particularly

Martinez comes from the southern town of Bahia Blanca, a place particularly known for its love for basketball.

He faces sentencing enhancements alleging that he took advantage of a position of trust, preyed on particularly vulnerable victims and committed the crimes with planning and sophistication.

"I'm just saying that generally speaking, the electorate doesn't particularly care about it."

He added: "With pressures on the replacement programme growing and with limited engineer availability, especially in rural areas, there's a real risk of prolonged disruption, particularly for vulnerable households."

Increased support for Canada's two largest parties has come at the expense of smaller parties, particularly the NDP, whose share of the popular vote is down by around 12 percentage points.