Martin C. Barry, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
As virtually all politicians and electoral candidates know from experience, nothing beats going door-to-door during an election campaign – no matter how time-consuming and exhausting it might be.
Not only does it offer an opportunity to touch base and get your message out to decided and undecided voters. It also allows incumbent and novice candidates alike to gain a sense of what’s actually happening on the ground, and what possibly to expect long before the ballot counting has been completed.
It seemed fairly clear during the month-long campaign for Canada’s 2025 general election that the Liberals were edging significantly ahead of the Conservatives – much to Conservative leader Pierre Poilièvre’s dismay.
While Poilièvre had every good reason to believe, as late as last January, that he’d easily be waltzing into power because of former PM Justin Trudeau’s overwhelming unpopularity – as well as Trudeau’s headstrong determination to lead the Liberals to what would have been almost certain defeat – Mark Carney’s arrival completely changed the scenario and stole the wind out of Poilièvre’s sails.
If the Conservatives made one error – being an overall reflection of their tendency throughout the campaign – it may have been to dwell too long on issues that typically appeal to the emotions – such as violent crime and elaborate punishments – rather than economic problems – which were the Liberal focus for the most part during the campaign.
While Canadians and Quebecers are as preoccupied by crime (including violent criminal acts, but increasingly also fraud and online scams) as they were a decade ago when the Conservatives were last in power, it’s clear that in this election their minds were on threats of an economic type coming from Donald Trump and the U.S.
Carney and the Liberals returned to this theme again and again. But, in the meantime in the closing days of the campaign, Poilièvre – like a hockey coach who’d pulled the goalie in a last desperate bid – ratcheted up his tough-on-crime rhetoric in the apparent hopes this might offer a better chance of jarring undecided voters into supporting the Conservatives.
As well, around the half-way mark in the campaign, Poilièvre announced that a Conservative government would be “giving judges back the power to sentence multiple murderers to consecutive prison sentences without parole eligibility beyond 25 years.”
Canada has indeed experienced up to 10 mass murders in a little more than a decade. They include the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting in which six people were murdered, the 2018 Toronto van attack in which 11 were mowed down and killed, and now the Vancouver Filipino street festival car attack with nine fatalities.
The fact that the last of these took place just a day before Canadians went to the polls may have led more than a few voters to support the hardline tough-on-crime views promoted by the Conservatives.
In the run-up to election day, and another example of Poilièvre’s style of politics, he pledged to have the country’s MPs sit over the summer holidays until they would pass three key pieces of legislation.
But what real impact could a measure like this have, except as a raw emotional appeal to Canadian voters so teed off at government that seeing their MPs punished by being virtually held hostage in the House of Commons with a symbolic gun to their heads would be enough to secure votes for the Conservatives?
If anything, it’s the type of political blackmail – the equivalent of holding democracy hostage – one would previously have imagined only Donald Trump stooping to. But it was Poilièvre threatening to use such a juvenile tactic.
Describing Mark Carney in an opinion piece in The New York Times last Sunday, technology journalist David Wallace-Wells said Carney “may emerge from this month’s elections as the new face of global liberalism,” with Carney having previously “declared the eight-decade-old economic order – on which the modern American empire was built – simply ‘over.’”
If that is so, then Canada stands to play an increasingly significant role in the emerging new order, beginning with the willingness of our leaders to stand up to Trump and the U.S. in defiance to the belligerent threats that are certain to continue while Trump remains in office.