Singh explains why he did not push for an earlier election
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking from Toronto in the final week of the election campaign, says there were two main reasons he didn’t push for an earlier election, which included him wanting Canadians to benefit from dental care and pharmacare and that he did not want Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party form a majority government.
The Latest
We are just three days out from Canadians electing the next Parliament.Liberal Leader Mark Carney was in the northern Ontario town of Sault Ste. Marie talking about his plan to support workers hit by U.S. tariffs.Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was campaigning in Saskatoon, where polls suggest the ridings are safe blue seats.He said that, if elected prime minister, he would cancel the summer break for MPs until three bills laying out his top three priorities were passed into law.NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh made a morning appearance in Toronto, where he talked about the NDP’s priorities for the next federal budget.He’s also heading to Hamilton, where incumbent New Democrats are fighting to hold on to seats.Updates
April 25
33 minutes ago
Reflections from an evening with a door-knocking candidate
Evan Mitsui
Freeland speaking with a voter earlier this week. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)I’m Evan, a CBC staff photojournalist. I recently spent an evening in University-Rosedale, Chrystia Freeland’s Toronto riding, while she knocked on doors. She’s hoping to win her seat back for a third time.
We started at the campaign office, where there was pizza and the vibe was chatty. Freeland arrived, all smiles, in a red blazer and jeans.
On the street they move fast. Freeland, known to stand on a box in order to reach the microphone at news conferences, walks with purpose. I had to jog to keep up.
When she would ask if she could count on someone’s vote, the answer from many was, “Yes, I’ve already voted.” One couple, who recognized Freeland as she cut through a park, said they expected her to win. She knocked on a tree so as not to jinx it.
At another door, I listened as Freeland had a lengthy conversation with a resident who revealed he had voted early and for the Conservatives. His family, he said, were likely to have voted for her. He admitted he thought she was going to win and, had she parted with former prime minister Justin Trudeau earlier, might have won him over as well.
Trudeau’s name came up a few times in the hour or so I spent tailing Freeland’s team. To what extent his legacy dictates the outcome of this election, for the Liberals and Freeland, remains to be seen.
1 hour ago
‘This nation is not mine’
Jenna Benchetrit
Blanchet said yesterday that he thinks of himself as an MP in a “foreign parliament.”
Pointing out that the Bloc leader is working hard to hold the balance of power in the Canadian Parliament, one reporter asked Blanchet today if he is, by definition, engaging in foreign interference.
“We are, [whether] we like it or not, part of an artificial country with very little meaning called Canada,” said Blanchet, who was in Shawinigan, Que. — famously the hometown of Liberals such as Jean Chrétien and François-Philippe Champagne.
Blanchet said he calls it a foreign parliament because “this nation is not mine,” and that he doesn’t feel any more at ease in Canadian Parliament than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith would feel in Quebec’s National Assembly.
“As long as we’re part of it and we get elected in this Parliament, we are entitled to any right and privilege and opportunity being provided by the person’s vote. And I will relinquish none of them,” said Blanchet.
2 hours ago
A late-campaign endorsement to buoy Blanchet’s campaign
Raffy Boudjikanian
Blanchet speaks during a stop at a Bombardier facility in Dorval, Que.. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)A boost for Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet from popular provincial equivalents came late in this campaign, but it sure came in loud.
Late Thursday afternoon, after questions about why Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was not seen tagging along with Blanchet at all during the last month, Plamondon appeared to have found his voice.
In a blistering open letter called “Mark Carney is an existential threat to Quebec,” Plamondon accused the Liberal leader of being a continuity candidate to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, with “the same politics that pushed Quebec back” during the last few years.
Plamondon then tore into Liberal immigration policies and accused the party of doubling Canada’s debt. He pointed out Carney still intends to pursue legal recourse on two controversial pieces of provincial legislation, the secularism and language protection laws.
“Let’s take stock of the danger they represent for Quebec before giving them a blank cheque and a majority government,” he warned.
Plamondon is preparing for his own provincial election next year. His sovereignist party is ahead of Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec party and the currently leaderless provincial Liberals in voters’ intentions at this time.
However, in 2021, Legault made his own recommendation to voters in the last federal election, saying the Conservatives were better for the province. Voters here instead largely split their support between the Bloc and the Liberals, suggesting a provincial leader’s endorsement may not have the weight a federal candidate would hope for.
2 hours ago
The latest Poll Tracker update
Lucas Powers
Seat projections as of April 25, 2025, from the CBC Poll Tracker. (CBC)Here are the latest public polling developments as summed up by Éric Grenier of TheWrit.ca. He is managing the CBC Poll Tracker throughout the campaign.
“The Liberals are very comfortably leading in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and enjoy a wide lead over the Conservatives in Ontario. They are also narrowly ahead in British Columbia,” Grenier wrote this morning.
“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. The Bloc has rebounded a little in Quebec following the French-language debate.”
2 hours ago
Singh defends election timing
Marina von Stackelberg
Singh explains why he did not push for an earlier election
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, speaking from Toronto in the final week of the election campaign, says there were two main reasons he didn’t push for an earlier election, which included him wanting Canadians to benefit from dental care and pharmacare and that he did not want Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party form a majority government.
Singh says he stands behind his decision to not trigger a federal election sooner by allowing the Liberal minority government to stay in power until this spring.
“I could not stomach the idea of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives forming a majority government. I knew that was going to be bad,” Singh said in response to questions Friday morning in Toronto.
“I knew that it was going to be bad because of their cuts, because of the division, because of the things they wanted.”
Singh said the other reason for his decision not to vote non-confidence against the Liberals was to ensure Canadians actually started to receive dental and pharmacare coverage.
“We wanted more time,” he said. ”We wanted people to actually benefit from the dental care and the pharmacare. We wanted people to actually get those benefits.”
“We wanted to improve people’s lives.”
Singh said he thought if people were actually receiving the benefits by the time an election was called, it would make it harder for any future government to take them away.
The NDP pushed the Liberals to bring in the major health programs as part of the confidence and supply agreement between the two parties.
Right now, three million Canadians qualify for the Canadian Dental Care Plan. Before the election was called, the Liberal government promised to expand it to the remaining six million eligible Canadians in May.
And so far, the government has signed pharmacare deals with three provinces — B.C., Manitoba and P.E.I.
2 hours ago
Poilievre on how he would deal with Trump
Jenna Benchetrit
Trump in the Oval Office. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Poilievre was asked how he’d deal with Trump differently compared to his opponents. While taking on Trump has been a centrepiece of Carney’s campaign, Poilievre hasn’t mentioned the U.S. president as much, focusing more on affordability and security.
“We need to take direct action to end the tariff chaos from a position of strength,” said Poilievre.
He accused Carney again of exaggerating about his phone call with Trump, and said Canada will become more “self-reliant, strong and sovereign” under a Conservative government.
He said his government will approve pipelines, mines, LNG plants, nuclear power and export terminals “so that we can get our goods overseas to other markets.”
Poilievre also said in French that he would remove interprovincial barriers, and reiterated plans to cut taxes on investment, work, housing, home building and production of Canadian-made goods.
“We will be strong as a country and focus on what we can control here in Canada,” said Poilievre.
2 hours ago
FACT CHECK: The EV ‘tax’
Stephen Hoff
Hi, I’m Stephen Hoff with CBC’s fact-checking team.
Today, Poilievre is echoing claims he made yesterday that the Liberals plan to tax the production of internal combustion vehicles.
In 2023, the Liberal government did establish regulations with the goal of eliminating the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 through a credit system for building electric and hybrid electric vehicles.
Manufacturers would receive credits for every electric or hybrid electric vehicle they build over their quota and could use them to build internal combustion vehicles or trade them on the open market.
Manufacturers can also invest in fast-charging station infrastructure, receiving one credit for every $20,000 invested until 2027.
The credit system is not a tax and the ability to gain credits through investment in fast-charging stations is an incentive to build them, not a penalty. However, it does mean that there will be a point where all manufacturers will run out of credits and, under the current regulations, have to produce only electric or hybrid vehicles.
2 hours ago
Poilievre threatens to cancel summer break for MPs
Jenna Benchetrit
The Conservative leader is making a splashy promise: there will be no summer vacation for Canada’s members of Parliament if Poilievre is prime minister and his three flagship policy proposals are not passed. He says it’s part of a promise to usher in “100 days of change.”
Those include his proposals on affordability, safe streets and bringing home jobs.
“This is urgent action that is required,” said Poilievre in French. It’s unclear if the promise would apply to a Conservative-led minority government, too.
3 hours ago
‘We cannot trust anything he says,’ Poilievre says of Carney
Jenna Benchetrit
Poilievre speaks Friday in Saskatoon. (Trevor Bothorel/CBC)Poilievre took a moment at the top of his event to react to a Radio-Canada story published yesterday that found that Trump referred to Canada as the 51st state during his March 28 call with the Prime Minister.
Carney, speaking to reporters after the call, said that Trump respected Canada’s sovereignty during the call.
“Yesterday, Mark Carney was caught lying. If he’s lying about that, you can be sure he’s lying about inflation, lying about Liberal tax increases, lying about the Liberal housing crisis.”
“We cannot trust anything he says,” the Conservative leader said.
Carney confirmed yesterday that Trump said “51st state” during their call, but said that the president respected Canada’s sovereignty and that the “outcome” of the call was the most important part of it.
3 hours ago
Singh’s message to Palestinian, Jewish communities
Jenna Benchetrit
My colleague David Thurton asked Singh what his message is to members of the Palestinian and Jewish communities in Canada for whom the Israel-Hamas war is an important issue this election.
“We believe fundamentally that the people of Gaza have just the same rights to live in peace and security as the people of Israel, and we fundamentally believe they both should,” said Singh.
“People are not monoliths. Whether you’re from the Jewish community, or you’re from the Palestinian or Muslim community, I think all people really commonly share the value of human dignity, believe in human rights, believe that violence is horrible,” he said.
During the leaders’ debates, Singh was the only major federal leader to refer to what’s occurring in Gaza as a genocide. He challenged his opponents to use the term.
Among the broader electorate, Vote Compass data has shown that issues like Canada-U.S. relations, the economy and affordability are taking precedence over foreign policy.
But CBC has also spoken with members of the Jewish and Muslim communities who say the war will factor into who gets their vote.
