Front Burner - Mark Carney wins, a country divided

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

A whirlwind election campaign has ended with Mark Carney leading the Liberal Party to victory, coming back from disastrous polling numbers just months ago. The NDP has been decimated, with leader Jagmeet Singh stepping down. Yet, despite losing, Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party still earned the support of a large percentage of the population, leaving the Liberals with the prospect of leading a country dealing with persistent political divides.CBC Ottawa senior writer Aaron Wherry and David Coletto, CEO of the polling firm Abacus Data, recap the biggest moments of the night and what to expect in the coming months.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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This is a CBC Podcast. I have a question. Who's ready to stand up for Canada with me? Hey everybody, it's Jamie. It's just before 2am after election night and while we are still waiting on many final results, here's what we do know. Mark Carney and the Liberals will form government, but we don't know yet whether that's going to be a majority or minority. The vote share

so far is really split. Liberals with 43% of the vote, Conservatives with 42. I'm here to make sense of what we know so far with Aaron Wary and David Coletto. Aaron is a senior reporter with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau and David is the CEO of Abacus Data. We've been hosting a live stream all night. I think it was what, four hours guys? Yep. So I'm very grateful that they're not so sick of me that they're here right now. And we're going to record the podcast episode. Thank you. Thanks for sticking around to both of you. This was fun. Thanks for having us. It was actually a pretty good night.

It was good. Very exciting election. Aaron, how would you characterize how the night unfolded? I mean, it's a remarkable result for a few reasons. I mean, first, to state the obvious, a few months ago, this was close to unfathomable. The Liberals would be winning with Mark Cardy as their leader. Canada's next government will be a liberal government. It is not yet clear at this hour whether it will be a minority or majority become as some of those close races we were talking about.

This marks a fourth liberal mandate, very rare in Canadian politics, but the Liberal Party. It's also, you know, it had been 25 years now since any party broke 40% of the popular vote. And tonight we have two parties over that threshold. Yeah. And so far as I can tell that hasn't happened, uh, since 1930 that we've had two parties

above 40%. Huh. And 1930, hey? It's remarkable because if you had told Pierre Poliev a few months ago, hey, you're going to win 42% of the vote. He would have taken that in a second. Uh, and if you told the liberals, they were

going to win 43% of the vote, they would have said, wow, that's a huge majority. And so it's a remarkable victory for the liberals, but it, it doesn't quite, you know, this isn't a sweep. This doesn't completely, uh, sweep aside the concerns that were raised by Pierre Poliev and the conservatives. And it leaves a big challenge ahead for Mark Carney.

David, it's probably worth us acknowledging off the top here, the reason why both these parties were able to get so much of the vote and just explain to me what happened with the NDP and the block to a lesser extent tonight. Well, I think we saw, particularly the New Democrats, really their support bottomed out to really the lower end of what the polls were saying would happen, where they're getting barely 6% of the vote down at this stage when we're recording seven seats leading or elected. And that may be the worst performance for the New Democrats in their history, both in terms of share of vote and seats. And so, you know, it's a remarkable election for many reasons that Aaron and you already

alluded to, but one of them is that the block, they lost, I think, close to 10 seats. So they too lost quite a bit. They will still be an official party in the House of Commons. And interestingly, our analysis before this election was that the liberals majority, which is still potentially there, would go through the province of Quebec and they did everything they needed to do in Quebec.

What fell short was Ontario, which surprised, I think, uh, me and many others and that the conservatives did much better in parts of the province, particularly around the GTA, uh, which we didn't expect because the GTA did not move as one today. Yeah. Well, just do you guys want to flesh that out a little bit more? Yeah.

I just saw you doing a bunch of stuff. Yeah, because- Pointing at a bunch of things on your computer. We spent a lot of time together in the last little while. We were looking at a riding like Windsor West, which was an NDP seat. There was a, there was a several elections ago. There was a close call, but it was a, it was one of the safer NDP seats. And, uh, there was a thought, Mark Carney went there a couple of

times during the campaign and, and it, you could, you could talk yourself into, okay, that's a seat where the NDP vote is going to collapse and the liberals will win. And what happens tonight is the conservatives win it and I haven't checked, but I'm going to guess that's the first time the conservatives have ever held Windsor West. It is at least the first time they've

had it in a long time. And for those kinds of writings to go conservative is a huge surprise. If the liberals don't get to a majority, it'll be because they lost writings like that. And it's, it's one of those things where you want to be able to dig into it afterwards to go, okay, what happened there?

Why did Pierre Poliev resonate in a place like that and what does it mean going forward? I overheard you saying, um, boots over suits, right? Is that what you were talking about? You're talking about that writing? Well, that's one of them, right? Where we're, we're, we're looking at this, this sort of, it's part cultural, it's part professional, what, what kind of work you do.

And I think the conservatives have made a concerted effort, uh, for, for many years now to speak to those, to voters who typically live in those kinds of ridings. These are folks who work in factories, work in natural resources, forestry, and I think Pierre Pauliev really did speak to them. And it wasn't just Windsor. We saw the interior of British Columbia, all but maybe Colona, which I think is moving liberal for a different reason, go all conservative.

You're seeing parts of Vancouver Island where the conservatives have picked up a few seats. And even in Northern Ontario, they've made some gains. And some of the GTA ridings. I look at Vaughan Woodbridge, for example, high some of the GTA writings, I look at, you know, Vaughan Woodbridge, for example, a high proportion of Italian Canadians there, very different than other writings in the greater Toronto area. There is, I think, a higher proportion of folks who live in that writing who probably do the kind of work that Pierre Ballet was saying he's going to represent. And that dignity of work, the dignity of, I think, is embedded in his narrative.

And I think he's embedded in his narrative. And I think he's going to look at tonight, despite not winning this election, and feel they've made some progress. I want to come back to him because we saw him speak, but we just saw Carney speak. Aaron, do you think Carney sufficiently acknowledged in that speech just how split the country is? I mean, I think I don't know that he there were a couple moments when he seemed to be making reaching out to different parts of the country. During this short campaign,

during this short campaign, I went to Saskatchewan and Alberta a couple of times, even though, you know, we're liberals, it's tough. It's tough out there, I grew up there. But I went because I intend to govern for all Canadians. And of course, of course, this campaign, alreadyers opened their doors to me and gave me their confidence. And I have been deeply touched by that, and I want to thank you.

He talked about unity. Humility underscores the importance of governing as a team in cabinet and in caucus and working constructively with all parties across parliament. Of working in partnership with the provinces and the territories and with Indigenous peoples. He talked about, uh, kindness. Let's put an end. Let's put an end to the division and anger of the past. I don't know that he explicitly got into the idea of, you know, 42% of the country voted for somebody else.

And that's a, that's a, as I said earlier, like that's not something we're used to in this country where, uh, you know, the, the party on the losing end or the party that doesn't get to form government had that much support and it reminds me a bit of after 2019, when there was a big emphasis on Trudeau having to reach out to people who didn't vote for him,

particularly in the West. And I think that's going to be part of how Carney is watched now. Like I don't want to, again, I don't, I don't want to overstate things too much. Like a win is a win. And by the time all the ballots are counted, it's possible that the liberals could have a majority here and a majority would

give them a full four years to govern. Uh, you know, there's a big difference between a majority and a minority. Uh, but he is going to have to, you know, when he talked about change during the campaign, that is something that he's now going to have to really demonstrate because we now know that, that there's 42% of the, uh, of voters were actually really looking for change this time around. And so, you know, Mark Carney's sort of dual

mandate now or dual sort of, uh, assignment is to deal with Trump and to also show change. I was just going to add, you know, in listening to the prime minister's speech, I felt he got close to the edge of being somewhat divisive when he started talking about Canadian values. You know, I chose to enter politics because I felt we needed big changes in this country, but big changes guided by strong Canadian values. And those include three values that I want to highlight this evening. Humility. It's Canada after all.

Ambition. It's Canada after all. And unity. It's Canada. And the way that he wanted to approach the policy, that it came to a point where you were basically, I heard maybe that those who didn't vote for us don't share Canadian values. And I think he's going to have to be very careful, regardless of whether he gets the extra six seats

that he needs to have that majority or not, in that the country's quite divided. And because we have big things to do. And if you're needs to have that majority or not, in that the country's quite divided. And, because we have big things to do. And if you're going to bring the country together and be able to go down to Washington and say, the country's behind me, I think he's got to find a way to not divide us more. And I don't think that was his intent tonight,

but I think if you listen to that as the loser tonight, you might have been saying, oh, there he goes again. He's judging us for now, not for support. And I don't think that was his intent tonight, but I think if you listen to that as the loser tonight, you might have been saying, oh, there he goes again. He's judging us for now, not supporting us. ["The New York Times"] Now our change will honour the Supreme Court of Canada and its role in protecting the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. Its guiding motto of justice and truth has defined its

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the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now. Let's say we wake up tomorrow and it's a minority. And sorry if this is a completely relevant question for everybody waking up now. But what would governing look like for Carney moving forward? So some of this really does come down to the math. I've already, I will say, made Aaron do so much math. So.

More math than I was ready to do. Uh, you know, if it's, if he's sitting at 166 and the NDP is at seven and the greens are at one, uh, you know, that can get you over together. That can get you over the majority threshold. So if you could have those, if you could have the one green MP and the seven NDP MPs voting with you, you'd have some comfort. Or you could at least sort of carry on. And, and I think it's safe to say after Jagmeet Singh resigned tonight as NDP

leader and with the NDP knocked down to seven seats, they're not in any mood to go to an election anytime soon. But it does, you know, I don't think any of the opposition parties, you know, block the NDP, are going to rush into a confidence and supply agreement again. Because I think the conventional wisdom would be that that didn't work out so well for the NDP. And so he is going to have to look for support from one or two parties. And there will be a grace period to some extent because nobody wants to go into an election right away. But eventually that grace period will run out.

And so the idea that he could have, you know, four years to govern, it's probably more like he can plan on having maybe two years. Yeah. Yeah. Um, before we move on to talking about the conservatives more, uh, let's just spend a minute, um, talking about Jagmeet Singh and his speech. So he lost his writing tonight, his Burnaby writing. Um, and then he gave, uh, what I think was a very gracious speech. Tonight I've been forwarded a party leader that I'll be stepping down as party leader

as soon as an interim leader can be appointed. He was very emotional and broke down a couple of times, especially when he's talking about his kids and his wife, which is very understandable. Now, I could not have done this incredible job without, here's a point, give me a second to break down a bit. I couldn't have done it without the incredible support of my wife, Krukinen. Also, I might break down this part because, and Anhad and Dhani, my daughters remind me of the future.

God damn it, that me of the future. God damn it. That we are fighting for. You know, what did you make of the speech? How do we think that he will ultimately be remembered here? David? I thought the speech was very Jagmeet Singh. I think it was authentic. I think he was speaking from the heart.

I don't think anyone from a political performance perspective, this election will go down as not very good, but I don't know if it was because entirely because he wasn't himself. I think he was himself and I don't think that's what Canadians were thinking about. In terms of what he's going to be remembered for, I think that's always hard to say the moment a few hours after an event like this, but I think he will be remembered as someone who broke barriers, who spoke to young people early on when he was leader in a way that I don't think still very many leaders do using TikTok and other kinds of things like that. And he got a lot of things done, um, that not many NDP leaders can look back and say they did.

And as much as that may have caused his ultimate, not ultimate demise, I think that will be what, what history looks back and says, if these programs survive, dental care, pharmacare, anti-scab legislation, these are things that new Democrats have fought for, for years. Jagmeet Singh will be able to say, look, I helped get that done.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's sort of a odd legacy in that politically in terms of just winning seats, it's not great. You know, they won fewer seats in 2019 than they'd won in 2015. They basically held steady in 2021 and now they've been knocked down to seven or we'll see where they finally come in. So politically he has a pretty bad record, but substantively in terms of policy, you

know, he may end up having one of the stronger records of any NDP leader. So it's a very odd mix of sort of, you know, real policy achievements because of that confidence in supply agreement and very little political success. Um, can one of you just answer very quickly for me, they've lost parties, official party status.

What does that mean? So in the house of commons, you have to have 12 MPs to qualify as an official party in the house. And, uh, if you have 12 MPs, then you get a certain number of committee, you get a certain number of spots on committees, you get a certain budget. Uh, it is a significant advantage. They are going to be, unless they can convince the

house of commons to give them official party status, that it will be a significant obstacle to overcome. And if they are the balance of power, you can imagine that might be something that they are able to negotiate. Get from. That's interesting. Alright, let's talk about the conservatives. In many ways, kind of the most interesting storyline of the night. We recently, we just watched Pierre Pauliev give his speech. He does not sound like he's going anywhere. The promise that was made to me and to all of you is that anybody from anywhere could achieve anything that through hard work, you could get a great life,

you have a nice affordable home on a safe street. My purpose in politics is and will continue to be to restore that promise. How would you describe what we heard from him tonight? David, do you want to take that first? I think he repeated a lot of the same message he said, and it was an attempt to empathize with the half of the country that I think saw what he and this party were offering as the best and most appealing option, which

was that scarcity mindset of housing's too expensive, food's too expensive, life's too hard. And I think he's going to be able to look at this and know, yes, he lost this election. But if he gets 42% of the vote, that's not that far from what I thought was kind of an artificially high number of around 45 when they were 25, 27 points ahead of the liberals. So they did not do anywhere near as bad as I think some thought they might. And, um, I think whether he holds his riding or not, which as we record this,

that's still not clear. I can't say he's safe, but I think his political future is far more secure right now at this moment, if he wants it to be, than probably before. And I think it's a reflection of how appealing what he has been saying and his ability to tap into a deep frustration. I've been saying for a few weeks now that this election has not just been about Donald Trump, that for half the country it is about something else. It is about the day-to-day life being more difficult and a feeling that many Canadians had that the liberal government first, primarily led by Mr. Trudeau, did not sufficiently deliver and try to

make it easier, even if it wasn't fully their fault. They didn't think that they understood it. And so I think, I think it's a complicated path forward for them, but I think they'll feel that they made progress towards their ultimate goal, even if the certainty that we almost all felt at the end of 2024 about a conservative victory in 2025 didn't come true.

Aaron? Yeah, I thought tonight's speech sounded like the start of the next campaign. Like he's getting a headstart on 2027 or 2029, whenever the next one comes. Um, you know, uh, tonight during the live stream, we were talking about, you know, maybe there's a ceiling on a conservative support of 39%.

Well, it looks like he's beat that. Um, you know, he, if in terms of just popular vote, he's going to end up, it looks like he's going to end up above Stephen Harper's figure in 2011. Which gave him a majority. Which gave him a majority. And in almost any other world, uh, 42% or 41% of the vote would be enough for a majority. And so there's that. And then I, but then you also kind of have to

balance that with they, they were leading by 20 points. I mean, I was just, so he's, he's still law. He's still the loser. Right. Yeah. He's both the, probably the first political leader in Canadian federal history to blow a 20 point lead. And maybe the first in decades, at least to

come in with 40% of the vote and not win. Yeah. Uh, it's a, the way the conservatives read this result and how they read this result will be fascinating to see what lessons they take from this, whether they decide they need to change something or whether they think we're on the right track and we just need to keep going.

I mean, one of the things I think I've seen even initially comments online is, is if you look at the coalition of voters, they've pulled together. The future of that coalition looks brighter than the future of the liberal voter coalition, which is older primarily, right? Um, student vote, CivX is an organization every year they come out with, they do this big vote than the future of the liberal voter coalition, which is older primarily, right? Student vote, CivX is an organization every year they come out with, they do this big vote,

900,000 students in elementary and high school voted and the conservatives won the popular vote across the country among elementary and secondary students. Oh, that is interesting. Right? We know that although there's some mixed signals in the polling that they were doing substantially better than any conservative party did among younger voters of age.

And so- Particularly among young men, right? Absolutely. So I look at this and I say the long-term future of the conservative party feels very different than when we were talking about them a decade ago when they lost to Justin Trudeau, which was a party of older voters, a party of, you know, and so in that

way, if you're looking for a silver lining and a loss, that's another one, I think, for the conservatives that the liberals shouldn't, should be asking themselves, what does our future look like if our coalition is getting older. The campaign itself was rife with all of this infighting, right? Conservative power broker type, Corey Tenik accused Poliev's team of campaign malpractice. Blowing a 25-point lead and being like 10 points down is campaign malpractice at the highest level. And I'm sorry to have to point that out, conservatives,

but that is the actual reality. He was on them about not getting on the Trump question sooner and on Poliev himself for being too Trumpy. Doug Ford kind of inserted himself in this election a couple of times, but, you know, he's talked about how... If Corey was running that campaign, I don't think Mr. Poliev would be in the position he's in right now. But there's still a lot of time left. campaign. I don't think Mr. Poliev would be in the position he's he's in right now, but there's still a lot of time left. We still have debates at the end of the day. The people will decide which way they want

this country to move forward. But sometimes the truth hurts. Tonight, we heard conservative MP Jamil Javani really go after Ford. When it was our turn to run an election, he couldn't stay out of our business, always getting his criticisms and all his opinions out, distracting our campaign, trying to make it about him, trying to position himself as some kind of political genius that we needed

to be taking cues from. And that he was essentially a hype man for the Liberal Party. He has taken the provincial conservative party and turned it into something hollow, unprincipled, something that doesn't solve problems. He's glad handing with Christia Freeland, having coffees and lattes with Mark Carney. And I'm sitting here. And then he's not doing a great job running the province of Ontario. And it's not like this guy's doing anything particularly well.

You did used to work for him. I did. I'm speaking from experience. I tried to fix problems in this province and he kept getting in his way and all his goons around him all the time. They wouldn't make anything better. And now we're seeing him because he, you know, this guy's a political genius because he beat Bonnie Crombie and Steven Del Duca. And now we got to sit around getting advice from him. No, no. He really did not hold back. And so is this kind of what we can expect from the coming days, you think? Yeah, I mean, it will be interesting to see how much the federal conservatives on Pierre Poliak's side try to make the case that they were on the right track all along.

And that this result sort of supports what they were doing. And whether the other side is able to say, well, maybe if you've been more on our track, you would have been on the other side of the equation and you wouldn't have 42% of the vote, you'd have 44 or 45% of the vote. And so there's that. I'm speaking of it in some kind of high minded political science course, there's that conversation and then there's just going to be the very personal, Hey, what the heck you were out talking trash about us.

The hurt feelings could be fascinating to watch in terms of how just interpersonally they handle each other. What do you think this really becoming a two-party country at the moment is going to do to our politics? So I will always caveat election results with every time we think the political system has changed forever, it changes it again four years later. 2011, the liberal party was dead and the NDP and the conservatives were now going to dominate federal politics and four years later Justin Trudeau was prime minister. That said, you could look at this and say, yeah, it really does look set up for a conservative liberal fight for a while.

And I do think there's some kind of outside risk that that leads to, you know, further polarization. Where instead of it kind of being a multi-party system where voter sentiment is kind of spread out, that it really does become very distinct views on the liberal side and very distinct views on the conservative side. Because I think the other thing that happened in this campaign is that Pierre-Paul Yavre ran the most conservative campaign in recent memory in decades, probably. And the differences on

something like climate change between the two parties is so vast now and so stark. And so, you know, coming out of this campaign, do they, do the conservatives sort of come back, you know, on an issue like climate change and get, get to the parties get closer together again, or do, or are we now in this kind of pitched trench warfare where two parties with very different views are going against each other?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, as the political scientist, I think Canada's party system is kind of the anomaly, right? You should have never had a centrist party survive as long as we have. And so when Jack Layton made the breakthrough

in 2011, everyone was positing that this is the end of the liberal party and that we're going to see this kind of polarization. And four years later, Justin Trudeau, you know, breaks through and breaks that theory apart. So I agree. We can never, I don't think it's wise of us to be predicting the demise of the NDP. Because I always think that I look at it from as a pollster, what's the demand that the public is, is asking of its political system and of its political leaders. And that demand will shift.

And I think there will be a space for it. The question is, is Mark Carney's instinct to move to the center and stay there? Or does he realize that he actually has to occupy some of the left? Because there's no one else really now to speak for that very loudly. And I don't know how that's all going to work itself out, but I do think the risk is if I were putting our, like the benefit, like take a political strategy off and say what's in the best interest of the country. This. Sorry. I just, I feel like there's been so much talk in the last couple of days and I'm like, this all seems so bad for democracy.

All these strategies. Yeah, it's not even democracy. It's more of like we are facing one of the biggest threats our country and the world has probably faced in a very, very long time. And I think what the verdict of Canadians was a split decision and not the state, at least at this point, the stable, even if even if Mark Carney wins a majority by one or two seats, it's not that stable. I think we can say definity right now is not going to be a rampage. Certainly not. Yeah. Right. That that leaves us in a position of not weakness, but not not a, you know, this is not sending a strong signal to Washington that Canadians have a very clear sense of where they want this country to go.

And so that's what I'm left with thinking about. Can our system find a way to, you know, Pauli today said in his speech, I will, in the best interest of the country, find ways to work together. But that only can go so far in a system where it's designed to be head-to-head, sword lengths apart. Yeah. Okay. Guys, I think we're on what, hour seven now. Such a pleasure to spend this time with you. I want to thank you so much. It was lovely. Thanks for having me.

All right. Well, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.