Election 2025

OTTAWA — In late March, Liberal Leader Mark Carney set foot for the first time in his Ottawa-area riding’s campaign office and began his speech to volunteers with a stark declaration: “This election is the most important election of our lifetime”.

Only time will tell if Carney and the many others — including Conservatives, pollsters, unions and even former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien — who argue that the ongoing federal election is the most important or consequential one in 81.6 years (the average life expectancy in Canada) are correct.

The 2025 Conservative campaign was one that featured multiple realities.

In legacy media TV studios and editorial pages, you have a punditry class convinced Pierre Poilievre is about to lose, amidst piles of polls showing Mark Carney’s Liberals ahead.

But in farmers’ fields, warehouses, and factories across the country, Poilievre held historic rallies in the thousands, with attendees convinced something big is about to happen.

If you're unfamiliar with Cloward & Piven strategy, it's a plan developed in the 60's by sociologists Cloward & Piven (Mark Carney's wife's aunt) focused on overloading systems in order to push radical socialist reforms & it's hard to argue it's not been implemented in Canada pic.twitter.com/oiyQZ8qUDI

— uh oh canada (@GdfnShirts) April 25, 2025

You should have heard a loud ‘pop’ on Thursday — the sound of Liberal Mark Carney’s I’m-the-best-leader-to-deal-with-Trump bubble bursting.

On March 28, Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump held what Carney and his aides called a “positive” phone call. Afterwards, Carney insisted “the president respected Canada’s sovereignty … both in his private and public comments.”

Imagine for a moment what would happen if Canada’s federal government announced a production cap on Ontario’s auto sector – something like the proposed federal emissions cap on oil and gas, which industry proponents say will limit production in Alberta.

Close your eyes and picture how things would look if the feds passed a law that specifically targeted the growth of Ontario’s main industry and the high-paying jobs that are driven by that industry.

Many of Canada’s problems in the last 10 years can be traced back to over-immigration

It’s good that Liberal Leader Mark Carney at least understands his party’s role in overpopulating Canada faster than it can grow capacity, but it’s a problem that he doesn’t have a plan to wind it up.

That’s one big reason a Carney win on Monday would prove disastrous to Canada’s youth: the immigration excesses will continue, and with it, the affordability squeeze. This is only a recent problem: population growth reached an average of 320,000 people per year from 2001 to 2015 — but doubled to an average of 612,000 from 2016 to 2023. In turn, Canada’s longtime receptive attitude towards immigration has cooled; people have lost faith in a system that was once revered for welcoming only the world’s best and brightest.

Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot in Canada’s election Monday. But a lot of Canadians are expected to cast their vote with him in mind. The single biggest issue in the race is the White House’s verbal jabs at Canadian sovereignty and threats to annul the free-trade agreement between the two countries. The voter solution to the matter is shaping up to be more visceral than rational, which is unfortunate for Canada.

As Canadians inch closer toward election day, political experts are watching closely to see if Ontario will continue a trend of split-ticket voting, choosing one party to govern at Queen’s Park and a different one to form government in Ottawa.

Often referred to as the “alternation theory,” experts say Ontario has a long history of voting for one party provincially and another federally.

“Since 1867, about 78 per cent of provincial elections in Ontario have been won by a party ideologically different from the federal governing party,” Semra Sevi, assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto. “Since 1943, that figure exceeds 90 per cent.”

Good news for Poilievre given Ontario currently has a Liberal government.

Every successful campaign starts with a clear sense of purpose. Too often, when people hear “message,” they think it means a slogan or a handful of talking points. But a campaign message is far more than a tagline—it’s the central argument, the foundational story a party is telling voters about why it deserves their trust and their vote. It’s the lens through which every policy, promise, and appearance is filtered.

With Canadians heading to the polls tomorrow, I wanted to test whether that foundational story came through for the three main national parties. In our final survey, we asked voters, in their own words, what they thought each party’s central argument was.