Canada will hold an election Monday following a campaign electrified by threats made by U.S. President Donald Trump, with Prime Minister Mark Carney favoured to win after promising voters he has the experience to stand up to the United States.
A victory for Carney’s Liberal Party would mark one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history.
On Jan. 6, the day former prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his plans to resign, his Liberals trailed the Conservatives by more than 20 points in most polls, and Tory leader Pierre Poilievre looked certain to be Canada’s next premier.
Over the following weeks, Trump chaotically rolled out his trade war while repeatedly talking about absorbing Canada into the United States.
Outraged Canadians booed the American anthem at sporting events and cancelled U.S. travel plans.
When Carney replaced the unpopular Trudeau on March 14, he anchored his message squarely on the Trump threat, claiming the U.S. “wants to break us, so they can own us.”
The 60-year-old, who has never held elected office but led the central banks of Canada and Britain, assured voters his global financial experience made him the ideal candidate to defend Canada against Trump’s volatile tariff campaign.
“Pierre Poilievre has no plan to stand up to President Trump,” Carney said Friday.
“Unlike Pierre Poilievre, I’ve managed budgets before. I’ve managed economies before, I’ve managed crises before. This is a time for experience, not experiments,” he added.
Trump’s impact and the Trudeau-for-Carney swap unsettled Poilievre, a 45-year-old who has been in parliament for two decades.
But the Conservative leader has tried to keep attention on issues that drove anger towards the Liberals during Trudeau’s decade in power, particularly rising living costs.
“The trajectory we are on after this lost Liberal decade, were it to continue, would lead to more despair,” he said Thursday.
He has also criticized Trump, but blamed poor economic performance under the Liberals for leaving Canada vulnerable to U.S. protectionism.
Analysts say his political style, notably his fondness for bombastic partisan attacks, has also hurt him with voters who may have been inclined to vote Tory, including women.
Tightening race?
Polls project a Liberal government, but the race has tightened in its final days.
The CBC’s poll aggregator has at various points given the Liberals a seven-to-eight point national lead, but on Friday it put Liberal support at 42 per cent, with the Tories at 38.
A crucial factor that could help the Liberals is the sagging numbers for the left-wing New Democrats and the Quebec nationalist Bloc Québécois.
In past elections, stronger support for those parties has curbed Liberal seat tallies in the key provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
A record 7.3 million of Canada’s 28.9 million eligible voters cast advanced ballots over the Easter weekend, a 25 per cent increase compared to advanced voting in 2021.
Montreal voter Nathalie Tremblay said this election is “definitely more important” than past elections because of “everything that is happening in the United States.”
“I think everyone is concerned,” she said, voicing hope “a strong government” is in place after Monday.
Simon-Pierre Lepine said he was worried about “ten more years of backtracking” under the Liberals, who he accused of plunging the country “into a financial hole.”
The 49-year-old entrepreneur said he believes “the Conservatives traditionally do much better” in managing the economy.
‘A strange campaign’
For McGill University political scientist Daniel Béland, Conservative efforts to “change the subject of the campaign” away from Trump have largely failed.
Tim Powers, a political analyst, agreed the campaign is not the one the Tories wanted to run.
They had hoped “there’d be more of a debate around affordability and all of the things that they were scoring points on,” he said, adding Poilievre “envisioned a campaign where Justin Trudeau would be his opponent.”
But he said it’s been “a strange campaign,” full of surprises and the Tories will make a final weekend push to turn out their vote.
The winner should be known hours after polls close on Monday.
