Trump's threats and 51st state taunts reset race to lead Canada

South China Morning Post

15-02-2025

For over a year, Canada's Conservative Party seemed on track to win a decisive victory in the next election as Justin Trudeau's governing coalition crumbled. Now, nothing seems guaranteed – and the reason is Donald Trump.
The national mood has changed and with it the landscape for this year's vote. Trudeau's Liberal Party is making gains in public opinion surveys, even though its members have not chosen his successor yet.
Polls by Nanos Research Group and Leger Marketing show the Conservatives eight or nine points ahead of the Liberals, a significant shift from previous leads of as much as 27 points.
A separate poll released this week by Abacus Data gives the Conservatives a much wider edge, but it also found that voters most worried about Trump tend to believe the Liberals are best to handle him.
The US president has shocked Canada with threats to use 'economic force', including tariffs, as a strategy to coerce the country into becoming a US state. Trump's repeated taunts have upended decades of assumptions about national security and created seething resentment across Canada, realigning the country's politics in the process.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre built his profile by relentlessly targeting Trudeau as the culprit for Canadians' affordability struggles, using slogans like 'Axe the Tax', a criticism of the prime minister's unpopular carbon tax.
Now that Trudeau is leaving and Canadians face an alarming threat from their southern neighbour, the Conservatives are rebranding. Poilievre is planning a major speech Saturday with a nationalist motto – 'Canada First' – that mimics Trump's own.