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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.Can Liberals get a boost?
Before Trump makes a serious move on tariffs, Canadian Liberals are to choose a new leader, who will face Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an election soon after. At that point, Canadians will decide who should manage the country – and its difficult new relationship with its southern neighbor.
All the polls show Poilievre with a decisive lead, but issue polling is giving the Liberals faint hope that they might turn things around.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeausaid Tuesday that Canada would respond with a “very strong” dollar-for-dollar retaliatory package. A poll from Ipsos for Global News finds that 82% of Canadians agree that Canada should retaliate. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievrehas said Canada should do so, but his position is more delicate, since about half of Canadian Conservatives like Trump.
He is demanding that Trudeau recall Parliament so that MPs can debate tariffs and other elements of the response. Trudeau won’t do that because Poilievre would move a non-confidence vote, which could send Canadians to the polls in the middle of a Liberal leadership race.
The same poll that showed support for retaliatory tariffs found that three-quarters of Canadians want an immediate election, but they will have to wait. Voters in Ontario will likely get the chance to express their views sooner as Premier Doug Ford is expected to call an election there as early as next week. He hopes to capitalize on his Captain Canada image and lock down votes before the federal election scrambles electoral preferences.Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre; Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada; and Canada's former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Hot heads, cold comfort: How Trump is upending the race in Canada
There’s an old saying: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” With the changing of the guards in both the US and Canada, where are these two countries headed?
The short answer? They’re headed for a hot trade war, one made hotter by Donald Trump’s threats to take over Canada by escalating counter-threats from patriotic Canadian leaders who are locked in their own election cycle. The political barometer is rising.
This has upended conventional wisdom about the political landscape in Canada, where the Liberals are in a leadership race (former Banks of Canada and England Governor Mark Carney announced his leadership bid in Edmonton today), and a federal election is likely to kick off at the end of March.
Just weeks ago, it was all about Justin Trudeau and his legacy. The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, have been up in the polls, with a lead ranging from 20 to 25 points. That may well hold, but the election is no longer only about Trudeau. It is also about Trump’s threat to take over Canada and which leader has the best response.
Outside threats have a way of healing some internal divisions and, already, we’ve seen two long-time former prime ministers, Stephen Harper, a conservative, and Jean Chretien, a Liberal, speak out forcefully against Trump’s threat. That catalyzed all political leaders to boost their own tough patriotic talk aspolls show the vast majority of Canadians reject Trump’s expansionist dream.
A common outside threat doesn’t help an opposition party looking to focus on domestic issues, but it also creates new internal divisions.
For example, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford believes Canada must retaliate against the US with every weapon possible, including cutting energy supplies, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says cutting off energy exports will spark a national unity crisis. She wants it off the table. Smith went to visit President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago to get an exemption for Alberta energy, where she was joined by the self-appointed champion of Trump’s Canadian union strategy, Kevin O’Leary.
Will Poilievre side with Smith on the energy issue, and if so, does that risk being linked to O’Leary, who openly supports an economic union between the US and Canada? Or, will a new Liberal leader side with Ford and drive the old East vs. West internal tensions at a time when unity is needed?
The Canadian federal election cycle and the Liberal leadership race are now being driven by three factors:
Change. The Economy. And Trump.
All of Canada’s leadership candidates are pitching themselves as a change from Trudeau, especially the Liberal contenders, which is a harder case to make than it is for Poilievre.
On Monday, Mark Carneysoft launched his campaign on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” calling himself an “outsider” and talking about his long economic experience in dealing with serious disruptions like the 2008 financial collapse. (Disclosure: Carney is a close family friend, and Diana Fox-Carney is an adviser at Eurasia Group, our parent company). Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is also expected to launch her bid, with reports saying she will try to position herself as a change candidate by scrapping the carbon tax, a policy she long championed that has become controversial.
So defining yourself as a change candidate is vital. When it comes to the economy, inflation and home prices are still crucial to the domestic agenda, but will these drop back as the impact of the Trump tariffs is felt? Expect the tariffs to dominate the economic agenda if they come next week.
Does changing the focus of the upcoming federal election to an outside threat change the current polls? That will be the most critical question in the next Canadian federal election. Trump is now the most disruptive and important political figure in Canada, and every day he makes that more clear.
For example, as the California fires raged, the president-elect talked covetously about water from Canada, claiming – erroneously – that water from Canada would have prevented the California fires. “When I was President, I demanded that this guy, the governor (of California), accept the water coming from the north, from way up in Canada,” Trump told Newsmax, likely referring to the Columbia River. “It flows down right through Los Angeles … They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires.”
Like Trump’s claims about the US subsidizing Canada to the tune of $100 billion – most recently debunked by economist Jim Stanford inthis report from the Center for Future Work – this is provocative but false. The Columbia River flows through Washington state and parts of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean, but it never reaches Los Angeles. And this water issue isn’t some new thing either. In 1961, the US and Canada signed theColumbia River Treaty, a treaty that has been under renegotiation since 2018. Those 15 rounds of negotiations have never included bringing water to LA.
Still, these kinds of jabs, taunts, and threats make Trump the leading opposition figure in Canada, the person changing the direction of politics. Every leader in Canada – whether they like it or not – is now forced to run primarily against Trump, not Trudeau.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters, announcing he intends to step down as Liberal Party leader, from his Rideau Cottage residence in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Jan. 6, 2025.
Trudeau steps down, and a leadership race kicks off
On Monday morning, Jan. 6, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed reporters on the stairs of Rideau Cottage, his official residence in Ottawa, to announce his resignation. He began by stating that “Parliament has been paralyzed for months. This morning, I advised the governor general that we need a new session of Parliament. The House is prorogued until March 24.”
This means that instead of returning on Jan. 27, as previously scheduled, the Canadian legislature will not sit for another two months. This prevents the opposition from presenting a non-confidence motion to topple the government, as it had threatened to do.
“I intend to resign as party leader and prime minister after the party selects its next leader in a robust, competitive nationwide process,” Trudeau explained. “Last night, I asked the president of the Liberal Party to begin that process.”
The move obliges Trudeau’s party to hold a rapid-fire leadership race to choose a new leader – the winner of which will face voters in an election that must be held no later than Oct. 20, 2025. This makes it difficult for the party to bring in outside candidates and instead favors current cabinet members, whom Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre wasted no time attacking.
What Poilievre really wants is an immediate election. His party is currently ahead by 25% in the polls, and he has every interest in going to voters before the Liberals have the chance to improve their fortunes.
Trudeau, meanwhile, blamed caucus infighting for his decision. “If I continue to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in the next election.” At the time of his resignation, 59% of Liberal Party supporters, as well as three of his four national caucuses, said he should resign. He also threw shade at former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, saying that he had hoped she would take on one of “the most important files in my government” but that “she chose otherwise.”
We’ll be watching to see which candidates arise as possible contenders to replace Trudeau in the weeks ahead. Possible names include Freeland, cabinet colleagues Dominic LeBlanc, Francois-Philippe Champagne, and Mélanie Joly, as well as former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and former BC Premier Christy Clark.Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the federal Liberal caucus holiday party, the day after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unexpectedly resigned, in Ottawa, Ontario, on Dec. 17, 2024.
Chances of Trudeau staying as PM drop quickly
After Finance Minister Chrystia Freelandresigned in mid-December, Trudeau was said to be considering quitting. Since then, his Atlantic and Quebec caucuses – groups of members of Parliament from regions or provinces – have said he should go, which means the majority of Liberal members of Parliament are calling on him to quit. Trudeau’s former principal secretary – and Eurasia Group vice chairman – Gerald Buttsthinks Trudeau is less likely to stay on after the Freeland departure as his grip on power loosens.
“Mr. Trudeau was unlikely to lead the Liberal Party into the next election and is now much less likely to do so,” he writes. “That election will probably come sooner rather than later, and the odds of it producing a Conservative majority government are materially greater than they were before the events of 16 December.”
Before Christmas, Trudeau canceled all of his year-end press interviews save for one with comedian Mark Critch. A few days later, Trudeau was mocked and harassed while on vacation skiing in British Columbia.
The Liberals are down roughly 20 points in the polls, and the Conservatives are preparing a vote of non-confidence against the government through a committee backdoor trick by way of the standing committee on public accounts, which they control. The New Democratic Party has said it will vote non-confidence but hasn’t specified whether it’ll vote with the Conservatives if they proceed with their current plan, or wait to come up with their own. Whatever happens next, the days of Trudeau’s government appear to be numbered.Canada's Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada September 25, 2024.
Conservative leader fights with broadcaster
While Trudeau was enjoying a New York broadcast, his opponent, Pierre Poilievre, was getting deeper into a fight with a Canadian broadcaster.
Poilievre’s Conservative Party announced Tuesday that it will no longer give interviews to reporters at CTV, the country’s top-rated private news channel. The Conservatives are furious about a Sunday report in which the network put together several clips of Poilievre speaking to present a misleading quote. The network apologized, but the apology did not go far enough for the Conservatives, since it presented it as an error, not an effort to deceive the public.
Poilievre’s disagreement with the broadcaster predates this incident. Last week, he celebrated the downgrading of the parent company’s credit rating. BCE, which owns CTV, is a landline and wireless phone company, and often the target of Canadians’ ire because of complaints about service.
Attacks like this on a big company, which employs 40,000, are unusual in Canadian politics and may be disquieting for BCE management, since Poilievre’s party may soon be in charge of its regulator. Poilievre often complains about Canadian media coverage of his party, alleging that outlets are tailoring their coverage because of subsidies from Trudeau’s government. He has often promised to defund public broadcaster CBC, but the new focus on Bell signals a wider and even more confrontational approach to media relations.
Canadian parties choose to see, hear no foreign mischief
When about 200 foreign students arrived by bus at the Liberal nomination meeting in the leafy suburban Toronto community of Don Valley North in 2019, Han Dong thought nothing of it.
“I didn’t pay attention to busing international students because … I didn’t understand it as an irregularity,” he testified later.
Dong, who was born in Shanghai but has lived in Canada since he was 13, was seeking the Liberal nomination at the time, and he wanted the support of Chinese students because that was allowed under party rules – and his opponents could be expected to do the same. The prize was worth the trouble: Whoever won the nomination was almost certain to represent the riding in the House of Commons.
Dong later testified that he was unaware that the Chinese consulate threatened the students and arranged the buses, as is now alleged, meaning Beijing got their chosen candidate into the House of Commons, apparently without the candidate knowing.
Reluctant to see the problem
That nomination contest, and Dong’s career in the House, later became controversial when Canadian spies leaked unproven allegations about his connections to Beijing, which led to his exit from the caucus, a lawsuit, and Trudeau reluctantly calling a commission of inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian politics.
In testimony at the inquiry earlier this year, representatives of the Liberals — and other parties — appeared reluctant to acknowledge that there might be problems in their parties. Azam Ishmael, executive director of the party, for instance, testified that he had not read the report that revealed what the Canadian spooks knew about interference in Dong’s nomination race.
It’s not just the Liberals who seem to see no evil, hear no evil ...
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has been happy to castigate the Liberals for their alleged connections to the Chinese government — which is fair enough since the Chinese seem to have tried to help the Liberals in the last election. But Poilievre has refused to be sworn to secrecy for fear it will restrict what he can say about the facts. That means he can’t read the details, even though Indian foreign interference may have played a role in the leadership race that made him the leader of his party.
Busloads of voters
Both China and India are accused of using proxies to influence their diasporas to support candidates they favor and block those they oppose. This is possible, in part, because the parties leave the door open to them.
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who leads the ongoing inquiry, warned that nomination races can be a “gateway” for foreign influence.
Under Canadian electoral law, the parties decide who can vote in their nomination battles. For Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats, that includes teenagers and noncitizens, like the Chinese students who seem to have made the difference in Han Dong’s nomination.
Dong was right to point out that it didn’t seem irregular because it was not against the rules. Grassroots organizers routinely bus new Canadians to nomination meetings. Since many ridings are, like Don Valley North, very likely to be won by the incumbent party, that means that in Canada, the real elections are often decided by whoever can get the bigger busloads of new Canadians to a meeting hall when the party picks its candidate.
Bad foreign policy
This has serious implications for Canadian foreign policy since diaspora politics pressures parties to stay on the good side of the mysterious people (read: countries) arranging for busloads of voters to show up.
Trudeau’s government has a terrible relationship with Modi because the Indians are suspicious of the Canadian Sikhs in Trudeau’s coalition, accusing them of sponsoring terrorist attacks in India. They are similarly suspicious of Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP. Trudeau has accused Modi of being behind the assassination of a Sikh activist in British Columbia.
This conflict is rooted in the powerful role that Canadian Sikhs play in grassroots political struggles in all the parties. Other diaspora groups also play prominent roles, and those groups end up binding the hands of the people conducting Canadian foreign affairs.
Eurasia Group Senior Analyst Graeme Thompson, formerly a policy analyst with Global Affairs Canada, says Canadian diplomats can’t avoid the political reality of diaspora politics, which makes it hard to develop policy focused on the country’s national interest.
“It’s a huge problem for Canadian foreign policy making to have politicians primarily making policy on the basis of domestic political considerations that are driven by diaspora politics.”
More rules on the way
It seems clear that it should be harder for noncitizens to participate in Canadian nominations, but the parties don’t want to close the gateway Hogue identified. They benefit from the money, energy, and busloads of voters, so they don’t want to bar noncitizens from voting in nomination battles.
“The other parties seem to like the idea of being much loosey goosier about who can vote in a nomination race,” says Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, which only allows citizens to vote in party races.
She thinks that the other parties should tighten their rules, thus avoiding a complicated and potentially expensive regulatory structure, but those parties benefit from the status quo, so it will likely fall to Hogue to urge them to make changes when she issues her report at the end of the year.
But there is no guarantee that they will do whatever she proposes, and there could be another election before she issues her report, which means India may be tempted to help the Conservatives, and China may again work against them.
It would be better if the Canadian parties could work together to signal that they won’t stand for foreigners interfering in Canadian politics, but in a pre-election atmosphere of deep mutual distrust, that may be too much to hope for.