Just days before the federal election and after more than a week without commenting on Canada, Trump resurfaced his 51st state rhetoric Wednesday afternoon, saying ‘as a state, it works great’ and suggested he could further raise auto tariffs. (CBC News)

The Polls

Margin narrows, but Liberals still favourites to win

  • Liberals 42.7% / Conservatives 38.3% / NDP 8.4% / BQ 5.9% / Green 2.2% / PPC 1.6%

A series of post-debate polls suggest that the margin between the Liberals and Conservatives has narrowed nationally, but the Liberals still hold the lead. The Conservatives are not closing the gap in the important battlegrounds of Ontario and British Columbia, leaving the Liberals as the heavy favourites to win the most seats — and likely a majority government. The New Democrats remain stuck in a distant third place while the Bloc has recovered a little in Quebec following the French-language debate. (CBC Poll Tracker – April 23, 2025)

Nanos Research » Liberals lead by 5 points over Conservatives on Day 32, as NDP loses post-debate bump

  • The Liberals have a five-point advantage over the Conservatives on Day 32 of the 36-day federal election campaign. A three-day rolling sample by Nanos Research conducted on April 20-22 has the Liberals at 44% over the Conservatives, who are up a few points at 39% nationally. (Nanos)

Leger Poll numbers show Liberals leading by 4 points over Cons

  • Mark Carney’s Liberal Party continues to lead in voting intentions. Currently, 43% of Canadians say they would vote for the Liberal Party if the election were held today, compared to 39% for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party. Voting intentions remain stable, even after last week’s leaders’ debates. (Leger)

Abacus Data Poll numbers show Liberals lead by 3 in final days of the campaign

  • With less than a week to go in the campaign, a new poll from Abacus Data finds the Liberals leading by 3 among those who have already voted and are committed and by 5 among those who have voted and are certain to vote.
  • Overall, the data suggest that not much has changed over the weekend and following the two debates. Mark Carney remains the most popular federal party leader. The Liberals continue to have the largest pool of accessible voters, and regionally, the Liberals have leads in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. The data continues to suggest that the Liberals have a clear advantage and remain the favourites to win the election. (Abacus)

Elections Canada has released the estimated number of electors who voted on the four advance polling days in the federal general election now under way

  • According to the preliminary figures, 7.3 million electors voted at the advance polls in this general election.
  • This is a 25% increase from the 5.8 million electors who voted in advance in the 2021 general election. (Elections Canada)

On The Campaign Trail

Is Pierre Poilievre hiding something? His rationale for not getting security clearance makes no sense

  • Why doesn’t Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre have security clearance? Can someone who wants to sit with world leaders and direct Canada’s response to global threats really do that without access to our most sensitive intelligence?
    If not, let me pull up a chair — I have some ideas of my own about how the country should run. There is just too much happening in the world for our leaders not to have access to all the information they need to make decisions and to have informed discussions — especially on the campaign trail. (Toronto Star)

Cons having fun with numbers. A big platform with made up numbers that doesn’t add up, is evidence that the Cons have no clue how to manage the economy.

  • Most economists accuse the Cons of lowballing the cost of their platform. ‘These numbers are a joke’  (Toronto Star)
  • The Cons full, costed platform outlines a plan to reduce the national deficit to $14.2 billion within the next four years. However, various experts have expressed concern that the Conservative projections are rooted in overly-optimistic savings estimates associated with eliminating various pre-existing policies. For example, the Cons platform includes nearly $1 billion in expected savings over the next four years from repealing the Impact Assessment Act (formerly known as Bill C-69), which Pierre Poilievre has blamed for blocking energy development across the country over the previous decade. The Cons are also projecting significant savings from eliminating the industrial carbon tax ($8.2 billion over the next four years), scrapping the government’s electric-vehicle mandate ($11.2 billion), as well as getting rid of the oil and gas emissions cap ($3.95 billion). (iPolitics)
  • The Cons claim they would reduce the size of the public service by 17,000 employees a year.
  • The Liberals estimated the cost of Poilievre’s campaign pledges at $140 billion over the next four years, and said the only way to find enough savings would be to gut crucial supports Canadians rely on. (iPolitics)

Pierre Poilievre would axe one of Parliament’s primary purposes

  • Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced Tuesday that under his government a referendum, not politicians, would decide if Canada needed to raise taxes. Poilievre would “ban” any new taxes or tax increases unless the Canadian public votes for them. We can all probably guess the answer if the Canadian public were asked “do you want higher taxes,” and that answer can’t be published by a family-friendly news outlet. But leaving aside such a referendum would almost certainly fail, Poilievre’s pledge eliminates one of the House of Commons core responsibilities — to debate and vote on budgets and taxation. (Global News)

Cons Leader Pierre Poilievre event ignores Elections Canada rules (Toronto Star)

Most Conservative voters don’t trust media reports

  • 56% of people who identified as Conservatives in the Leger poll said they had little trust — or none at all — in media reports about party leaders.
  • Just over one-quarter of Liberal voters who responded to the poll, and about two in five NDP voters, expressed a lack of trust in the media. (The Canadian Press)

Jagmeet Singh can’t stay on as leader if NDP loses official party status, says Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair

  • “Mr. Singh knows what the results are going to be. I think he’s serene in his understanding of what it might mean for him, and I’m not getting any indication that he’s intent of fighting to stay on,” Mulcair said during a panel segment. (CTV)

Former Opposition Leader Preston Manning says Liberal election loss would avoid ‘unity crisis’ 

  • To the former right-wing populist and conservative federal party leader Preston Manning, the solution to keeping Canada unified is simple: Replace Mark Carney’s Liberal government this election, under a different party banner. “I’m very strongly on Canadians uniting, but the question is: ‘Uniting behind whom, and for what’?” he told CTV Your Morning. (CTV)