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Australia is not the only Western nation heading to the polls this week with US President Donald Trump looming large.
When Canadians choose their next government on Monday (Tuesday AEST), they will do so largely based on who they think is the best person to deal with the upheaval, threats and animosity being thrown at them from Washington.
The Trump effect, which dramatically altered the frame of the campaign before it even began, is poised to deliver Mark Carney’s Liberal Party a victory that was almost unthinkable a few months ago, when Justin Trudeau was leading the party to certain defeat.
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, during a campaign rally in Mississauga, Ontario on the weekend.Credit: Bloomberg
But Carney, the Harvard- and Oxford-educated central bank governor who has never before been a politician, now seems like a man factory-made for this moment: a level-headed, financially literate banker who can talk Trump’s language and stand up to him where necessary.
“Is Pierre Poilievre the person you want sitting across the table from Donald Trump negotiating for us?” Carney said at a rally at the weekend, referring to his conservative rival. “I’ve managed budgets before, I’ve managed economies before. I have managed crises before. This is a time for experience, not experiments.”
That is a bold line, in some ways, for a person who has only been prime minister for six weeks and doesn’t hold a seat in parliament. But Carney’s success has been to convince Canadians that his financial experience, including steering Canada’s central bank through the global financial crisis, is more valuable now than the hard yards done by Poilievre, who has been in parliament for 20 years and opposition leader since 2022.
Both leaders are expected to change their plans on the final full day of campaigning after a car ploughed through crowds at a Filipino community festival in British Columbia on Saturday night, killing 11 people, in a tragedy that has rocked the nation.
The Canadian public broadcaster’s poll tracker shows support for Carney’s Liberals – the main centre-left party – stable at 42.5 per cent, to the Conservatives’ 38.7 per cent. It gives Carney a 74 per cent probability of forming a majority government. CNN gave Carney an even higher chance of winning; its data analyst, Harry Enten, said it was the most dramatic turnaround he had ever seen.
Poilievre shares a similar dilemma to Australia’s Peter Dutton. Through his long parliamentary career, Poilievre was a political attack dog; now he’s trying to shake that image to become the likable leader for all. His past embrace of some Trumpian tendencies has come back to haunt him; political opponents like to portray him as Trump-lite (“maple syrup MAGA”).
Canadians seem to worry that a conservative would appease rather than stand up to the US president. Polling from the non-partisan Angus Reid Institute published at the start of April showed 56 per cent believed Carney was the best person to handle the relationship with Trump, compared to just 29 per cent for Poilievre. Political analysts in Canada are debating whether Poilievre’s campaign has been poor or just unlucky.
Poilievre ran on a campaign slogan more often associated with progressives – “change” – hoping that after 10 years of Liberal rule, Canadians were itching for a new direction. He talks about a “lost Liberal decade” and argues a Carney-led government means a continuation of Trudeau’s policies with a new face.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife, Anaida, at a campaign rally in Delta, British Columbia on the weekend.Credit: AP
While Carney’s first act after taking over from Trudeau was to scrap the so-called consumer carbon tax paid by motorists at the petrol pump, Poilievre would go further. “We need to get rid of the entire carbon tax on absolutely everything,” he said at a weekend rally, in a refrain familiar to Australian voters.
And much like Australia, housing affordability is front and centre of this Canadian election, with house prices and rents having skyrocketed in many provinces. In Vancouver, the median is more than $C1.2 million ($1.35 million).
Both sides have promised tax breaks for first home buyers, and both are promising to build close to 500,000 homes a year in a country with a population just over 40 million. The Liberals would create a new government developer for affordable housing, while the Conservatives would sell off 15 per cent of federal buildings for new homes and tie city funding to completions. “Build, baby, build,” Poilievre says.
And the Conservative leader has also promised to move with Trump-like speed if elected: he says lawmakers won’t get to go on their summer break until they pass three key bills on cost of living, crime and jobs.
Poilievre’s former communications director, Ginny Roth, told Canada’s The Globe and Mail that voters accepted the argument for change – but that did not mean they would vote for it.
“Voters are having an emotional response to Trump. They feel traumatised and their response is ‘Carney comforts me’,” Roth, who is now a partner at Crestview Strategies, said.
“A lot of Canadians are going to vote with their hearts instead of their heads.”
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