The coming election is likely to be close
Posted March 14, 2025
As expected, Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership and became the Prime Minister. As of March 9th, polls show a Conservative 6% lead in votes, the same as a week earlier.
Polls showed the Liberal seat projections still increasing though not enough to match the Conservatives. Those findings were gathered before the winner of the Liberal race was revealed.
So, the Liberal polling results must be largely attributed to the certainty that their leader would be someone other than Trudeau. Carney has not been widely exposed to the broader public.
His platform talks about reducing barriers to the movement of people and goods between provinces. A worthy objective, but already underway with leadership from Premier Houston of Nova Scotia and others. It also promises large infrastructure projects to facilitate the movement of goods between and within provinces.
It acknowledges that “…the federal government has been spending too much. Total spending has increased by around 9% per year on average over the past decade, and the federal workforce has grown over 40% in total since 2015.”
Likewise: “Overall business investment in Canada has dropped from 14% of GDP in 2014 to 11% in 2024, undermining long-term economic growth and workers’ wages.”
About savings it says: “Fiscal policy will focus first on reining in wasteful and ineffective government spending, creating room for personal income tax cuts so that Canadians can keep more of their hard-earned money and better cope with the higher cost of living.”
It continues: “…we will balance the operating budget in three years…” and “we will also adopt a fiscal rule to ensure that government debt-to-GDP declines over the budget horizon.”
All very virtuous aspirations, but not much different than the Liberal promises in the last four elections, which were never the actual intent and never accomplished: “…. the federal government has consistently missed its spending targets and breached its fiscal guardrails.” Carney should expect some understandable skepticism.
On housing he repeats the Trudeau promise of doubling the pace of home building. He wants to “reduce housing bureaucracy, zoning restrictions, and design criteria prescribed by government staff,” by which he is referring to provincial and municipal levels of government but should also stop federal bureaucrats from telling Halifax and other cities where to put their bicycle lanes.
Unlike Trudeau’s government, he acknowledges the need to almost double the number of construction workers. “Expand and accelerate training and apprenticeship programs for skilled trades” is a worthy goal, but like health care workers it takes a lot of time to make an impact. There is zero chance of meeting the goal to build 4 million houses by 2035.
Carney will replace the current carbon tax with a plan that “…will provide incentives for consumers. Put more of the burden on big polluters.” He does not acknowledge that the big polluters (for example refineries, carbon fuelled electric utilities, pulp and paper plants) will pass those costs on to their customers.
Poilievre has yet to release a platform but has been clear that he would slim down government and cancel the carbon tax without replacement. Trump complains that Poilievre doesn’t like him. Good.
The great unknown is the degree to which the Donald is going to interrupt and interfere with the election. Carney remains prime minister as the campaign proceeds, and will have to respond to tariff attacks as they occur.
Since announcing his intention to resign, Justin Trudeau has done a commendable job of responding to the on-again off-again tariff circus. In response to Trump calling him “Governor,” Trudeau has addressed Trump as Donald.
The intentional disrespect is deserved, but Carney will not own it. He would be wise and Canada will benefit if he can persuade Trudeau to be available as needed for advice during the election period.
So far, Carney and Poilievre have been busy making untrue statements about each other. It reflects poorly on both of them. Leave the lies for Trump.
At this stage it is hard to discern which party will win the most seats in the soon to be called election. It seems likely that neither will win a majority.
In that case, the Bloc Quebecois may be a big winner. The NDP’s 25 seats in the 2021 election have been enough to keep Trudeau in power. As payment, the NDP was able to dictate several policy wins for their party, including first steps on national dental and pharmacare programs.
In the 2025 election the NDP contingent is projected to dwindle while the Bloq is projected to win between 25 and 30 seats. A minority government will need the Bloq to get legislation passed. In a close race between the two major parties the Bloq may be in a position to choose the winner.
In return, they will be able to insist that Quebec have the option to receive the cash equivalent of the federal contribution to pharmacare and dental care, which should then be offered to the other provinces.
More broadly, the Bloc can press the federal government to stay within their constitutional boundaries. That would be good for everybody.