The Top Line
As of today, there is one week left in the Election 2025 campaign.
Last week was dominated by the national televised leader debates (Wednesday, April 16, French, and Thursday, April 17, English). In the 2015 and 2021 elections, the debates represented turning points in the campaign, but often their impact can take many days to fully materialize. While the impact of the debates on voters’ choices is still unclear and may be quite limited, the general consensus is that Pierre Poilievre had a strong English debate, while Mark Carney made the impression he needed to with voters.
Meanwhile, the Liberals and NDP also released their Election 2025 platforms over the past weekend – titled ‘Canada Strong’ for the Liberals and ‘Made for People. Built for Canada’ for the NDP. It is very late in the campaign for the publication of platforms, but parties evidently feel that the fairly narrow focus on economic and Canada-U.S. issues that has dominated this election to-date is where voters are putting their attention. Notably, the Conservative Party has said their platform will be released tomorrow.
As of the publication of this note, the state of the election remains relatively unchanged from the past three weeks: During week 4 of the campaign, a couple polls showed a small Conservative lead that could translate into a Conservative minority government, but other polls continued to show a Liberal lead. As in previous weeks, the regional breakdowns of most recent polls show the Liberals on an easier path to forming government, primarily due to strong leads in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and Ontario.
Liberal and NDP Platforms
As mentioned, the Liberal Party and NDP each published relatively brief (compared to precedents in recent elections) platforms this week.
The Liberal platform tried to walk a tightrope between proposing large investments in Canadian industrial and economic development, infrastructure and housing, and the Armed Forces with a demonstration of fiscal responsibility (in this case, a lot of plans for somewhat reduced government operational spending and finding “efficiencies” in government operations). The result is a fiscal and policy plan that calls for fairly large deficits over the next five years while pledging to balance the operating budget by fiscal year 2028-2029.
The NDP platform is focussed around pledges to protect Federal public services – including the fledgling pharmacare and dentalcare programs that the NDP championed – during the fiscally challenging context of the Canada – U.S. trade war. As well, proposed new investments and policies in the platform were largely in the area of housing (much increased public spending on housing and greater protections for renters) and expanding existing healthcare coverage in the areas of mental and dental health, as well as for prescription drugs.
Ultimately, most of the content in the Liberal and NDP platforms had been previously profiled in “message of the day” announcements during the lead-up to the election, so there was nothing in either policy plan to surprise stakeholders. But how voters react to the Liberal platform’s plan for larger deficits than was forecast under the Trudeau Government bears monitoring.
Leaders’ Week in Review
Liberal Leader Mark Carney campaigned in Quebec and then later in the week in Conservative ridings in Ontario where he is hopeful of making seat gains. Recent Liberal policy proposals included policies for skills training and a new defence procurement strategy to streamline the way Canada’s procures military equipment.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre campaigned in Montreal prior to the leaders debates and then later in the week in British Columbia, where many ridings are showing close races. This week, policy announcements made by Mr. Poilievre focussed on law and order as well as measures to combat fraud scams targeted at seniors.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet spent the vast majority of this week in Montréal and surrounding areas, almost entirely in ridings (including his own) that are already held by Bloc MPs.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh spent the early part of the week in Toronto and Montreal and then after the debates headed to British Columbia, where several NDP incumbents are in uphill battles to retain their seats.
Each of the Bloc and NDP, facing low support in public polling, have transitioned their campaigns to focussing on the role that their parties could play as the balance of power in a minority Parliament and securing re-election of incumbent MPs. For the NDP, this increasingly means a fairly narrow focus on winning ridings in British Columbia.
What This Means to You
With the Liberal and NDP platforms released on the weekend and the Conservative platform coming tomorrow, organizations should be closely evaluating all of the platforms and finalizing post election plans. No matter who wins the election we can expect the Government to hit the ground running by mid-May, so organizations need to have advocacy strategies and messaging ready to go as soon as possible after next Monday.
Because the platforms of the major parties were released so late, you can expect public servants to be busier than usual in the next few weeks developing their briefing books for the next Government. While the campaign is in the home stretch the work to prepare for the next Government is now just really beginning. In the final week, we expect the Leaders and national party campaigns to focus very closely on battleground or “swing” ridings, which likely means a heavy focus on British Columbia, suburban Ontario, and (for the Liberals and Bloc) Québec.
