From Trump to taxes, here's how Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh courted Canadians in a strange campaign

In this campaign, there is unity of purpose vis-à-vis the threat of U.S. President Donald Trump. The collective goal is to survive the next four years.

Where Canadians sharply differ is on exactly how to become a stronger, and more independent country, and who has the best strategy to ensure that.

As it goes down to the wire, the polling lead the Liberals held through most of the past five weeks narrowed to a statistical tie in the popular vote. However, the Mark Carney-led Liberals may nevertheless land a majority government. Their support is more widespread, meaning more seats within grasp, while the Conservatives’ is more concentrated in the west, lessening their reach.

For two years the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives campaigned on fear, repeating over and over that Canada is broken, warning of a dystopian future under the Liberals, even nuclear “winter” if the carbon tax remained in place. No longer facing Trudeau, or a carbon tax, but the bigger threat of Trump, Poilievre flipped his scripted change message to posit he offers “hope.”

The Liberals — who under Justin Trudeau campaigned on hope and change in 2015, “forward” in 2019, and building back better in 2021 — have instead anchored the 2025 pitch in fear and anxiety, using voter concerns about the economy and Canadian sovereignty as the trampoline for Carney’s bid to win a “strong” mandate to govern and confront the mercurial American president. Lest he sound cocky, Carney hasn’t uttered the word majority. Yet.

New Democrats, who used to channel former leader Jack Layton’s message “hope is always better than fear,” are appealing to supporters’ fears to try to keep official party status. It’s not a given. Jagmeet Singh emotionally talked about the “joyful struggle” Friday, but his closing argument casts the Carney-led Liberals as a threat to the cause of progressives.

To say it’s a strange campaign is an understatement.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have been in an open feud with Poilievre’s campaign team. Nova Scotia’s PCs are too. In Quebec, separatists put sovereigntist ambitions on ice to rally behind the federalist push against Trump. In Alberta, warnings of western alienation and separatist sentiment are on the rise.

The Pierre Poilievre most Canadians knew as a sharp-tongued Opposition leader prone to slogans chose not to turn his blistering attacks on Trump, but on Carney whose haircut, resumé and “trophy titles” he mocked. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith argued soft diplomacy with Trump is the way to go, and some Conservatives admit with at least a quarter of their voting base fans of Trump, Poilievre couldn’t afford to alienate them. The Conservative leader who vowed to “fix the budget” pledged to run deficits. He kicked national media off the his campaign’s plane and restricted questions, but smiled at them every day and did soft interviews with alternative outlets.

Campaign 2025 had its quirky moments. A rally punctuated by a woman hollering “lead us big daddy” to Carney that prompted memes. Carney mangling the French name of a star Quebec candidate. Carney telling a francophone interviewer he only got into politics to help: “Pas de crise, pas de Mark Carney.” After weeks of the Liberal leader repeatedly claiming “I’m not a politician” to explain stumbles or punt questions, it was almost comical to hear him finally admit in the past week that, “What I am is a politician.”

Former prime minister Stephen Harper emerged to charge Carney was taking too much credit for his role in managing Canada’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis — which others who were there at the time debunked.

The campaign also had its democratic challenges: numerous candidates were dropped by the main parties. Election integrity watchdogs warned of attempts at foreign interference and misinformation.

Those disparate elements of the current campaign are all notable. It’s just not clear any single one will move votes one way or another.

Indeed, there has been no single, defining, “Kodak moment” that crystallized the central debate or definitively framed the ballot question.

Certainly not in the same way as, say, the debate exchanges in the 1984 election when Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives prosecuted the case for a change in government against another post-Trudeau Liberal party, then newly led by John Turner, a Bay Street financier.

And not in the same way as the Liberal anti-free trade ad in the 1988 election rolled out a powerful image of negotiators erasing the Canada-U.S. border with the tag line “Just how much are we giving away?” That captured the angst of the day. Conservatives cast it as fear-mongering, won, and went on to sign the first Canada-U.S. free trade agreement — one the Liberals later expanded to a North American pact.

Today, in an election where a U.S. president literally does want to erase the border and crush Canada via a revised trade agreement, there’s no graphic image or campaign meme giving voice to voters’ collective anxiety.

All party leaders have uttered some version of “this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes.”

Yet Carney and Poilievre are outdoing each other trying to project calm and control in a situation where both admit nobody can “control” Trump. Their platforms propose similar immediate responses to the tariff war: counter-tariffs, aid for the auto sector, loans or other financial supports for affected industries, help for workers, “Buy Canadian” plans for government purchasing and infrastructure projects, and ongoing support to build a Canadian electric vehicle supply chain, among other measures.

In reality, Trump’s economic warfare and 51st state threats have formed only a backdrop, not taken centre stage in this campaign, unlike when the presidential monologues from the Oval Office made headlines from January to early April.

After his early volley of tariffs against Canada, Mexico and then the rest of the world roiled markets, Trump pressed pause on his some of his aggressive threats to Canada.

While Trump was quiet, the everyday concerns around cost of living, and the desire for change in policy direction in Ottawa rose back to the top of many voters’ priority lists.

Trump surfaced again late this week, telling reporters he still prefers Canada as a state, telling Time magazine he’s definitely not just “trolling” Canada, and “wouldn’t mind” becoming a U.S. president who expands American territory.

It couldn’t be more dramatic. For real.

So, the campaign was a brief reprieve.

Will Trump’s latest musings, and questions about whether Carney was completely transparent about his first call with the president reset priorities as voters head to the ballot box? Perhaps not. What’s clear, however, is when this is over, the roller coaster starts up again.

The next prime minister will be instantly plunged into Canada-U.S. trade talks, at a time when Trump is taking aim at all America’s global allies along with its adversary China, while coddling Russia.

It will be an opportunity to seize on national support for breaking down provincial trade barriers, something Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister and now Carney’s lead on the domestic trade file, says has been talked about in policy circles for decades, but “we just never could summon the political will to do.”

Now, she says, “interprovincial trade has become sexy.”

Luckily, it’s also a political imperative embraced by all leaders.

But only one winning party leader will get to lead the charge: the one who secures the most seats on Monday night.

If he loses, Carney the newcomer has more certain prospects to stay on, having gotten Liberals back into the game.

The others, the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh almost certainly, could face leadership challenges from within and outside their caucuses, depending on the result.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet signalled his confidence that he would survive a drop in seat totals in a way Singh won’t, taking aim at the NDP leader and saying, “I won’t miss this guy.”

But Blanchet is closing his campaign like Singh, arguing the Liberals are likely to win a minority and Quebecers should elect BQ MPs, dismissing Singh’s criticism that the Bloc is “useless.”

For Poilievre, his political future lies in what Monday’s result is.

If he holds the Liberals to a minority, it’s easier to argue the party has another shot within a few years, and they don’t have time to fight among themselves. Poilievre has strong support within his caucus, on the party’s national council and in what is now his base — just witness the energy at his rallies.

He is likely, however, to face challenges from some who’ve found his iron grip on caucus suffocating or from external forces, among provincial Conservative ranks in the Atlantic or in Ontario, where Poilievre and his tough campaign manager Jenni Byrne have burned bridges.

For any prime minister, including if it is Carney, winning a majority makes the job so much easier.

But if it’s a minority government, where a prime minister needs a governing partner, the job is a lot tougher, especially facing a trade war and competing interests.

One Conservative MP vying for re-election, who insisted they not be identified, believed Poilievre will still form a government, and suggested that a Conservative minority, ironically, could look to Liberal party support — as Stephen Harper did in his two minority governments — especially because Carney agrees with “so much” of the Poilievre plan.

In the closing days, observers watch where the puck is going. The Carney Liberals are on offence, and they want voters to believe they can vote for a winner. The Poilievre Conservatives are playing both offence and defence, with the leader heading to Calgary and Saskatchewan to shore up support, and holding a closing rally in his riding. The NDP are mainly on defence.

The rest is up to the party volunteers — to get identified voters out to the polls Monday. All say they’re taking nothing for granted.