Liberal Campaign and Trump’s Influence in Canada

By Promit Mukherjee and Rod Nickel

PORT MOODY, British Columbia (Reuters) – Donald Trump re-emerged as a factor in Canada’s election campaign on Thursday, days before a vote that Prime Minister Mark Carney says will determine how Ottawa can best stand up to the U.S. President.

Carney launched the race last month, calling for a strong mandate to address Trump’s tariffs and his expressed desire to turn Canada into the 51st state. The ruling Liberals had a healthy lead, but polls showed their advantage gradually shrinking as Trump’s silence on Canada shifted voters’ focus back to high living costs.

On Wednesday, however, Trump declared that the United States did not need Canadian-made autos and hinted at increasing tariffs on vehicles imported from Canada.

> “President Trump repeated his attacks on Canada. He said he doesn’t want Canada to play any part in the North American auto industry,” Carney stated at a campaign event in Port Moody.
> “So, I will be equally clear: this is Canada – we decide what happens here. Yesterday was more proof that the old relationship with the United States is over,” he added.

Carney is promising to invest tens of billions of dollars to help reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, which currently absorbs 75% of all Canadian exports.

While the Liberals lead ahead of Monday’s election, the gap with the opposition Conservatives is tightening, according to a rolling three-day poll.

The Liberals currently hold 42.9% support, followed by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives at 39.3% and the New Democratic Party at 7.2%, based on the CTV News-Globe and Mail-Nanos poll.

The 3.6-point gap between the two leading parties as of Wednesday narrows from a 5.6-point Liberal lead in the same poll a day earlier. A similar result on Election Day would mean a fourth consecutive Liberal mandate, but Carney might only achieve a minority of seats, making him reliant on smaller parties for governance.

Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba, noted that voters’ attention is shifting back to high prices, crime, and the housing crisis, central issues in the Conservative campaign.
> “We can’t afford a fourth Liberal term of rising costs and crime,” Poilievre asserted during a press conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, promising to scrap electric vehicle sales mandates.

Liberal support is typically more efficiently distributed across Canada, yielding more parliamentary seats, while Conservatives tend to achieve significant wins in rural areas with fewer seats.

Carney remains the preferred choice for prime minister, but Poilievre is closing that gap, according to Nanos. The poll of 1,307 Canadians, conducted from April 21 to 23, has an accuracy of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

An Abacus Data poll, released Wednesday, placed the Liberals at 40% among decided voters and the Conservatives at 37%. This indicated that the Liberals’ support was unchanged from the previous week, while the Conservatives saw a one-point decrease. This poll surveyed 2,000 eligible voters from April 18 to 21, with a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.