🚨 ICYMI... On Sunday, March 23, Prime Minister Mark Carney asked Canada's Governor General to dissolve the 44th Parliament, issuing 343 writs of election to kick off the 45th general election campaign.

Set for Monday, April 28, 2025, the 37-day election period is the shortest allowed by the Canada Elections Act, but while short, it has already proven itself to be action-packed.

Key dates 

With the 37-day writ period flying by, key dates like registration cutoffs and advance voting options are quickly approaching. 

The deadline for parties to nominate candidates or for Independent candidates to put their names forward has officially passed, and voters can now see a complete list of candidates in their riding 👀. 

• 🗓️ April 18-21 from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local time: Advance voting days. You can also vote in advance at any Elections Canada office up until April 22 at 6:00 p.m.
• 📮April 22 by 6:00 p.m.: Vote by mail. Once registered, Elections Canada will send a vote-by-mail kit, which must be returned before the close of the final election day.

On March 24, Canada's Leaders' Debates Commission announced the details of the upcoming debates, taking place at the Maison de Radio-Canada in Montreal, Quebec.

FRENCH DEBATE

• 🗓️ Wednesday, April 16 at 8:00 p.m. ET
• 🎙️ Moderated by Patrice Roy of Radio-Canada

ENGLISH DEBATE

• 🗓️ Thursday, April 17 at 7:00 p.m. ET
• 🎙️ Moderated by Steve Paikin of TVO

📍 To check your registration, register, or update your address, visit the online voter registration service.

Campaign Commitments 

Each political party is rolling out its vision for the country - here's a breakdown of their current standings and key promises while on the campaign trail: 

🟥 Liberal Party of Canada (led by Prime Minister Mark Carney) - 152

• CBC/Radio-Canada: Create a governance plan to improve accountability, leadership, and innovation; Promote Canadian and Québec culture; Expand local news coverage through more bureaus and reporters; Ensure the transmission of emergency information; Enhance efforts to combat disinformation; and Invest in digital tools and innovation to meet audience needs.
• Apprenticeship training: Provide an Apprenticeship Grant of up to $8,000 for registered apprentices; Double funding of the Union Training and Innovation Program to $50 million; Establish a new $20 million capital funding stream for colleges; Increase labour mobility between provinces; Expand the Labour Mobility Tax Deduction.  
• Retirees: Reduce the minimum amount that must be withdrawn from a RRIF by 25 per cent for one year; Increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement by 5 per cent for one year.  
• Biodiversity: Create at least ten new national parks and marine conservation areas and 15 new urban parks; make access to National Parks and historic sites free for this summer; establish a new Arctic Indigenous Guardians program; invest $100 million in a strategic water technology fund; Enshrine First Nations' right to water into law; invest $15 million to modernize the location, retrieval, and responsible disposal of ghost gear. 
• Energy: Kickstart the clean energy supply chain; Fast-track projects of national interest; Sign Cooperation and Substitution agreements with all willing provinces, territories, and Indigenous Governing Bodies; Establish a Major Federal Project Office; Build out an east-west electricity grid; Invest in Canada's conventional and clean energy potential.  
• Crime: Reinvigorate the implementation of a gun buyback program for assault-style firearms; Automatically revoke gun licenses for individuals convicted of violent offences; Legislate a requirement for the RCMP to classify new firearm models entering the market; Increase funding to the RCMP's Forensic Laboratories and the Saskatchewan Ballistics Laboratory; Toughen oversight of firearms licensing; Toughen the Criminal Code and make bail laws stricter.

🟦 Conservative Party of Canada (led by Pierre Poilievre) - 120

• Intimate partner violence sentencing: Create a new offence of "assault of an intimate partner" to deliver tougher sentences for anyone who abuses an intimate partner; Require the strictest bail conditions for anyone accused of intimate partner violence, including GPS ankle bracelet monitoring; End the downgrade of murder of an intimate partner to manslaughter, ensuring it's treated as "first-degree."
• Red tape: Cut 25 per cent of all federal government red tape within two years, pass a law requiring two regulations be cut for every new one added and ensure $2 in administrative cost savings for every $1 added.
• Recovery mandates: Fund treatment for 50,000 Canadians in treatment centres with a proven record, ban drug dens from being located within 500 metres of schools, daycares, playgrounds, parks, and seniors' homes, and impose strict new oversight rules. 
• Resource projects: Create a single office, the Rapid Resource Project Office, to handle all regulatory approvals across all levels of government; One application and one environmental review per project; One year maximum wait times for approvals with a target of six months; Approve LNG Phase III and at least nine other projects waiting for the go-ahead. 
• Tax accountability: The Bring it Home Task Force will close tax loopholes; redirect CRA resources away from auditing and small business owners and charities; Create a name-and-shame website; Expand the Offshore Tax Informant Program, giving whistleblowers up to 20 per cent of recovered funds. 
• Criminal sentencing: Stop criminals convicted of three serious offences from getting bail, probation, parole, or house arrest; Ensure that three-time serious criminals get a minimum prison term of ten years and up to a life sentence; Repeal Bills C-5 and C-75.
• Housing: Require cities to free up land, speed up permits and cut development charges to build 15 per cent more homes each year to receive federal funding; Sell 15 per cent of the government's buildings and require them to be turned into affordable housing; Require municipalities to pre-approve building permits for high density housing around transit stations to receive federal funding for transit. 
  
  • Housing taxes: For every dollar of relief a municipality offers in development charges, a Conservative government will reimburse 50 per cent, up to a maximum of $50,000 in savings for new homebuyers. 

⬜️ Bloc Québécois (led by Yves-François Blanchet) - 33

• CUSMA and trade: Require the federal government to have the preliminary texts of trade agreements and treaties voted on in Parliament before they are signed. 
• Investment and innovation: Amend the Investment Canada Act to better control foreign takeovers of companies; Demand that negotiations be initiated with Quebec and the provinces with a view to amending the various laws on business corporations; Fight against any attempt to centralize financial markets towards Toronto. 
• Judicial reform: Require Quebec judges on the Supreme Court and the superior courts of Quebec be selected from a list submitted by Quebec; Ensure all judges appointed to the Supreme Court are proficient in French; Overhaul the judicial appointment process. 
• French language: Exempt Quebec from the application of the Official Languages Act; Require mastery of French and the francization of workplaces for all federal civil servants working from Quebec; End appointment based on the promise of learning French; Require sufficient knowledge of French for managers of federally regulated companies. 
• Border security: Create a Ministry of Borders with a portfolio encompassing the Border Services Agency and all its mandates; Grant border service officers the power to patrol outside border posts; Increase the staff of the Border Services Agency and the RCMP; Tougher penalties for criminal smugglers. 

🟧 New Democratic Party of Canada (led by Jagmeet Singh) - 24

• Corporate tax dodging: End tax agreements with known tax havens like Bermuda; Require corporations to prove a genuine business reason for offshore accounts; Implement country-by-country financial reporting; Launch a review of the tax code to close loopholes. 
• Rent control: Implement national rent control; Ban fixed-term leases, renovictions, demovictions; Ban rent price fixing and collusion; Recognize the right of tenant unions to negotiate with landlords.  
• Workers: Expand CCAA super priority protections for workers; Raise the cap on the Wage Earner Protection Program; Strengthen and enforce directors' liability for unpaid compensation; Create a mechanism for workers to be made whole through trust-held funds or federal guarantees.  
• Housing: Double the current pace of home construction; Permanent $16 billion national housing strategy made up of the Canadian Homes Transfer and the Communities First Fund.

🟩 Green Party of Canada (led by Elizabeth May and Jonathan Pedneault) - 2

• Lumber reserves: Establish a Strategic Reserve of softwood lumber, aluminum, steel, and other critical materials; Stop raw log exports; Ensure Indigenous leadership and stewardship in forestry; Use Canadian lumber to build public housing; Require that logging profits be reinvested in Canadian communities.
• Public healthcare: Introduce a new Primary Care Health Act to guarantee every Canadian access to a family doctor, nurse practitioner, or community health team; Fully integrate mental health services into public healthcare as an insured benefit; Implement Universal Pharmacare; Expand the Canadian Dental Care Plan; Enforce and enhance the Canada Health Act; and Invest in healthcare worker training and fair compensation. 
• Defence: Build a Global Democratic Alliance with a new bloc of nations; Reform defence procurement and industry; enhance refugee protection and immigration infrastructure; enforce human rights and international law; Increase international development funding; strengthen Arctic and infrastructure defence. 

News and Nuance

The third week of the campaign unfolds against a backdrop of major political developments, shifting public debates, and key news events shaping the broader electoral landscape.

 📍 Political Pitstops   

Both Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilevre made campaign stops in Alberta this week, holding rallies and laying out their visions for the province and the country. 

During his speech in Calgary, Carney outlined his promise to make Canada an energy superpower, speeding up the review process to greenlight major national energy projects. He further stated goals to displace energy imported from the United States. 

Carney promised to sign agreements within six months of taking office with willing provinces and Indigenous governments that would recognize energy project assessments in their jurisdictions. 

While Canada has opportunities in clean energy, Carney also noted that he wants the country to dominate the market for conventional energy and become lower-carbon in the long term. 

Poilevre met supporters south of Edmonton, where former Prime Minister Stephen Harper endorsed him. 

There, he emphasized campaign commitments to sell government buildings for affordable housing, the need to build pipelines and transport energy interprovincially, toughening approaches to crime, reducing taxes, and implementing harsher sentences for fentanyl dealers. 

He also emphasized his fiscal approach, promising to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of government spending. 

He also touched on concerns of Western alienation, committing to ending the notion forever, amid concerns from Alberta Premier Smith of a national unity crisis if a Liberal government is elected.

Alberta has historically leaned strongly toward the Conservative Party in federal elections and is expected to maintain that pattern.

Nonetheless, recent polling averages indicate that Liberal support in the province has doubled since 2021, largely drawing from former NDP voters. At the time of Parliament's dissolution, the Liberals held two seats in Alberta.

• 🗂️ Access: 2025 Federal Election Tracker 

🔐 Foreign Interference 

Concerns over foreign interference in Canadian elections persist, as the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force uncovers an information operation linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The operation is being conducted through the popular Chinese-language social media platform WeChat, specifically by the account "Youli-Youmian." This account, which is associated with China's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, has been found to be amplifying narratives surrounding Mark Carney regarding his stance with the United States and his credentials. 

This shift in Chinese interference tactics contrasts with past smear campaigns, such as those against Conservative MP Kenny Chiu.

Kenny Chiu, a former Conservative MP, became a prominent figure in the discussion of foreign interference after losing his Steveston-Richmond seat during the 2021 election, which he attributes to a smear campaign orchestrated by Chinese-language media outlets. 

The operation has raised concerns about the CCP's growing influence on Canadian elections, with experts noting the use of bots and fake accounts to amplify these messages.

While posts about the Prime Minister are mostly positive, they contribute to the broader issue of foreign interference, which manipulates public opinion without adhering to Canadian campaign laws.

The situation underscores the complexity of election interference, where foreign actors use social media to sway voters covertly. This latest case also fuels ongoing political debates, with Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre emphasizing the need for a tougher stance on Chinese interference.

Despite the controversy, some argue that the Trudeau government has not done enough to prevent such interference, leaving Canada vulnerable to foreign manipulation in its electoral process.

📊 Polling Positions 

As the 2025 federal election continues, the race between the Liberal and Conservative parties remains tight, with a five-point gap separating them, according to the latest Nanos Research poll.

According to the poll, the race for the country's preferred Prime Minister has gotten tighter. Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who previously held a 20-point advantage over Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as the preferred Prime Minister, has seen his lead narrow to just 12 points.

National support stands at 43 per cent for the Liberals and 38 per cent for the Conservatives, while the NDP, Bloc Québécois, and Green Party trail behind at 9 per cent, 6 per cent, and three per cent, respectively. 

Regionally, the Conservatives have gained ground in Ontario, but the Liberals maintain a stronghold in Quebec, the Atlantic, and British Columbia, with the Prairies firmly supporting the Conservatives

The data, based on Nanos Research tracking, suggests the election outcome could be influenced by shifting voter preferences in key regions.

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