Due to actions by Trump, Conservatives are no longer runaway favorites.
Snap Election April 28
The Wall Street Journal reports Canada’s Mark Carney Calls a Snap Election
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney called a snap election on Sunday, sending Canadians to the polls for a vote on April 28 that is set to revolve largely around the question of how Canada will deal with President Trump.
Carney, a 60-year-old former central banker, called the election less than two weeks after he was sworn in to succeed Justin Trudeau. Carney begins a race against the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Pierre Poilievre, with some polls showing the Liberals leading public opinion for the first time in years.
The governing Liberals seemed headed for an electoral drubbing only a few weeks ago, but are now in a position to possibly win the election because of voters’ concerns about the harm Trump could do to the Canadian economy with his threats to levy punitive tariffs on one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners. Trump also has proposed using economic force to annex Canada, a threat that has animated a patriotic backlash and galvanized public opinion against the U.S.
“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” said Carney in remarks delivered in Ottawa Sunday.
The dynamic has helped shift the focus away from a Canadian economy that was already struggling before Trump’s tariff threats and an affordability crisis that had sent the Liberal Party’s approval ratings to historic lows.
“This election is definitely about one thing: Trump and the damage he’s going to do to the economy,” said Gerald Butts, an informal Carney adviser and vice chairman of the Eurasia Group consulting firm.
The election will be a race between two very different candidates. Carney is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who also led the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Poilievre, 45, and a two-decade veteran of Parliament, is a populist who rode a wave of discontent over Trudeau’s Covid, environmental and immigration policies.
Poilievre said he shares Canadians’ concerns about Trump’s tariffs. “We must put Canada first and bring about a change,” the Conservative leader said as he kicked off his campaign on Sunday. He then moved quickly to a critique of the Liberal government.
“The question is whether Canadians can afford a fourth Liberal term,” he said, blaming the Liberals for feeble growth, elevated housing costs, damaging a once-admired immigration system, and thwarting projects in the country’s resource sector. The Liberals’ “radical, post-national globalist ideology has weakened our nation,” he said.
Carney has tried to tar Poilievre as “a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump.”
Scott Reid, a onetime strategist to former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, said Carney has so far successfully distanced himself from Trudeau, and that gives the Liberals a chance to complete a historical political comeback.
The shift in the Liberal Party’s fortunes since the beginning of the year has been dramatic. Over two months ago, projections from polling aggregator 338Canada called for a big Conservative victory with the Liberals in third place. Today, it has the Liberals winning a fourth straight election with a majority mandate.
“I have never seen something like this,” said Philippe J. Fournier, the head of 338Canada. “It doesn’t mean that it will last. But could it last for a five-week campaign? Yeah, it could.”
Last week, Trump weighed in, hinting he would prefer to work with a Trudeau-less Liberal government. “I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care,” Trump told Fox News. Trump said Poilievre “is stupidly, no friend of mine…I don’t know him, but he said negative things.”
Poilievre immediately tried to turn Trump’s remarks into an advantage. “It’s clear President Trump wants the Liberals in power because they will keep this country weak,” he said. “What Canadians need is a leader who is tough and firm and stands by his convictions.”
Poilievre, who used populist rhetoric similar to Trump’s in building his polling lead last year, has tried to capture some of the anti-U.S. energy in recent speeches. He unveiled a new “Canada First” slogan and warned Trump in a speech that, “I’m a tough guy to deal with.”
Collapse of the Conservatives
Newsweek comments on Mark Carney’s Chances of Beating Pierre Poilievre in Canada Election
With the general election just over a month away, polls show the race essentially neck-and-neck. As of Sunday, polling aggregator 338Canada had the Liberal Party at 39 percent, the Conservative Party at 37 percent, and New Democratic Party at 11 percent. The Liberal Party’s lead falls within the margin of error, which is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The same aggregator shows that when Trudeau announced his resignation on January 5, his party was polling around 20 percent compared to the Conservative party more than doubling support, at 45 percent. That was also prior to Trump taking office on January 20. The polls have now nearly flipped.
A CityNews-Léger poll of 1,504 Canadians conducted from March 10 to 13 found the Liberal Party at 40 percent to the Conservative Party’s 37 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.49 percentage points.
Carney also outpaces Poilievre in overall approval. He is the only Canadian leader in the poll with a higher approval than disapproval rate, earning a 48 percent approval rating and 30 percent disapproval. Poilievre holds a 35 percent approval rating, with 52 percent disapproval.
Trump single-handily turned the Canadian election from a debate over Liberal incompetence to a debate over Trump.
Trifecta Success?
- If Trump wants top help elect a liberal leader in Canada, he succeeded.
- If he wanted to sour friendship between two great countries, he did that too.
- And finally, if he wanted to hurt the economies of both Canada and the United States, then Trump scored a boxed trifecta.
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That last link is a real hoot. Please give it a look if you missed it.