OTTAWA—Canadians will vote on April 28 in a snap spring election to be called Sunday as newcomer Liberal Leader Mark Carney seeks his own governing mandate, and a fourth term for the Liberal party.
Carney, who will have been prime minister for 10 days when he returns to Rideau Hall, will ask Gov. Gen. Mary Simon to dissolve Parliament and issue election writs for Canada’s 45th general federal election.
Sources confirmed to the Star that voters will cast a ballot on Monday, April 28, marking the end of what will be a 37-day campaign, one day longer than the minimum required by law. The number of federal ridings increases to 343 from 338 due to the redrawing of electoral boundaries.
The election unfolds as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war ramps up, disrupting global markets, Canadian industries and jobs.
All political parties are rapidly reshaping their political pitch to voters to present their platforms and leaders as best suited to confront the challenge of the next four years. But Trump looms large over this campaign.
On Friday the U.S. president claimed he’d already shaped the course of the Canadian election as he asserted that “it would be great” if Canada were the 51st American state. Trump said that “the conservative” — Pierre Poilievre — was ahead “until I got involved…and totally changed the election.”
“Probably it’s our advantage, actually,” Trump said, even as he insisted again that he didn’t “care about the outcome.”
“Canadians are going to decide who their next government is going to be,” Mark Carney retorted at a news conference late Friday. “We’ll have, I’m sure, a robust election campaign and Canadians will make the choice. No foreign leader is going to determine who’s best.”
For the untested Carney, the first Canadian to have never held an elected office before becoming prime minster, the challenge will be to maintain the surge of voter interest in the Liberal party, which has led to a massive drop in public opinion polling for the Conservatives.
Poilievre has struggled to shift his key message from “Canada is broken” under the Trudeau-led Liberals, to meet the new and different challenge of a Liberal party led by the former central banker, and to surf the rising wave of Canadian pride and unity.
Poilievre recently adopted “Canada First” as a slogan to rebrand his “axe the tax, fix the budget” and energy development program, and continued his main attack on the Liberal’s nine-year governing track record. The Liberals left Canada in a weak position to face Trump, and Carney represents more of the same, Poilievre argues.
The Carney-led Liberals have undercut Conservative support. He dropped previous Trudeau-era policies such as the consumer carbon tax and the expansion of capital gains taxes. Carney matched the Conservative proposal of cutting the GST for first time buyers of homes under $1 million, and says he will expedite approvals of big energy, resource and infrastructure projects, and last week took steps to diversify Canada’s trading and security alliances.
Carney said Poilievre and his team do not understand how government can offer solutions to boost the economy. “The Conservative party will say, well just cut taxes, cut regulation, everything will happen. A thousand flowers will bloom. We know how that works,” he added.
Meanwhile the NDP and the Greens suddenly find themselves fighting for political airtime as polls show it’s become a tight two-way race between the main parties.
The NDP says neither Carney nor Poilievre can be trusted to deliver help for workers and ordinary families at this time, and claim credit for pushing the Liberals to deliver dental care and pharmacare.
On Saturday before the election call, the Liberal government rolled out the last phase of its dental care expansion, extending it to other eligible Canadians aged 18-64, with coverage starting in June.
The parties’ jockeying for position has intensified in the past week before the election writ was issued.
More than ever, the adage is true that “campaigns matter.”
Media, including the Star, will cover the leaders’ tours, while the Conservatives have barred reporters from travelling (at the media outlet’s expense) on the leaders’ campaign plane, and have said they will further limit questions by national reporters of Poilievre to allow more local media questions.
David Coletto, head of Abacus Data polling firm said in an interview Liberal voters are much more motivated and yet the surge of support belies a softness in the Liberal vote, one that could potentially be exploited by the Conservatives.
Coletto said in an interview 43 per cent of those who “would vote Liberal today say they could change their mind.” Only 27 per cent of Conservatives say that.
“We’ve always known that the Conservative coalition is a little firmer, solid. They’re going to get 33 to 35 per cent of the vote no matter what happens like that, unless something spectacular happened that blows that coalition right up. But the Liberal vote is still signalling it is not solid. It’s rebuilt itself, but its foundation is still a little bit shaky. And that shakiness is, I think, a lack of familiarity about Mark Carney.”
With files from Mark Ramzy and Althia Raj
