Carney Calls an Election for April 28, Giving the Conservatives Only 37 Days to Change Their Messaging if They Want to Win

Yesterday, Canada’s unelected Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered his Governor General to dissolve Parliament, thereby bringing about a federal election dated to happen on April 28. His predecessor Justin Trudeau had prorogued Parliament on January 6 to allow for the transition period into a newly-appointed Prime Minister, which was decided by a mere 0.3% of the country through the Liberal Party leadership race. Carney was sworn in on March 14, and Parliament was set to return from prorogation today on March 24 — but there was one main problem with that.

Unlike almost every Canadian PM in history, Carney does not hold a seat in Parliament. As a matter of fact, he’s the only PM to have never held a seat in any elected office.

Governing Canada while not being able to participate in parliamentary processes is essentially ruling with a hand tied behind your back. Knowing this would be an issue, rather than waiting till the scheduled election in October 2025 (or even delaying it till September 2026, which Carney would arguably have had the lawful backing to do), he sped up the process so that Canadians would be going to the polls on April 28.

So where do things stand now in terms of each candidate’s favourability to win? The polls all vary to some degree, but they all agree one thing: it’s much tighter than it should be. Abacus Data’s latest poll puts the Conservative Party at a narrow lead with 39%, the Liberal Party at 36% and the New Democratic Party at 12%. A report by Nanos Polling from March 18 shows Pierre Poilievre emerging as victor with 31.4% over “Trudeau/Carney” with 30.7%. (Jagmeet Singh of the NDP follows at 8.6%, Elizabeth May of the Green Party at 3.1%, and Maxime Bernier of the People’s Party at 2.0%.) Most astonishingly of them all, 338’s latest polling from today has the Liberal Party winning with an estimated 178 seats in the House of Commons — exceeding the 172-seat threshold for a majority government and defeating the CPC with 130 seats, the Bloc Québécois with 25 seats, the NDP with 8 seats, and the GPC with 2 seats.

Needless to say, the Conservatives are not being predicted a landslide win, if any win at all. The reasons for this lie within many core flaws of the party and their leader, Pierre Poilievre — one of them being their messaging. For the last two years, Poilievre has championed the slogan, “Axe the Tax,” in reference to Trudeau’s expensive carbon tax placed on both consumers and corporations. It began in April 2019 at $20 per tonne of C02 emissions, increasing year after year until accumulating to a massive amount at $95/tonne, set to take effect in one week from now on April 1. How appropriate, since the government instituting this tax was made up of fools.

So while left-wing Canadians railed about Trump’s tariffs, they remained silent when it came to the looming carbon tax hike. Opposing this overreaching tax was a very effective platform that Poilievre heavily utilized, making it the primary motto of his campaign. It seemed to work well until just 10 days ago, when Mark Carney held a Trumpian photo op where he signed a paper declaring the carbon tax to be null in void. He made it one of the very first things he accomplished after being sworn in as PM, painting a positive picture of him in the media and also stealing Poilievre’s main platform. However, few Canadians realize that not only did Carney not eliminate the carbon tax, he also doesn’t have the authority to sign such a document. Only the Governor General can sign an Order-In-Council like one that is necessary to remove the carbon tax. But instead of actually removing it, Carney set the carbon tax rate back down to zero, meaning it is still existent for him to hit hit back up to $95/tonne after winning the federal election. Additionally, only the consumer carbon tax was set to zero; the corporate carbon tax remains. If Carney decides to raise this to offset the loss of the consumer carbon tax, the price of goods will increase and Canadians will again be forced to pay an extra tax in this harsh economy.

Alas, none of this actually matters because the average Canadian does not care. They care about what they read in the Toronto Star and what they watch on CBC. If these outlets tell them Carney eliminated the carbon tax, they’ll believe it whole-heartedly. Most Canadians — even the most liberal ones — hated Justin Trudeau, but Carney appears to them as being more polished, knowledgeable, diplomatic, and well-spoken. His impressive background precedes him: being appointed by Stephen Harper as Governor of the Bank of Canada, then leaving that role to go on as Governor for the Bank of England. His past work in the private sector at big investment firms and banks like Goldman Sachs contribute to the idea that he’d be better suited to handle Canada’s economic turmoil than a career politician like Poilievre. Forget that Carney was actually an economic advisor to Trudeau for years (including during COVID) while Trudeau torpedoed Canada’s financial system and stability; it doesn’t matter because the taxpayer-funded media says it doesn’t.

Obviously Carney is a fraud and a liar; he will inevitably show his most liberal colours after being granted a majority government. But he’s done well at taking the Conservative Party’s platform away from them and running on it instead. Last week, he even flirted with the idea of expanding the oil industry and potentially removing his predecessor’s emissions cap. Of course, he doesn’t mean any of this. The Mark Carney you will witness from now until April 28 may seem like he’s full of good policy-making; but reality will set in on April 29.

Until that point, the Conservative Party and Pierre Poilievre specifically only have 37 days to adjust their messaging. “Axe the Tax” won’t work anymore, because most Canadians believe (wrongly, but irregardless) that the tax is already axed. Poilievre seems to be running on an anti-Trump platform, but that likely won’t work either. Trump’s “endorsement” of Carney last week (which wasn’t an actual endorsement as the media and the CPC made it out to be, as I wrote about here) should theoretically have had a negative effect on Liberal voters, yet it doesn’t seem that any wavered from their support of Carney.

The CPC are running right now without a platform or a message. Empty platitudes and anti-Trump rhetoric won’t be enough to sway voters’ minds. The federal election is looming, and a repeat of the last nine years is looking like a potential reality. If given a term by the voters, Carney will inevitably drive Canada back into the hole it had just begun to come out from, and it will have been achieved by using the same campaign that Pierre Poilievre has been using for the last few years. If Conservatives don’t adjust their messaging fast, they will lose resoundingly, and Canada will be subjected to an even worse form of Justin Trudeau.

Cover Photo Generated by Grok AI