Welcome to Need to Know, The Hub’s roundup of experts and insiders providing insights into the federal election stories, policy announcements, and campaign developments Canadians need to be keeping an eye on.
We still don’t know the actual details of Mark Carney’s governing agenda
By Sean Speer, The Hub’s editor-at-large
Thus far in the election campaign, Mark Carney and the Liberals have made few specific policy commitments. A personal income tax cut, a top-up to the CBC’s revenues, more funding for seniors, a new federal agency to build social housing, and that’s about it.
Otherwise, his campaign has been mostly directional. He’s nodded in general to support for industries and households in response to Trump’s tariffs, trade diversification, and (possibly) the construction of energy infrastructure.
If polls are accurate, Carney and the Liberals are likely to form the next government. He may even get a majority.
It prompts the question: after he implements his specific policy promises—most of which can be effectuated in a single budget—what will be his policy agenda? What ideas and priorities will guide a four-year term?
It’s a question that Carney himself would presumably like to avoid answering. Obtaining a vague, undefined, and mostly directional mandate would give him maximum flexibility to pursue his own theory of the case, as The Hub’s Rudyard Griffiths puts it.
But Canadians should insist on more details. How will he get more energy infrastructure built when he said that individual provinces effectively have a veto? And how will he reconcile his past skepticism of conventional oil and gas projects with his new talk of building?
What about his promise of balanced budgets and more investment? What kind of investment? And how much?
As for his foreign policy, what does he think about Canada’s relationship with China? Will he pursue closer relations? If so, on what terms? And what about Israel? Will he be an ally to the only liberal democracy in the Middle East?
And how will he handle questions of culture and identity? Will he maintain his predecessor’s skepticism about Canadian history or its identarianism?
There are various other questions that strike at the heart of what kind of prime minister Carney will be.
They’re not meant to commit him to a precise policy agenda for the next four years. That would be unreasonable (and probably not useful) in light of the current uncertainty.
But surely Carney owes Canadians some insight into the ideas and priorities that would shape his prime ministership. They should insist on it before it’s too late.
AI makes an appearance in this federal election campaign—and its here to stay
By Chase Tribble, a senior consultant at Counsel Public Affairs who served in the 2019 and 2021 Conservative war rooms.
Canada’s 45th general election has been the first in which generative AI has made its debut for political advertising in Canada. Canada Proud recently released the “Mark Carney Action figure” video, which was made entirely from AI-generated images; the video garnered over 840,000 views on Facebook and 330,000 on Instagram in under two weeks.
The United States has always been a leader in political advertising, and the use of AI is no exception. In 2023, when Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, the Republican National Committee released an attack ad on Biden using only AI-generated content, and one democratic candidate has used an artificial intelligence volunteer in a Pennsylvania Senate race to call potential voters and discuss political issues with them.
Just this week in Australia, the Liberal Party of Australia released an entirely AI-generated video ad, advocating to reduce the petrol tax by half.
While in Canada, we have not seen any major political party use generative AI in their campaign advertisements, AI adoption could become a driving factor in political campaigns in the future. While third-party advertisers in Canada have begun leveraging AI, our political parties have not to any noticeable degree.
As we look to the future, how will AI be used? Campaigns could use AI for volunteer phone banking, which could increase output and accuracy. Campaigns could use generative AI to create video or photo images, reducing production costs and centralized content creation. Campaigns could use in-house AI tools to develop more comprehensive voter profiles with the data they collect at the doors and through online activity.
While there are endless benefits of future AI use in campaigns, fears of deep fakes and AI images created to spread disinformation are also causes for concern. For example, this past summer, there was a deepfake of then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland advocating for Canadians to register for a new investment platform. A similar situation happened to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
As we observe the first wave of AI in a Canadian federal election, we should note that this technology is here to stay and will become even more advanced by the next election. Political campaigns leveraging these tools will have the edge, but debates on how these AI tools are used should continue between elections.
An honor guard marches in formation with U.S. and Canadian flags after the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Monday, July 8, 2024, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., to attend the NATO summit in Washington. Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo.
Best friends forever?
By Joanne Archibald, a PhD candidate in History at Queen’s University
The patriotic Canadian reaction to the chaos of the Trump tariffs is one thing. But what is missing from the discourse surrounding Canada-U.S. relations is that the close relationship many of us take for granted with our neighbours to the South is only 80 years old.
A quick glance at world history reveals that no political relationship is inevitable. For example, the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France lasted nearly 300 years, the Dual Alliance between Austria-Hungary and Germany lasted 39 years, and the nearly 100-year-long Franco-Mongol alliance crumbled because of the Black Death. Canadians should realize that our U.S. alliance was and is not guaranteed, and, despite geography making us neighbours, most alliances do have an expiration date.
Historians debate when exactly a closer Canada-U.S. relationship began to develop, but most safely assume it happened in and around the Second World War and rapidly accelerated thereafter. Before then, the relationship had been partially defined by American attempts to invade Canada (for example in Quebec in 1775, the War of 1812, and the Fenian Raids in the 1860s), and by the Canadian fear of American western expansion and manifest destiny ideology, which prompted a sense of urgency surrounding Canadian Confederation in 1867.
Then, in 1954, Louis St. Laurent, the 12th prime minister of Canada, gave a speech to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Albany, New York:
“It would, I believe, be a mistake to think that the good relations between the United States and Canada are the inevitable result of circumstance; or that they do not need to be cherished, if they are to persist.”
St. Laurent, who cemented a strong, post-war relationship with Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, highlighted the importance of political leadership. Alliances between nation-states require immense effort from politicians and diplomats, and it is now on Canadian leaders to begin to develop closer ties elsewhere. We’ve done it before—we’ve switched from British pattern military equipment to American pattern after the Korean War, we switched from relying on British naval protection of Canadian territory to joint U.S.-Canada air defence with NORAD, and we switched from relying on British and European imports to American ones.
Ultimately, it is true that even a partnership like the Canada-U.S. alliance is only as strong as its leadership allows it to be. The Canada-U.S. relationship has never and will never be static.
