Canadians get an election just about everybody wants

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/03/2025 (191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to the election just about everybody wants.

In case you didn’t know, the words “welcomed” and “election” are rarely uttered together. Elections start off as background noise to the more pressing issues of our lives. And if voter turnout is any indication, most end with a shrug and a coast-to-coast “meh.”

Not this time. Not this election.

After four years of growing dissatisfaction with now-former prime minister Justin Trudeau, the country seems intensively engaged in the outcome of the election that Prime Minister and Liberal Leader Mark Carney triggered on Sunday. Remarkably, rather than being angry at the governing party and poised for retribution — the posture-of-choice for voters only a couple of months ago — a good portion of the electorate seems to be focused on finding the best possible leader and party to take Canada through an incredibly challenging time.

Both the Liberals and Tories face steep hills and profound challenges over the next five weeks.

The biggest problem the Conservatives have going into the campaign is that the message they were using for most of the past two years is suddenly ringing hollow for Canadians.

Two months ago, with the Conservatives soaring above the Liberals in opinion polls, life was not just good for Poilievre, it was easy. He was the anti-Trudeau, the man who everyone, regardless of political affiliation, loved to hate. There was a very active, very shrill constituency of Trudeau loyalists lurking on social media, but together they likely couldn’t have fit into a highly maligned Tesla cyber truck.

Then, Trudeau pulled the rip cord on his career, and Trump began salivating over the prospect of absorbing Canada, through legal means or other means. Suddenly, the man who everyone, regardless of political affiliation, loved to hate was Trump — and Poilievre was a leader without a brand.

That points directly at the real problem that Poilievre cannot outrun: for most of the last two years, Poilievre was more like Trump than he was unlike the bombastic U.S. commander-in-chief.

While mainstream conservative politics in this country had largely eschewed colourful characters of the far right, Poilievre ran toward them with open arms. He orchestrated photo ops with Freedom Convoy truckers, applauded militant anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, and nudged his party toward the culture wars that Trump found so welcoming.

À la Trump, Poilievre has found immense pleasure tossing nasty, disparaging nicknames at his political enemies.

His attacks are generally full of deliberate falsehoods and exaggerations.

He talks about ridding public institutions of “woke” ideology.

And while he won’t do interviews with established news organizations, he will spend two hours on a podcast with Jordan Peterson, Canada’s resident spirit guide for woefully misinformed libertarians, raging about “wokeism.”

After spending the better part of two years talking the Trump talk, Poilievre now wants Canadians to believe he isn’t going to walk the Trump walk.

The Liberals have already pounced. In a campaign-style television advertisement that appeared in the days leading up to Sunday, clips of Trump are intermingled with clips of Poilievre saying almost the exact same things. Poilievre’s dalliances with Trumpian rhetoric are pretty damning.

As Trump continues to drive rage and trepidation in Canada, Poilievre remains a man leading a party that have both hitched themselves to the wrong wagon.

None of that means Poilievre cannot claw back his advantage over the Liberals. But the Grits have momentum. At least for now.

The Liberals have come out strong, co-opting the slogan Canada Strong for their campaign, a nod to the tradition of attaching the word “strong” to a community under siege to underline its resiliency. (The Tories are stuck with Canada First, a cringeworthy slogan that sounds far too similar to Trump’s “America First” and does little to dispel the notion Poilievre is a Trump wannabe.)

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The Liberals have quickly adopted several critical policy plans from Carney’s leadership campaign, namely to stop charging the consumer carbon tax and abandon plans to increase the taxes on capital gains, two of Trudeau’s most unpopular policies.

However, the greatest advantage Carney has is that he can use Trump as his opponent and largely ignore the Tories. This advantage cannot be understated. All that Carney needs to do is position himself as the best leader to combat Trump and Poilievre never has to come into the debate.

The greatest vulnerability for the Liberal party is also its greatest strength: Carney.

Although he has experience leading large public and private sector organizations, Carney does not have any real-life experience leading a party through an election. Leading a campaign is an ordeal that has ruined many a promising political leader.

Let’s not forget as well that Carney will have to make it through five weeks of intense campaigning with the knowledge Trudeau’s woeful legacy will never be far behind. Give the Tories credit for the eloquent warning in their advertisements about the dangers of “another lost Liberal decade.”

When it’s all said and done, we have the conditions necessary for a true, two-party showdown. This election, for better or worse, will be a choice between Poilievre’s Conservatives and Carney’s Liberals.

And for perhaps the first in a long time, Canadians will be paying close attention.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.