Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Canada’s recent federal election suggests a growing gender divide in political preferences. Polling indicated women voters leaned strongly toward the Liberals, while an increasing number of men — particularly younger men — gravitated toward the Conservatives. This polarization was not simply a matter of partisan preference, but reflected deeper social, cultural and economic realignments rooted in identity politics and diverging values ... CLICK HERE for the full story

I t’s still pretty quiet on the polling front, but that will change very soon. Today’s update to the Poll Tracker, which only included the two morning trackers from Nanos Research and Mainstreet Research and yesterday’s from Liaison Strategies, has hardly changed the dial. Mainstreet put the gap at a little over two points, while Nanos put it at a little over four points. Liaison yesterday had it at five points. Not much change ... CLICK HERE for the full story

W ith just days to go before Election Day, the 2025 federal election is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched—and misunderstood—in recent memory. Most polls, including ours at Abacus Data, show a tight race. For the past three weeks, we’ve consistently had the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives by 2 to 3 points nationally. Among those who have already voted or are most certain to vote, the gap grows to 5. That may not sound like much. But in our electoral system and in the current context, that would be plenty for the Liberals to win a majority. Because in Canada, a party doesn’t need to win the most votes to win the most seats. And if there’s one thing Conservatives should know by now, it’s this: winning the popular vote is not enough ... CLICK HERE for the full story

W ith only a few days left in the election campaign, we’re now waiting for the final polls from all the major pollsters. Expect a rush of them starting on Saturday through to the end of Sunday. I’ll be updating the Poll Tracker once daily until Sunday, when I’ll likely have multiple updates right up to the wire. But should we expect things to shift around much between now and then?  ... CLICK HERE for the full story

E ach election is called “the most important of our lifetime.” This time, though, it might actually be. Trump’s threat of tariffs and even annexation loom large, upending what was looking to be a guaranteed Conservative super-majority into a race that has shown to be far more competitive. At the heart of this political shift is older Canadians who’ve disproportionately adopted an anti-American “elbows up” posture and see Pierre Poilievre as too akin to President Trump—despite comments that suggest that Trump would prefer Mark Carney. Given this demographic-driven dynamic, Poilievre’s chances hinge on a colossal youth turnout, with Gen Z proving to be one of the most supportive group of the Conservatives. It’s a seismic shift from 2015 when Justin Trudeau was elected largely on a wave of youth enthusiasm, but not a surprising one to anyone who’s been paying attention ... CLICK HERE for the full commentary

T he Conservative Party’s platform launch has prompted a lot of focus on the party’s underlying economic and fiscal assumptions—particularly since Pierre Poilievre and other party spokespeople have (rightly) criticized the Liberal plan in recent days. The Conservatives’ own fiscal plan is a bit of a mixed bag. Similar to the Liberals’, it anticipates ongoing annual deficits for the next four years. The deficits are smaller than the Liberal platform and even the government’s pre-election baseline, but there’s still no clear path to a balanced budget. The result is that even under a Poilievre-led government, Ottawa will have run deficits for a decade and a half and counting ... CLICK HERE for the full story

I n a time of serious global democratic decline, and especially with the United States falling from the ranks of true democracies and posing a very real threat to Canada, it is crucial that the next federal government do what it can to strengthen governance and protect democracy. Below is a brief exploration what each of the main federal political parties are promising in terms of governance, democracy, and rights ... CLICK HERE for the full story

At least you aren't foraging for food yet. But! The government has some thoughts on that, just in case you were thinking about it. Hey everyone. We hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday and/or end of Passover. Or even just a nice long weekend. If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out our latest episode of The Line Podcast — this week, totally free of emotional breakdowns. Some of what we’re talking about might cause you to have an emotional breakdown, but your hosts came through this episode without a scratch. CLICK HERE for the podcast  

The debates have come and gone, and we now enter the final stretch of the 2025 federal campaign. Polls have come aplenty in recent days, many of them measuring a tightening race—though to varying degrees—at the top of voting intentions. So let’s review the latest data and update the federal projections. The latest numbers from the daily trackers somewhat diverge. This morning’s Nanos Research update puts the Liberals back in front with 45% support, compared to 37% for the Conservatives. If the LPC wins the popular vote by eight points on election night, it would secure a comfortable majority. However, the latest updates from Mainstreet Research and Liaison Strategies show much narrower gaps between the two main parties. This morning’s Mainstreet tracker sees a statistical tie, with the Liberals at 42% and the Conservatives at 41% (regional details are paywalled). Liaison’s latest update, from yesterday, showed only a three-point spread between the Liberals (44%) and the Conservatives (...

The federal Conservative Party’s incomprehensible decision to reject 30-year MLA Mike de Jong as a candidate looks like it is going to haunt them. He sulked for a few weeks after he was cavalierly dismissed. But he’s a beer league hockey player from way back. He’s probably been cut from lots of teams before this. So after the Conservatives punched him in the mouth, he put his helmet back on and signed up as an Independent. The buzz in the Fraser Valley is that he is doing well. I do not care how he fares in the election. But the Conservative Party’s opaque, last-minute decision to dump him because he was “unqualified” ranks as one of the major blunders of this election campaign. It raises questions that go beyond de Jong’s career ... CLICK HERE for the full story

If there is one thing Canadians agree on after this election, let it be this: government-organised leaders’ debates should be abolished. Regular readers of The Hub will know that I am not a fan of the Trudeau government’s created and funded Leaders’ Debate Commission. As I have written here, here, and here, I believe the Commission was and has always been a misguided solution in search of a non-existent problem ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Except in the rare cases when an election is truly too close to call, debates really come down to a simple question: did the front-runner survive or did the challenger(s) do anything to close the gap? While we’ll have to wait for some data before we can definitively answer that question, to my eye the front-runner, Mark Carney, did indeed survive the debate. I’m just not sure if the challengers did anything to improve their fortunes ... CLICK HERE for the full story

During this federal election campaign, Joshua Rambout walks door to door in the riding of Elgin-St. Thomas-London South, hanging pamphlets on voters' doors and speaking with them about ideas he hopes will take hold. He's doing this as a volunteer in his spare time, but Rambout isn't stumping for a political candidate or party. Instead of talking to people about who they might vote for, Rambout would rather spur some conversations about how those votes will translate into power. With U.S. President Donald Trump making statements that threaten Canada's sovereignty, Rambout believes now is the perfect time to again broach the often thorny topic of Canadian electoral reform ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Liberal Leader Mark Carney faced jabs from his opponents at Wednesday's French-language leaders' debate with accusations he's out of touch with working people and won't offer enough change from his unpopular predecessor — charges he denied as he fought back saying he's the best candidate to handle the U.S. threat and a slumping economy. While Carney came under attack at points, the two-hour contest was a largely polite affair and the former central banker emerged from the debate relatively unscathed. The anglophone Liberal leader was thought to be in a tough position given he's less fluent in French than the other leaders, but Carney held his own in Canada's other official language ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The stage will look different that originally planned Wednesday night, when Canada’s major party leaders square off in the first of two nationally televised debates. Instead of five podiums on the stage, there will now only be four. The Green Party had its invitation rescinded less than 12 hours before the debate is set to start, with the Leaders’ Debate Commission saying the party no longer met the criteria to be included ... CLICK HERE for the full story  

The Liberal government’s Online News Act, which passed in 2023, was designed to help Canadian media, demanding that tech giants pay for the use of content. Google struck a deal, paying $100 million to an assortment of media companies. But Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, refused to pay, figuring that the best way to avoid shelling out cash to the Canadian media was to block it from its platforms. With Meta, the Online News Act massively backfired. Now high-quality, fact-checked journalism is nowhere to be found on Facebook, which is the most popular social media platform in Canada with approximately 30 million users. The internet is a splintered, chaotic cesspool of misinformation, and professional news outlets have a much harder time reaching audiences. Weeks away from the election, voters struggle to separate fact from fiction ... CLICK HERE for the full story

In Saanich-Gulf Islands, the current election campaign feels much the same as past ones to Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May.  While the Liberal and NDP candidates argue there has been a seismic shift in Canadian politics and they have a good chance of winning this time, it doesn’t seem that way to May ... ... “It’s a two-way race ... between the Conservative Cathie Ounsted and me.” At the same time, May acknowledged, what’s on people’s minds is different this time. “I’ve never experienced so much emotion at the doorstep. People are feeling so anxious. The craziness of Donald Trump, and then the fear factor — which is dissipating as the polls change — of Pierre Poilievre becoming prime minister” ...  CLICK HERE for the full story

Something significant has happened to the NDP vote in this federal election. A party that, for much of the past two years, consistently held between 18% and 20% support now finds itself with just 9% of the committed vote, according to our latest Abacus Data survey conducted from April 7 to 10, 2025. That’s a collapse—one of the most dramatic shifts we’ve seen in this campaign. The last time support for the NDP was this low was way back in the 1990s. Based on our last survey, only about 1 in 3 of those who voted NDP in 2021 would vote for the party again today. Almost half of those voters are now supporting the Liberals. And 1 in 3 of those who self-identify as a New Democrat say they are voting Liberal in this election. It’s almost the reverse of 2011 when millions of Liberal partisans lent Jack Layton and the NDP their votes. In this piece, I want to uncover why this happening ... CLICK HERE for the full story

According to survey data released last week by Pollara, Canadians are evenly split on whether they want this federal election to result in "change" or "stability" — 46 per cent of Canadians want change and 45 per cent want stability. Among those who want change, 47 per cent say Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would best deliver that change, while 20 per cent said Liberal Leader Mark Carney would. But among those who want stability, 66 per cent say Carney would best deliver it, while 18 per cent said Poilievre. (Dan Arnold, Pollara's chief strategy officer, was director of research for the Trudeau government from 2015 to 2021.) Such numbers might speak to one of the central divides of this election — and explain why Carney's Liberals have staked out a lead with two weeks to go ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Watching Mark Carney lead the Liberals through this election has been weird. I mean, the decades of very public academic and professional thinking that distinguished Carney’s brand seem to have disappeared in a puff of smoke. I first assumed that, besides his well-documented 180 degree turn on carbon tax (and gas pipelines?), there were just a couple of adjustments to better fit the political context. But based in particular on Carney’s ”It’s time to build” website, I now see that the changes go deeper. Much deeper ... CLICK HERE for the full story