With the end of the election campaign in sight, I asked David Coletto, the head of the polling firm Abacus Data, what stood out for him. His answer, given the exceptional political and economic turmoil in Canada, was a bit surprising.
“As much as this election has been interesting,” he told me, “not a lot has happened during the election — which is really interesting.”
There were no moments of drama as in 1984, when Brian Mulroney challenged Prime Minister John Turner over making a raft of political appointments. (“You had an option, sir, to say no,” Mr. Mulroney said, jabbing his finger, in a debate that many believe brought him to power.) Nor was there anything like the rerun between the two men four years later, when Mr. Turner said of Mr. Mulroney’s free trade deal with the Reagan administration, “You have sold us out.” (That time Mr. Turner was the one to jab his finger.)
And Monday is unlikely to bring anything as unexpected as the Orange Wave of 2011 — the New Democrats’ sweep, under Jack Layton, of Quebec that made the party the official opposition for the first time in Canada’s history.
Instead, the campaign is ending much as it started: a contest between the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, with all the other parties sitting on the sidelines.
[Read: Who Will Be Canada’s Next Prime Minister?]
And nothing in the campaign shifted its focus away from President Trump’s trade war with Canada and his stated desire to annex Canada and make it the 51st state.
As a result, although the gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives has recently narrowed in polls, the distribution of each party’s support makes it likely that the country will have a Liberal government again.
[Read: Polls Tighten in Homestretch of Canada’s Election]
Less clear from the polls is how decisive a Liberal win may be. That will depend in part on how the party fares in ridings surrounding Toronto, as I wrote this week.
[Read: Why Greater Toronto Could Decide Who Wins Canada’s Election]
But a Liberal victory by any margin would be an extraordinary comeback. For much of last year, it appeared that Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives would dominate any election. They led the Liberals by upward of 27 percentage points in some polls.
Then, without the unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the Conservatives to attack, and with the surge in both anxiety and patriotism in response to Mr. Trump’s broad threats to Canada’s sovereignty and economy, the Liberals became a viable political force again under Mr. Carney.
Adding to the extraordinary nature of the story, Mr. Carney is a political neophyte up against one of Canada’s most experienced politicians, in Mr. Poilievre.
After traveling this week with Mr. Carney’s campaign, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, our Canada bureau chief, profiled the prime minister and his long path to politics through the world of finance and leading the central banks of both Canada and England.
[Read: Canada’s Anti-Trump Finds His Moment]
One major boost for the Liberals has been Mr. Trump’s conversion of many supporters of the Bloc Québécois, a party devoted to Quebec independence, into flag-waving Canadian patriots. During a visit to Sainte-Thérèse and Blainville in Quebec, Norimitsu Onishi, my colleague based in Montreal, found that many voters were willing to overlook Mr. Carney’s sometimes dubious command of French and his lack of connection to the province.
[Read: Despite His Shaky French, Canada’s Prime Minister Is a Hit in Quebec]
The Conservatives’ gains in recent polls appear to be partly due to Mr. Poilievre’s success in reminding voters about housing costs and inflation in general — the issues that once brought him to the top of the polls.
My colleague Vjosa Isai went to Chilliwack, British Columbia, a farming community that she found had become “a magnet for people from Vancouver who can no longer afford living there.” And many of those people want the next prime minister to do something about that.
[Read: Canada’s Million-Dollar Housing Crisis]
In this campaign, unlike the previous three, talk about climate change was relatively muted. Mr. Carney’s decision to kill the consumer carbon tax seems to be partly responsible for that, Max Bearak writes.
[Read: Climate Change, Once a Big Issue, Fades From Canada’s Election]
And this is the first federal general election in which Meta has blocked news from Canadians’ Facebook and Instagram feeds. Matina and Stuart A. Thompson report that the resulting vacuum has been filled with content that is “hyperpartisan and often veering into misinformation,” just as “cryptocurrency scams and ads that mimic legitimate news sources have proliferated on the platforms.”
[Read: News Is Blocked on Meta’s Feeds in Canada. Here’s What Fills the Void.]
[Watch: How Misinformation Is Booming in Meta’s Canada News Ban]
Trans Canada
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Before his death, Pope Francis commissioned a sculpture by Timothy P. Schmalz, an artist from St. Jacobs, Ontario, to promote his message of charity, Elisabetta Povoledo reports. It was installed this month in St. Peter’s Square and joins an earlier work by Mr. Schmalz that depicts 140 migrants and refugees from various points in history on a boat.
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Zadie Xa, a Canadian artist of Korean heritage, is among this year’s nominees for the prestigious Turner Prize.
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Margaret Lyons, a television critic at The Times, found “North of North,” a comedy series set in a fictional Inuk community in Nunavut, to be “a cozy sweetheart show with lots going for it.” But she warns of a plot point at the end of the first episode “that casts a grotesque shadow over everything.”
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The police shot and killed a man at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday after he brandished a firearm. The episode caused a partial shutdown of the largest terminal.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
The post Canada’s Extraordinary Yet Uneventful Election Draws to a Close appeared first on New York Times.
