Liberals are banking on the Carney effect in Quebec

Montreal Gazette

26-04-2025

Canadian Politics
By
On a crisp but sunny afternoon recently, Nathalie Provost took to the residential streets of Châteauguay to do some door-to-door campaigning in what has come down to a race between Provost, a star candidate for the Liberals, and her Bloc Québécois rival Patrick O'Hara.
Accompanied by former Liberal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna, who'd come from Ottawa to offer support, Provost approached an elderly woman on her way to an afternoon line dancing class.
Provost asked the woman what issues she cares about in this federal election. The woman told her she is 82 years old and a retired nurse, implying seniors' issues top her concerns. The conversation was light and friendly, but when the candidate asked the voter to pose for a photo or to pledge her support, she politely declined.
The exchange underlines how hard candidates, even star candidates like Provost, must work to win support, voter by voter, in this tense and fraught federal election campaign.
Châteauguay—Lacolle was the tightest race in the country in the 2021 election, with the Bloc's O'Hara declared the winner on election night. But a recount revealed the Liberal incumbent had actually beaten O'Hara by a scant 12 votes. The riding, which stretches from Montreal's South Shore to the U.S. border, has since been redrawn to include more rural and francophone ridings and has been renamed Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville.
While polls currently favour a Liberal win here, both Provost and O'Hara say they won't be relaxing for a moment until 9:30 p.m. Monday when the polls close.
In some ways, this race mirrors what is happening across the province. Most pollsters have the Liberals in the lead, but past surprises on (and sometimes after) election night are top of mind for candidates and voters alike.
With only four days to go before the vote, the election projection website 338Canada was predicting Quebec's 78 seats would break down like this: Liberals: 41, Bloc: 24, Conservatives: 12 and NDP: 1. The same firm, which uses an aggregation of polls and other data to predict election results, was projecting that Canada-wide, the Liberals would win a majority with 186 seats, the Conservatives 124, the Bloc 24, the NDP eight and the Greens one.
It has been a remarkable turnaround for the Liberals in Quebec and across Canada. Just four months ago, an Angus Reid poll put Liberal voter support at 16 per cent, while the Conservatives seemed poised to assume power, at 45 per cent.
Daniel Béland, political scientist and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, said a series of factors have helped the Liberals turn things around, some of which were beyond their control.
'Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, they had the leadership race, Mark Carney emerged as the front-runner early on and won very easily. But then of course as all of this was happening, Donald Trump returned to the White House and the Trump effect has benefited the Liberals and hurt the Conservatives partly because of the proximity, in terms of rhetoric at least, between Trump and Pierre Poilievre.'
He said the Trump effect also hurt the NDP and the Bloc because the focus of political discourse shifted from cost-of-living issues to how to respond to Trump's tariffs and his threats to Canada's sovereignty.
'That was hard for third parties, like the Bloc and the NDP, because trade and international relations and Canada-U.S. relations are not really their forte frankly. They focus on domestic issues, especially in the case of the Bloc (which focuses on) federalism, the status of Quebec within Canada, language. And social policies and environmental policies are very important for both the Bloc and the NDP.'
Rapidly, he said, the debate came down to who can stand up to Trump.
'And basically, there are two real options, because of course (Bloc Leader Yves-François) Blanchet cannot become prime minister and (NDP Leader) Jagmeet Singh will not.'
Carney is perceived by many as 'the right person with right CV at the right time,' Béland said.
'When the debate is on trade and the economy and you have someone with a PhD in economics who is a former central banker, that became appealing and the Liberals have used it quite well. So it's a mix of timing, the Trump effect and the Carney effect that has really helped the Liberals.'
Carney has been well-received in Quebec, despite his imperfect French. At campaign stops, he uses two discrete teleprompters to help him through the French portions of his stump speech.
At a recent stop at a bus manufacturing plant in St-Eustache, workers listened politely as Carney told them about a Liberal plan to offer a mid-career retraining program to workers affected by Trump's tariffs.
After the speech, one of those workers told The Gazette he found Carney's French had improved considerably since the start of the campaign, and that Quebecers appreciate the respect Carney has shown for their language. That doesn't mean he will vote Liberal, however.
'It won't change anything for me,' said Marc Rousseau, group leader for the Nova Bus training department. 'I am glad to be here anyway to listen to him, even if I won't vote for him. I will vote Bloc for Quebec. But if the Bloc didn't exist, I would vote for him.'
He said he trusts Carney and is glad he appears poised to be Canada's next prime minister. But he wants Quebecers to have a strong voice in parliament and he favours the Bloc to be that voice.
This is the kind of thinking the Bloc's O'Hara is hoping will finally win him the seat he thought he'd won in the last election.
Born in British Columbia, raised on a farm in Mascouche, O'Hara is a businessman and community fundraiser based in Châteauguay for most of the past 30 years.
He says he's hearing good support for the Bloc as he goes door-to-door, not to mention getting a lot of compassion for his bitter loss in 2021. He had hired staff and moved into an office on Parliament Hill before he learned he'd lost in that recount 10 days after the election. He actually had to pay back his first paycheque.
'I can confirm it is going to be a very close race. I am sensing a race as close as it was in 2021. We've knocked on over 1,500 doors and it's very positive for us. We are going into this last week stronger and more motivated than ever with 60 to 80 volunteers. So it's very positive.'
He acknowledged though, that Trump's trade war and threats are playing a major part in local campaigns.
'I hear more about Donald Trump on the door-to-door than I hear about my adversary,' he said.
For Provost, gaining a voice in the Liberal caucus would mean she can continue her 35-year fight for gun control and against conjugal violence. An engineer who survived the mass shooting at Montreal's Polytechnique in 1989, Provost has devoted much of her life to pushing the federal government to adopt a permanent ban on assault-style weapons. She says she entered the race in March because she couldn't bear to see the Conservatives destroy the advances that Liberals have made on gun control in the past 10 years.
Provost admits that some of the voters she encounters say they don't know Mark Carney. And even though Carney blundered earlier in the campaign by mispronouncing Provost's name and misnaming the Polytechnique, she has faith in him.
Like O'Hara, Provost finds herself discussing the Trump threat, as much as local issues, when she goes door-to-door.
'I strongly believe that if there is one man able to navigate the economic crisis, it's him. ... We need someone strong and we need someone who inspires respect from Donald Trump. (Carney) is quiet. He's calm. He's not a show-off. He doesn't want to be in the tabloids, as was natural for Justin Trudeau. (Trudeau) is a handsome man, very charming and close to people. But Donald Trump felt threatened by that kind of golden boy. Mark Carney inspires respect but doesn't threaten him with his public image.'