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The Canadian flag flies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Who’s meddling in Canada’s election?
Canada’s foreign interference watchdog is warning that China, India, and Russia plan on meddling in the country’s federal election. The contest, which launched last weekend, has already been marked by a handful of stories about past covert foreign interventions and threats of new ones.
This week, the Globe and Mailreported allegations that India interfered in 2022 to help get Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre elected, though he was not aware of the efforts. They also broke news that former Liberal Party leadership candidate and member of Parliament Chandra Arya was banned from running for leader and reelection because of alleged interference tied, once again, to India.
Now, Canada’s election interference monitoring group is warning that China, India, and Russia will try to interfere in the current election.
Poilievre also accused Liberal leader Mark Carney of being cozy with Beijing due to a $276 million loan Brookfield Asset Management secured from the Bank of China when Carney was Chair of Brookfield’s board. Carney rejected those accusations and, on Wednesday, said that Canada should not pursue greater economic ties with China but should prioritize other Asian nations and Europe.
Other Canadian critics have complained that the US is interfering, citing Donald Trump consigliere Elon Musk’s public statements about the country. But officials say this doesn’t meet the bar for foreign interference. Neither, apparently, do the actions of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith,who recently admitted to Breitbartthat she pressed Trump administration officials to delay tariffs to help elect the Conservatives over the Liberals, since Poilievre would be “the best person” for the White House to deal with given that he would be “very much in sync with the new direction in America.”Canada’s Liberals and Conservatives are neck and neck as election begins, and running on similar promises
Canada’s federal election is on. The polls show a polarized contest between the Liberals and Conservatives, one dominated by Donald Trump and the question of who’s best-suited to deal with his tariff and annexation threats. Canadian nationalism has surged. The Liberal Party, recently down 25 points in the polls to the Conservatives, have seen their fortunes turn around under new leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney — a manwho’s been all too keen to, ahem, adapt ideas from his top rival.
Liberal, Tory, same old story?
A Trump-centric campaign risks obscuring other important policy issues. But how much does it matter when the two front-runners are so close together? So far, both parties — one of which is running on the slogan “Canada Strong” and the other on “Canada First” – have adopted similar proposals for a range of issues.
Both Liberal and Conservative campaigns launched with promises to cut personal income taxes. The Liberals are offering a 1% cut to the lowest bracket, and the Conservatives are putting forward a 2.25% cut. Both parties are also promising to cut federal sales taxes on new homes for first-time buyers, with Liberals including new builds worth as much as CA$1 million and the Conservatives ramping it all the way up to … $1.3 million, but they’ll expand eligibility to non-first-time buyers, including investors.
On defense, Carney is promising to spend 2% of GDP on the military by 2030 and expand Arctic security. Poilievre has promised more or less the same, with details to come. Both say they’ll speed up the building of energy infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines, though Carney would keep a Trudeau-era emissions cap on the oil and gas sector, while Poilievre would not.
Affordability remains a major concern, even more so with tariffs threatening the economy. Poilievre even says he’d keep (though perhaps not expand) the Liberals’ public prescription drug, daycare, and dental care programs. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of Canadians can’t afford food. In 2024, the Liberals launched a food lunch program, which the Conservatives attacked as a headline grab but didn’t outright oppose. The parties haven’t released more on food security and affordability yet, but they almost certainly will.
Can the Liberals rewrite the past?
While the Liberals are now led by Carney, with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gone, they’re still the same party that has governed for nearly a decade and earned ire from voters for policy shortcomings. With a policy agenda that, so far, looks similar to that of the Conservatives, the Liberals must persuade voters they’re not just better on policy, but that their guy is better on character and competence, and that his team is fit for purpose.
It’s a tricky task, and it’s fair to ask how much the Liberal Party has changed. Many top candidates and current Cabinet ministers are the same faces from Trudeau’s years, including Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly, Dominic LeBlanc, Bill Blair, and François-Philippe Champagne. The Liberal surge even persuaded a handful of candidates who’d served in the caucus to run again after saying they were out under Trudeau, including high-profile players Anita Anand, Sean Fraser, and Nate Erskine-Smith.
When Carney announced his Cabinet just before he triggered the election, Conservatives were quick to point out that the group contained 87% of the same faces from Trudeau’s table. Among the faces are those who supported, just weeks earlier, policies Carney is now reversing, including the Liberals’ signature consumer carbon price and its planned increase to the capital gains inclusion rate (reversals Conservatives were calling for).
Canada’s “presidentialized” election
A leader-focused campaign in the face of Trump’s threats will, perhaps ironically, be thoroughly American. Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s global macro-geopolitics practice, notes that the tricky thing for the Liberals is this is a change campaign, with voters looking to reset after the Trudeau years. Carney will have to present himself as that change – which could mean an intense focus on him as leader.
Thompson calls it a “presidentialized” campaign, one that comes with a risk for the neophyte Liberal leader. “It opens the question of Carney’s political experience, or rather lack thereof – and the fact that he has never run an election campaign before, let alone a national general election campaign. It’s an open question whether his political inexperience comes out in a negative way.”
But a focus on character could also set Carney apart from Poilievre, even if the two don’t have much daylight between them on policy. Voters see Carney as the best person to be prime minister, and he enjoys high favorability ratings — over half the country likes him. The Conservative Party leader, on the other hand, isn’t particularly well-liked, with his unfavorables sitting at 59%.
Promise now, worry later?
For all the talk of character, Conservatives, including Poilievre himself, have accused the Liberals of stealing their ideas. That’s a fair criticism. As Thompson puts it, the Liberals have caught the Conservatives out and, indeed, have adopted their positions. But how far will that take the Liberals? And at what cost?
“These are all Conservative policies that were being wielded against Trudeau,” Thompson says, “which Carney has now adopted as his own. And it’s shrewd politicking.” But it’s also risky. “If the Liberals win, they need to deliver very quickly on showing that this is a new government and that they have new policies. The honeymoon period would be, I think, quite short.”
The Liberals will be happy to worry about all of this later. For now, they’re the beneficiaries of an election in which the very issues that were set to spell their doom have become temporarily incidental to Trump and to questions of character and competence – questions to which voters seem to think Carney is the answer.
The policy challenges that got Liberals into trouble in the first place are still lurking and waiting to reassert themselves in short order. But for the Liberals, those are problems for another day.
Canadian PM Mark Carney
Canadian PM calls snap election
The countdown is on! On Sunday, Prime Minister Mark Carneydissolved parliament and called a snap federal election that promises to be one of the most consequential — and hotly contested — in recent Canadian history.
Until January, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives had maintained a two-year lead in opinion polls, which ran as high as 25% in December. But the resignation in January of unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, coupled with the return to power of US President Donald Trump, upended the race. It allowed new leader Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, to capitalize on his financial and governance experience in the face of anxiety about Trump’s tariffs and talk of annexation. The Liberals are now neck and neck with the Conservatives and even ahead in some polls.
With the election set for April 28, the Conservatives are scrambling to retool their message, notably on the carbon tax, which Carney has now set to zero for consumers but maintained for industrial emitters. They also question Carney’s ethics, claiming he has conflicts of interest stemming from his work as chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The New Democratic Party of Jagmeet Singh is feeling the squeeze as it attempts to hold onto progressive voters, while the Bloc Québécois of Yves-François Blanchet will fight to represent Quebec’s interests in the new parliament.
For news about outgoing GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon and his decision to run for the Liberals, click here.
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney listens to outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's speech just before being elected to succeed Trudeau as Liberal Party leader on Sunday, March 9, in Ottawa, Canada.
Carney clinches Canadian Liberal leadership
Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, won the leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party on Sunday, succeeding outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Carney, 59, decisively defeated former deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, former Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould, and former MP and businessman Frank Baylis, garnering a whopping 85.9% of the vote. The campaign was dominated by US President Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs and territorial annexation.
In his victory speech in Ottawa, Carney said “Donald Trump has put unjustified tariffs on what we build, what we sell, how we make a living. He is attacking Canadian families, workers, and businesses, and we cannot let him succeed. And we won’t.” He added, “My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect.”
Carney is expected to be sworn in as prime minister by March 19. His immediate priorities include forming a cabinet and winning a seat in Parliament, but his minority government also faces a non-confidence vote when Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on March 24. For this reason, Carney is expected to call an election before that date. He will face off against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in what is an increasingly tight race.
What issues will be on the table? Trump, Trump, and more Trump. Thirty-six percent of voters say Trump is the most important issue for them, with jobs and the economy second at 29%. The most recent poll found the Liberals closing in on the Conservatives, 34.3 to 36.5%. Two months ago, the Conservatives had a 25% lead, which evaporated following Trudeau’s resignation and Trump taking power in Washington.
What has Carney proposed? Carney would implement retaliatory tariffs targeting key US industries and diversify Canada’s trade partnerships. He also pledged to boost stagnant wages and lower high housing costs, and in his speech he said he would eliminate the carbon tax on families, farmers, and small and medium-sized businesses and scrap a controversial capital gains increase.
Canada at risk: Janice Stein warns of erosion of sovereignty under Trump
Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, is one of Canada’s most important public intellectuals, with decades of experience working at the highest level with policymakers in Canada, the United States, and around the world.
GZERO’s Stephen Maher spoke to her on March 5, the morning after Donald Trump’s address to Congress, to discuss the president’s annexation threats and Canada’s economic, political, and military vulnerability. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maher: It appears that Canada is in a position of great vulnerability because of the new relationship between Washington and Moscow. What do you think?
Stein: Canada faces a challenge of unprecedented proportions. The vulnerability comes because we share a continent with the United States and Mexico, and there are enormous disparities of power between the United States and its two neighbors. We live next door to the most powerful dynamic economy in the world and the strongest military in the world. Geography is not destiny, but it comes very, very close.
You look at the near neighbors of other great powers, and you get a sense of what it’s like to live next to one of these giants in a period where they are looking outward, acquisitively at their neighbors. That’s what we’re seeing now in the Trump administration, and that, more than anything else, is what makes it risky for us. If there were no softening of US attitudes toward Russia, but Trump still talked about Canada and about Mexico the way he does now, we would still be at enormous risk.
I have been talking to experts about Trump and the Canada relationship for a long time, and they have all been wrong, and for good reasons, but they have all been suffering from normalcy bias. Why?
All of us had some normalcy bias, including me. There were boundaries to how far I thought Donald Trump would go, and I was wrong. He’s gone much farther than I thought he would go. So it’s important to think about the worst case.
What would the worst case be for Canada? A version of these 25% tariffs would stay. There would be tariffs on top of the 25% on aluminum, steel, and lumber, and then layer on top of that, whatever this administration means by reciprocal tariffs, and the president was explicit in his address to Congress that that would include and account for non-tariff barriers, such as, for example, the Goods and Services Tax.
Well, if you do the math, you can get up to 50% or 60% without trying very hard. That would deliver a crushing blow to the Canadian economy. And that’s what the prime minister was warning about when he was talking about the use of economic force to make us weak and vulnerable.
I don’t think we can take that kind of catastrophic scenario off the table. We need to think about it, and we need to do our best to make ourselves as resilient as possible against it, although it’s a tough hill to climb.
Do you think we will be forced to accept new limits on our sovereignty in the next four years?
Sovereignty is an evolving concept. There’s mythical sovereignty, where the state has full control over its territory and the population that lives within its territory. But it’s never been absolute, and it waxes and wanes. We signed the auto pact long before we signed the free trade agreement. So sovereignty is always a question of degree. When we had the free trade debate in this country, we debated whether we would be able to retain cultural sovereignty and sovereignty over health care if we agreed to a much deeper trading regime. We’ve managed to do that. Are we as sovereign today as we were in 1980? No, but nor is anybody else. So yes, I can see where we are going to have to partner in different ways — and that word is well chosen on my part — we’re going to have to co-invest in different ways. We’re going to have to co-produce in different ways, because we live next to the most dynamic economy in the world that is led by a president who thinks in regional terms, who thinks big powers make the rules and their near neighbors take the rules.
I keep thinking about Thucydides, who wrote, “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” Is that Canada’s position now? Will we have to suffer what we must?
Yes, because we live next door to the United States, which has a president who talks like President McKinley at the end of the 19th century, who is openly aggressive toward near neighbors. I think the prime minister was right when he used the words trade war, and the president said it himself: I will not use military force, but I will use economic force to coerce you.
It is economic warfare. We have to understand that, and that’s what all of us got wrong, including me. We expected a version of this, but what we did not anticipate was that it would be framed within a broader context of economic war, and that became apparent during that first trip to Mar-a-Lago when Trump talked about Canada becoming the 51st state. And he understands it’s not coming through the use of military force and formal annexation. But, again, pay attention to what he said Tuesday night about the Panama Canal and Greenland: We’re going to do it one way or the other.
He is not quite saying that about Canada.
It is not in the same category. And that should be some small comfort to all of us. I listened very carefully to the speech. We are not in the category of Panama and Greenland.
I was impressed by Claudia Sheinbaum, who I thought, in contrast to Trudeau during the first tariff showdown, was able to keep her cool, and she didn’t have regional leaders undercutting her.
Let me talk about the challenges leaders face when they deal with Donald Trump because a courageous leader like Volodymyr Zelensky found himself in an absolutely unprecedented situation in the White House [last Friday]. So let’s talk about the difference between Zelensky and Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum has exercised iron self-discipline. She does not rise to the bait. She’s very deliberate. She makes it absolutely clear that Mexico is going to retaliate, but she always puts some time between when she says — in very deliberate, very controlled language — we are going to retaliate, and the date at which that retaliation is going to take place.
Zelensky was deliberately baited in that meeting, and he, tragically for him, took the bait and argued with the president and with the vice president. And very interestingly, there were two reactions in Canada to that. One was, “I’m really glad that somebody had the courage to stand up to that bully.” That is a very human reaction, and it actually channels the anger that Canadians are feeling toward Trump. The other was, “What a disaster. What a disaster.” He needed to sit there stone-faced and not rise to the bait because there’s a larger picture here.
That’s an object lesson for all Canadian leaders going forward, and it’s going to be very hard on the Canadian public. The outgoing prime minister did that for four years, with one exception, in Donald Trump’s first term. All of us are going to have to watch our leader, whoever it is, sit there stone-faced, not rise to the bait, and think about the longer term and what has to be done for this country, and not provide the emotional satisfaction of arguing back, even though it’s entirely justified.
So, in the election ahead, Canadians are going to have a choice between someone (Pierre Poilievre) who gets MAGA and might be better able to work with the Americans, and someone (Mark Carney) who will likely have more of a focus on maintaining sovereignty. Do you think that that’s the central question?
I think a ballot question is: How worried are you about Donald Trump? If you’re reasonably sanguine, and you have faith in American institutions, and you see this nightmare as a two-year thing, you’re in one world. And I would suspect then you’re going to consider Poilievre on the basis of the campaign on which he ran before Donald Trump. And you’re going to say, “Is this important to the Canadian future?”
But if you’re really worried about what Trump is going to do, if you’re scared, if you’re deeply worried about the future of the economy, you’re going to say, “Well, there’s a candidate who spent his life managing crises in the economy.” I think it’s going to come down to that. I think it’s all about the level of fear and anxiety.
Canada's Liberal Party leadership candidate and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney speaks to the media after participating in an English-language debate ahead of the March 9 vote to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Montreal, Quebec, on Feb. 25, 2025.
Do the Liberals stand a chance after all?
Over the past year, everyone had counted the Liberals down and out – their chances of holding on to power after the next federal election in Canada had been somewhere south of slim. But now the party is enjoying a twin boost from two recent shifts in the political terrain and has closed the polling gap between them and the Conservative Party.
In January, Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign as party leader and prime minister. Then Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president for the second time and immediately started coming after Canada hard, threatening economy-destroying tariffs, calling Trudeau “governor,” and talking about annexing the country and making it a “cherished” 51st state.
With Trudeau (and his baggage) on the way out and Trump stirring up nationalist fervor, the Liberals have now surpassedthe Conservatives in one recent poll by Ipsos, coming back from 26 points behind in just six weeks to lead 38% to 36%. Another poll, by Léger, finds that with Mark Carney as Liberal leader, the party’s support would hit 40% compared to 38% for Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives.
One or two polls will never tell the whole story, but over at 338 Canada, which aggregates federal polls, the Liberals are showing a sharp uptick and, on average, find themselves within 10 points of their Conservative competitors – and climbing day by day.
Disclaimer: Mark Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney, is an advisor to our parent company, Eurasia Group, but no one other than GZERO’s editorial team – and excluding publisher Evan Solomon, a family friend of the Carneys – is involved in the selection and editing of our coverage.Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on Dec. 3, 2024.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre goes after fentanyl
Poilievre, who often blames Trudeau for soft-on-crime policies, said he would introduce mandatory life sentences for fentanyl traffickers. “I will lock up fentanyl kingpins and throw away the key. It's like spraying bullets into a crowd — even if you don’t aim, you will kill people. The penalty should be the same as murder.”
Canadian courts have often ruled that mandatory life sentences for any crime violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Poilievre has said he would override the courts if necessary to get tough on crime.
The proposal comes as the Conservatives search for new messages to use against the governing Liberals. The party has been connecting with voters for two years by launching attacks against Trudeau and the unpopular consumer carbon tax. But Trudeau has announced that he is resigning and his likely successor, former central banker Mark Carney, has promised to get rid of that tax.
The polls have tightened slightly after many months of downward motion for the Liberals, and they are still moving. A poll of Quebecers shows many have suddenly decided to shift their support to the Liberals, and more would do so if Carney is leader.
Expect Poilievre to talk about crime and find new ways to talk about the cost of living, and keep an eye on volatile public opinion.
Commissioner Justice Marie-Josee Hogue speaks to reporters after the release of the final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 28, 2025.
Foreign interference report delivers mixed bag
“There are legitimate concerns about parliamentarians potentially having problematic relationships with foreign officials, exercising poor judgment, behaving naively, and perhaps displaying questionable ethics,” writes Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who nonetheless found no treason or conspiracy.
She did find, however, that foreign interference, including the spread of mis- and disinformation, is a “major risk to Canadian democracy” that must be addressed. She writes that “information manipulation” is, in fact, “the single biggest risk to” democracy in Canada.
The report includes a slew of recommendations (51 in fact) for combating foreign interference, including better information-sharing protocols, smoother cooperation across orders of government, that party leaders get top-secret security clearance soon after becoming leader – something Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has refused to do – and tighter rules for leadership elections to limit votes to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.