his decision to step down as the party leader. In the meantime, Vancouver-Kingsway NDP MP Don Davies has been named interim party leader.