Welcome to Need to Know, The Hub’s roundup of experts and insiders providing insights into the political stories and developments Canadians need to be keeping an eye on this week.
We have a real race on our hands now
By Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs
From a pollster’s perspective, the biggest political story of the week is the tightening federal race. For nearly two years, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have held a significant and consistent lead. However, two key events have disrupted this dynamic.
The first is Justin Trudeau’s decision to step down, triggering a Liberal leadership race. The second is the escalation of tariff threats from the United States. Individually, neither event would likely have caused the notable shift we’re seeing. But together, they have fundamentally altered the political landscape.
Historically, party leadership races almost always provide a temporary boost in voter support for the party holding the contest. This is precisely why underperforming leaders are often pushed out, to reset momentum. Given this pattern, some tightening in the race was expected. However, the dramatic closing of the gap has been amplified by the uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade actions, adding an economic dimension to voter concerns.
These twin forces, the political shake-up within the Liberals and external economic pressure, have combined to create a true competitive federal race.
Is this really how a serious country chooses its leader?
By Howard Anglin, former deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, now a doctoral student at Oxford University
I wonder how many Canadians understand that in less than a month either Mark Carney or Chrystia Freeland will be the prime minister of Canada. A general failure to process this fact is the only way I can explain the lack of public interest in the leadership race or our media’s reluctance to examine closely the record of either candidate.
Naturally, both candidates—especially the front-running Carney—are doing what they can to avoid scrutiny, but it doesn’t help that our media’s reaction has been mostly to shrug and let them. I can’t imagine the press in the United Kingdom, where I am right now, being so passive. Where is the muck-raking, mud-slinging, archive-mining, garbage-sifting, and shit-stirring? Where, in short, is the reporting?
The lack of interest extends to the dodgy process itself. A national commission on foreign interference just concluded that “foreign states are trying to interfere in our democratic institutions, including electoral processes” and yet we’re apparently cool with the next prime minister being chosen by an online poll with minimal safeguards that allows children and non-citizens to vote. Where are the media alarm bells?
There are no detailed policy platforms; no combative sit-down interviews of the kind politicians, and especially would-be heads of government, routinely face in other countries; and only (possibly) two debates, where I wouldn’t bet on sharp elbows from candidates who outside the race are close personal friends.
This is how we choose a prime minister? Try explaining it to anyone in another country. Among our national vices, complacency narrowly edges out smugness for first place. Right now it’s on full display.
Poilievre is right to focus on securing the Arctic
By Rob Huebert, professor and interim director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary
The Canadian Arctic has been a strategic location since the USSR developed first long-range bombers armed with nuclear weapons and then nuclear-armed ICBMs and SLBMs menaced North America in the 1950s and 1960s. Canada needed to work with the United States to defend against any attack and then worked to deter against that attack. Once a system of protecting the north was established through the creation of NORAD and some other arrangements, most Canadians—including Canada’s leaders—have tended to pretend there is no threat.
Following the second phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Canadian policy has shifted to recognize the renewed threat posed by Russia.
Pierre Poilievre has now released his party’s Arctic Defence Policy. It focuses on meeting the increasing threat posed by Russia. It has promised to build a base in Iqaluit that focuses on meeting the aerospace and maritime threat posed by Russia along with an expansion of the Rangers and building two armed icebreakers. While some have criticized this policy by pointing out the failure of the Harper government to deliver on a similar promise to build a refueling site at Nanisivik—something the Liberals have also failed to complete—and have suggested that any such base at Iqaluit will also fail.
But these critiques fail to recognize that the second part of that promise was to build three armed icebreakers. This part of the Harper policy morphed into the six Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS). This shows that with the necessary political will, such promises can be fulfilled.
Poilievre’s focus is correct, as is the new focus of both the Arctic Foreign Policy and the Defence Update, but the core question is whether their promises will be made good. The Liberal government has had the last decade to act and has not, while Poilievre has yet to have the opportunity to act.
The complicating factor is that Canada must now deal with a Russian threat while at the time dealing with an increasingly threatening and unreliable United States. While there is no question that Canada has indeed been slow in recognizing the Russian threat to the Arctic, Donald Trump’s “solution” will make North America even more vulnerable.
While it still remains to be seen if his is “only” trying to get Canada to act by scaring us, or if he is serious about absorbing both Canada and Greenland into the United States, one of the core assumptions of Canada’s defence in the Arctic has been significantly damaged.
