The Conservatives and NDP spent the weekend hunting votes in British Columbia — a key late-campaign battleground that one pollster says may offer Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre his best shot at victory.
Both Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh addressed Canadians’ cost-of-living concerns at campaign events in B.C. on Sunday.
Singh was asked if he was advocating strategic voting to shore up the party’s flagging support against possible Conservative inroads in the region.
“I’m calling for people to vote according to what they care about most. And if they want to stop a Conservative here on Vancouver Island, the best way to do that is to vote for a New Democrat,” he said during a campaign stop in Victoria.
Singh also said Canadians concerned about cuts under a Liberal government should “send a New Democrat to Ottawa” to fight for them.
The NDP won 13 of B.C.’s 43 seats in the 2021 federal election, but polls suggest those incumbent New Democrats may be vulnerable this time.
Angus Reid polling released on April 14 projects a virtual two-way tie in B.C., with the Liberals and Conservatives at 42 per cent each, the NDP at 11 per cent and the Greens at just three per cent.
In Metro Vancouver, the Liberals under leader Mark Carney hold the lead with 49 per cent of voter intention, though both the Conservatives and NDP have chipped away at that lead in the latest poll.
The Angus Reid polling was conducted online between April 10-13. Because the poll was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.
Angus Reid president Shachi Kurl said B.C. is one of the last federal “strongholds” the NDP has, in part because the party has done so well provincially. Singh himself is running in the B.C. riding of Burnaby Central.
She said some of the B.C. regions where Poilievre has campaigned recently have large populations of Asian or South Asian descent and are places where the Conservative message on law and order is likely to “resonate well.”
With the Liberals polling well in Ontario and Quebec, she said, the Conservatives will need to succeed in B.C. if they hope to form government after April 28.
“For the Conservatives, the path to victory has to be delivered through B.C., and for the NDP, (it’s about) holding on to dignity and/or party status,” Kurl said.
The Liberals can win the election without taking B.C., she added, but the province would amount to “extra insurance” for the incumbent government.
Carney himself is running in the Ottawa-area riding of Nepean and held a campaign rally there Sunday afternoon.
In Victoria on Sunday, Singh repeated his campaign promises to cap prices for food essentials and to legislate protections against price gouging at the grocery store.
Poilievre kicked the day off at a grocery store in Surrey, B.C., with another announcement on inflation.
Arguing that a reduction in government spending would ease pricing pressures, Poilievre said a Conservative government would cut Ottawa’s annual budget for consultants by $10 billion.
“Inflation is what happens when governments spend money they don’t have, so they just print the cash. More money bidding on a fixed supply of goods equals higher prices for everything,” he said.
Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that the annual rate of inflation cooled slightly to 2.3 per cent nationally in March, while food prices increased 3.2 per cent year over year.
Poilievre also railed against the Liberals’ campaign platform, unveiled Saturday, which proposes $129 billion in new spending over the next four years on top of existing commitments.
Carney pitched his platform as an investment in making Canada more self-reliant in response to the trade war with the United States.
The NDP also unveiled its costed campaign pledges Saturday, while the Conservatives have said their platform is coming soon.
On Sunday, Poilievre accused Carney of “printing money” during his time as governor of the Bank of England and blamed him for that country’s recent bout of high inflation.
Carney led the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 and was responsible for little of that country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation surged in Canada and the United Kingdom in the pandemic recovery period and peaked in both countries in 2022.
Poilievre did not answer directly Sunday when asked whether he would maintain the national freeze on purchasing or transferring handguns, introduced by the Liberal government in 2022.
He argued handguns on Canadian streets are largely brought in from the United States and said he would crack down on firearm traffickers to address handgun violence.
Owning a registered handgun purchased before the freeze remains legal in Canada, while such guns can be transferred legally only among certain exempted businesses and individuals.
After concluding his announcement and taking four questions from media outlets chosen by his campaign, Poilievre appeared to ignore reporters shouting additional questions — including one about when the Conservatives would release their fully costed election platform.
At the Liberal rally in Nepean on Sunday, Carney was introduced by his wife Diana Fox Carney to a crowd of hundreds of supporters in the parking lot of the Lusitania Portuguese Club of Ottawa.
In his speech, Carney touched on his proposals to make Canada more resilient in the face of threats from the United States. He also drew comparisons between Poilievre and U.S. President Donald Trump — and briefly echoed a call from the crowd labelling Poilievre as “Timbit Trump.”
Among the participants in Nepean was Leigh Hall, who said she had never attended a political rally before.
She said Carney’s track record of success outside government convinced her he’s the “right person for this moment in time.”
“I’ve never felt the need to be beholden to one party, but this time around this is too important,” she said.
Sunday was the second to last day of advance polls, which got off to a record-setting start on Friday.
Elections Canada said nearly two million people turned out to cast a ballot on the first day of advance voting, leading to long lineups at some polling stations.
A spokesperson for the independent agency said polls remained “very busy” on Saturday and workers were making adjustments to reduce lineups.
— with files from Anja Karadeglija in Nepean, Ont., and Brenna Owen in Surrey, B.C.
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