The Leader extended an invitation to three well-known locals to share their political insights. Sean Conway argues Mark Carney is qualified to lead the country. Ish Theilheimer says Canada needs Jagmeet Singh and John Yakabuski believes Pierre Poilievre offers real hope.

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Eganville – Monday’s federal election is the most consequential in modern times as Canada finds itself under threat and in a trade war launched in recent months by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party was poised to form a majority government in the 45th general election, but three significant events derailed his dreams. The first was the election of Trump who immediately turned on Canada, a neighbour, close friend and ally, then the resignation of Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and thirdly the election of Mark Carney to lead the party and immediately faced with the U.S. threats.

All of these events were huge blows to the Poilievre campaign, causing both the leader and party to take a nosedive in popularity after riding high in polls.

The Liberal lead in national polls has held steady under Mr. Carney, though it has slipped from about six or seven points to around five points on average, and last week’s national debates did not appear to shift voting intentions enough to bump the Liberals out of majority territory.

The Liberals have comfortable leads in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and enjoy a wide lead over the Conservatives in Ontario. They are also narrowly ahead in British Columbia. The Conservatives lead in Alberta and the Prairies. The NDP’s strongest support is in B.C., but even there the party is poised to suffer significant losses.

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By the time you read this, Canadians will have already begun casting ballots in the April 28, 2025, general election. The election is unlike any other in my lifetime or, for that matter, in the lifetime of post-Confederation Canada, which covers a period of 158 years and 43 previous federal general elections.

I say this because the person who becomes our next prime minster will face an unprecedented threat from the United States. Never in our long history of sharing the North American continent with the Americans has Canada faced a U.S. government as hostile, as predatory and as unstable as the current administration of President Donald Trump.

Since its inauguration three months ago, the U.S. government has attacked our sovereignty and our economy. It has launched a worldwide trade war against friend and foe alike. In the early days of his second term, Trump has shown a marked tendency to favour dictators like the Russian President Vladimir Putin over longtime allies and neighbours like Canada and western Europe.

Trump’s trade and tariff war against Canada is already hurting our economy in such key sectors as steel, aluminium, our automotive sector, softwood lumber, agricultural and energy products. And Trump threatens much more if we refuse to bow to his many and often changing demands.

What is most annoying about the current U.S.-Canada trade relationship is that a little more than six years ago, on Nov. 30, 2018, then-President Trump signed the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). CUSMA covers over 80 percent of all trade between Canada and the United States and provides for a dispute resolution mechanism for any and all concerns that may arise between parties to that agreement.

What recent weeks have made plain is that the current Trump administration appears to have no loyalty to the signed trade agreements it has with Canada and now seems intent on tearing up CUSMA, while Trump himself seems quite prepared to almost gleefully attack Canada on multiple fronts, not all of them economic. Can you recall a time in your life when an American president talked repeatedly about making Canada the 51st American state?

Because of the importance and the immediacy of the Trump/American threat to Canada’s vital interests, I truly believe the next prime minister must be someone with the right experience and judgement to confront this challenge with prudence and strength. I have known Prime Minister Mark Carney for many years and believe his wide experience in the both the public and private sectors recommends him highly for the challenges that lie ahead for Canada.

He had held senior positions in the federal department of finance in Ottawa; in 2008 he was appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper; in 2013, he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England; and, in recent years, he has worked internationally on a wide range of economic, financial and environmental issues.

Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. With these roots in northern and western Canada, he has a good sense of Canada in all its diversity and promise. In this crucial election, I believe we must honestly confront our changed political, economic and strategic circumstances.

Our neighbour to the south and largest trading partner for as long as any of us can remember appears to have gone rogue, seriously rogue, given some of what’s coming out of the White House on an almost daily basis. It is incumbent upon us as citizens and voters to choose the most qualified candidate to lead Canada at this critical juncture in the life of our country.

Mark Carney’s intelligence, strength, judgment and, most importantly, his wide economic and financial experience, make him the man to meet this defining moment in our nation’s history.

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Though polls make it seem unlikely, and he’s even played down the prospect himself, Canada would be well served by Jagmeet Singh as prime minister. Singh and the NDP represent so much of what’s good about Canada and what sets it off from our quarrelsome neighbour to the south.

First of all, Singh and the NDP reject the notion of corporate rule and always have. Liberal leader Mark Carney has deep ties and loyalties to the same world of mega-businesses and wealthy oligarchs that ultimately gave us the Trump regime with its anti-government ideology. Government is about protecting ordinary people from the excesses of the mighty. Corporations exist to make money and don’t concern themselves much with humanity or the environment. This is Carney’s world. It is not Singh’s.

Because it fights against wealthy, business interests on behalf of ordinary people, the NDP has shaped and continues to shape Canada. Tommy Douglas and the NDP introduced Medicare – one of Canada’s defining achievements – in Saskatchewan in 1962 and had to stare down a doctors’ strike to do it. He later convinced Liberal Primer Minister Lester Pearson to introduce Medicare federally. There are problems in Canada’s health system – many caused by tax and funding cuts by various Conservative and Liberal governments – but every Canadian politician knows that attacking Medicare openly is political suicide.

In similar fashion, Jagmeet Singh made support for a Canadian dental insurance program a condition for enabling the Trudeau government to survive. This is a really important achievement. Dental care is too pricey for poor people. My own mouth is in pretty bad shape from my first few decades as an adult, when I couldn’t afford proper care. Many people can never afford it. Singh and the NDP achieved something so good and so popular that even arch-right-wing Pierre Poilievre has vowed to keep public dental insurance going.

This is a prime example of what the NDP does in Canadian politics. It uses its influence, leverage and moral values to advocate for ordinary working people instead of rich oligarchs and corporations and to make the Liberals better Liberals.

Americans are living with the shocking reality of not having an influence like the NDP and, instead, having a two-party system in which the left leaning Democrats continually cave to conservatives and lose their moral standing. As an example, the leadership of the Democratic Party used every trick in the book to keep Bernie Sanders from getting nominated to run for president. Now, Sanders is filling arenas in “red” states in his campaign against oligarchy and Trump is president.

Canada needs Singh and the NDP, which is why I support him for PM.

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This federal election is crucial to our country’s direction at a time of global uncertainty. There’s an old political adage, that we don’t elect governments, we throw them out. Not so many months ago, Canadians had indicated in a most decisive way, that they had had enough of the Liberals and their decade of failure.

Along came Donald Trump and his tariff temper tantrum, a new face on the same tired team, a concerted effort by the mainstream media to promote never before elected Mark Carney and all of a sudden, those same Canadians have acquired a collective case of amnesia.

I‘d like to take this opportunity to remind you of why we wanted to rid the country of the Liberals in the first place: They got there by thumbing their noses and ignoring people’s pleas for accountability and recognition of how unaffordable things had become.

At one point they had under 20 percent of voter support. At the same time, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives offered hope for a better future, a more prosperous one with greater opportunities for everyone to succeed. All of the factors that made us lose hope and trust in the Liberals still exist. Other than Donald Trump, nothing has changed. Of course Mark Carney has stolen a few pages out of Poilievre’s play book, hoping to convince us that they have.

Let’s start with the carbon tax. For almost a decade, the Liberals swore up and down that you were better off financially under the carbon tax and that we must implement it to save the planet. Fast forward to 2025 and on Carney’s road to Damascus, he tells us with a straight face, that he is eliminating the carbon tax because that will save you money. Earlier this year, he stated the carbon tax should rise even faster.

The Liberal’s fixation with carbon not only lead to significant increases to the cost of everything, but also puts a huge damper on Canada’s ability to take full advantage of its wealth of natural resources. Had the Energy East Pipeline been built as the previous Conservative government would have done, we would not be so tied to the United States as our chief export market for oil. A diversified customer base makes us much stronger. The Liberals prevented that.

The issues of immigration and housing illustrate their failure to temper their own ideology with reality. The housing crisis we are experiencing all across the country is largely driven as always by the law of supply and demand. If demand exceeds supply, the prices go up. The Liberal immigration policy of accepting more immigrants each and every year than could be accommodated has been a major factor in exacerbating the shortness of supply.

Let’s not forget that while overseeing all these disasters they managed to increase our federal debt to over 1.25 trillion dollars.

While these are only a few examples, it is clear the Liberal government of the past 10 years has failed us and should be defeated. Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives offer real hope for a future that gives everyone an opportunity to reach their potential in a country that is reaching theirs.

They will bring in legislation to reduce the cost of living with measures such as targeted tax cuts while reducing wasteful government spending of taxpayers’ money. These will be the first meaningful steps to getting Canada back on track to being a real economic power. This will benefit us all.

At some point, Trump’s tariff fantasy will crumble under the weight of its own insanity. If re-elected, the Liberals will become who they have always been. Canada can’t afford them!

Canada needs strong leadership, which Pierre Poilievre will provide. Its people need hope for a better future and the country needs a government that will create new wealth that will benefit all Canadians.