It's election day in Canada. Here's what you need to know about the three main party leaders
Today is election day in Canada . A new federal government will be chosen, but none of the party leaders fought the election he expected.
Jagmeet Singh
of the
NDP
, who for months seemed the main opposition to a looming Conservative majority, is now facing a wipeout in
seat count, even his own. He achieved some policy goals through his deal to prop up the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau through a third term that saw the collapse of its popular support, but he failed to turn that into votes for his own party. With his own seat in jeopardy, it looks grim for Singh’s own future as leader, though not perhaps for his legacy.
Mark Carney has been toying with the Liberal Party for years, and Justin Trudeau’s resignation let him skip to the prime ministership without first winning an election. It could have been a recipe for a disaster of credibility with this politically untested central banker, but Donald Trump’s economic threats quickly transformed Carney from a long running Liberal daydream to the front runner in the polls.
Pierre Poilievre presented himself and the Conservative Party as a government in waiting, led by a slightly prickly but detail oriented policy obsessive who wasn’t in it for the personal affection. His goal was common sense. Their foil was Justin Trudeau, leading a washed up, tired out Liberal Party, weak in his own caucus, and disliked by Canadians in general. But then, the volatility of Donald Trump’s trade war upended that tidy ballot question, and threatened to make this an election on sovereignty. A pivot might have come too late for Poilievre, and his real fight was against a reborn Liberal Party under Mark Carney, an accomplished central banker who managed to flip the narrative.
Read more about the three major party leaders in these profiles of the leaders.
‘They’ve cratered’: For NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh this election is do or die
Under Jagmeet Singh, Canada’s New Democratic Party has successes its leftist supporters can be proud of.
A national dental care program, pharmacare and anti-replacement-worker legislation are all in line with the party’s social democratic vision of governance.
But they came about in a curious way, as the NDP’s policy reward in a tit-for-tat arrangement that kept the governing Liberal party in power well past the end of its popular support.
The supply and confidence deal that gave Liberals control of the parliamentary agenda, supported by NDP votes, did not benefit Singh’s party as much as it could have, political experts say. It dragged on beyond its purpose. It needed a time limit, an earlier exit clause. For the NDP, it looked like all give and no take.
Singh made this deal in 2022 but never fully capitalized on what he had, and now it might be too late, because he has become a “bit player” in this current campaign, said Tamara Small, professor of political science at the University of Guelph, whose research focuses on the use of digital technologies in politics.
“He’s in a tough position,” Small said. “This race is coming down to two parties and there’s really no space for him.”
He saved the Liberal Party from oblivion. But can Mark Carney close the deal?
Now that Donald Trump has won two presidential votes, though he notoriously claims three, it is easy to forget how disorienting the Brexit referendum was to the political and economic establishment, and how similar a shock.
Brexit happened not long before the first Trump win in 2016, and it seemed to announce a new era. It took down a British prime minister who had argued, alongside the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, that leaving the European Union was a terrible idea for the U.K., tantamount to economic self sabotage, ginned up by a chaotic new populism that tugged on modern conservatism from the farther right.
So it fell to Carney, now Canada’s Prime Minister seeking his first election to public office, to use monetary policy to absorb those shocks. And he did. There were recriminations about him being a doomsayer, and accusations of being so unclear on interest rates that he got tagged with the “unreliable boyfriend” nickname in the financial press. But it could have been a lot worse. Doom was dodged.
Canada faces similar economic fears today, and similar imperatives to resolve volatile geopolitics with economic reality. These have transformed Carney from a long-running Liberal daydream to the front runner in the polls.
Why Trudeau’s exit was the worst thing that ever happened to Pierre Poilievre
For a second, Mark Carney didn’t know where to look.
The English language debate had just ended. Carney had to look somewhere, he couldn’t just keep shuffling his papers. To his left, host Steve Paikin was walking toward Yves-François Blanchet to say happy birthday. If Carney turned that way, the final image of the leaders all together before this tight election would be him shaking hands with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.
From Carney’s right came a friendly voice. His head swivelled like a bird looking for food. It made for a striking moment, this little formality, and Pierre Poilievre seemed the more natural for initiating it. Carney leapt at the opportunity, leaning in with a smile to talk in his ear, patting him warmly.
It was funny to imagine Poilievre and Justin Trudeau looking like that, after such a long animosity. Trudeau especially would look like he was faking nice, as no doubt he would be.
Other moments like this have humanized Poilievre in the eyes of voters. He has shown off his family and told personal stories, talking about being adopted from a teenaged mother, and about his own young daughter who has special needs. But to emotionally familiarize the man behind the politician never seemed like core strategy for the Conservative Party of Canada.
People don’t swoon over Poilievre. That’s the point. Many Canadians are frankly embarrassed about having once liked Trudeau so much, whose life they had known since his childhood.
So it seemed fine just to be the guy who identifies big problems and proposes workable solutions, a slightly prickly but detail oriented policy obsessive who isn’t in it for the personal affection. It’s an election, not a date. This seemed to be the Conservative attitude, and for a while, it looked to be a winner. Odds are you’re never having that beer with the prime minister anyway, so who cares whether you’d have fun or not. On the other hand, if you elect him, you’ll definitely pay his taxes. This was to be an election about economic priorities and common sense.