Tangle - Canada's historic election.

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

On Monday, Canada held a federal election for members of the House of Commons to the 45th Parliament. The Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, won a plurality of seats, securing a fourth consecutive term in power. The Conservative Party placed second, and party leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat, casting his political future into doubt. While the Liberals did not take enough seats to win a majority, as the party that received the most votes they will now put forward their party leader, Carney, to retain his position as prime minister. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: How large of a role do you think Trump played in the Canadian election? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum,

some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the election results in Canada. We have a new prime minister, it appears, on the way, and also some interesting reversals of fortunes, I guess you could say, tied directly to our president here, Donald Trump. So we're going to be talking about exactly what happened. Before we jump in though, speaking of Donald Trump, tomorrow, we are going to join the chorus of news outlets reviewing Trump's first 100 days. However, we'll be doing it in typical Tangle fashion, evaluating how Trump has

performed on key campaign promises, then running through the other key initiatives of his administration, sharing perspectives from the left and the right side by side, then offering our own analysis of his term so far. Part one of this is going to be released tomorrow to all tangle listeners and readers. So there'll be an episode on the podcast and a newsletter coming out, and it will include a breakdown of Trump's campaign promises and whether he is on track to keep them. Part two is going to be released on Friday. That will be a members only edition

in both the podcast and the newsletter. So there will be a preview of it here on the podcast, but you'll have to become a member to get the whole thing. That second part is going to include assessments from the left and the right and then my tape. A reminder that if you're not yet a Tangle member, if you're hearing ads on this podcast, for instance, you can go to retangle.com forward slash membership and become a member to get ad

free podcasts. And of course, unlock a bunch of premium content that we keep behind the paywall. With that, I'm going to pass it over to John to break down today's main topic and I'll be back for my take. Thanks Isaac and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump signed a pair of orders intended to lessen the impact of his tariffs on imported auto parts, authorizing a mix of credits and relief from other levies on materials.

Number two, President Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in response to a report that the e-commerce company would begin displaying the added costs of Trump's tariffs next to products on its site, and Amazon spokesperson said this was never approved and is not going to happen. Number three, the Wisconsin Supreme Court temporarily suspended Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan following her arrest for allegedly helping an unauthorized migrant evade immigration authorities. 4. The U.S. gross domestic product fell at a 0.3% annualized pace in the first three months of 2025, the first quarter of negative

growth since Q1 2022. And number five, a Harvard University task force released two separate reports on anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus, finding that anti-Semitism on campus had increased following Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, and that many Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students, faculty, and staff felt isolated and uncomfortable in the community. It was quite the election result, helped along by a noisy next door neighbour, Canada's Liberal Party, written off just months ago, secured

victory at the polls after a campaign dominated by Donald Trump's trade war and threats to make the country the 51st U.S. state. In his victory speech, party leader Mark Carney talked of an American betrayal and promised never to yield to the United States. On Monday, Canada held a federal election for members of the House of Commons to the 45th Parliament. The Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, won a plurality of seats, securing a fourth consecutive term in power.

The Conservative Party placed second and party leader Pierre Paulyev lost his seat, casting his political future into doubt. While the Liberals did not take enough seats to win a majority, as the party that received the most votes, they will now put forward their party leader, Carney, to retain his position as Prime Minister. The Liberals' victory marks a rapid turnaround from the start of 2025, when the Conservatives were heavily favored to win.

The race shifted in early 2025, when President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on Canadian imports and comments about annexing Canada became a defining issue in the race. For context, in January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party, and then elected Carney as his replacement. Shortly after becoming Prime Minister in March, Carney called for a snap election. Federal elections in Canada must be held at least every five years, but they can happen sooner if the Prime Minister asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament, prompting a snap election. The four largest parties competing in Monday's election were the Liberals, Conservatives,

the New Democratic Party, and Bloc Québécois, which only fields candidates in the province of Quebec. These parties compete for seats in 343 ridings, or electoral districts, across Canada, with each riding representing a seat in Parliament's House of Commons. Before the Parliament's dissolution in March, the Liberals held 153 seats, the Conservatives held 120 seats, the Bloc Québécois held 33, and the NDP held 24. As of Tuesday, the Liberal Party had won 169 writings, the Conservatives 144, Bloc Québécois 22, and the NDP 7.

172 seats are required for a majority and to elect a Prime Minister, so Liberals will now have to work with a minority party to elect Carney as prime minister and pass legislation. Poliev, the conservative party leader since 2022, built his campaign on affordability issues, tax cuts, and criticisms of liberal party rule under Trudeau. He also pushed back on President Trump's calls to make Canada a U.S. state, pledging to put Canada first if elected, which drew a rebuke from Trump. Poliev's leadership guided conservatives to a 24-point polling advantage before Trump's inauguration, but that lead had dwindled and was nearly erased by the time Carney called

for a snap election in March. Carney ran as an outspoken critic of President Trump, promising to maintain Canada's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports and diversify the country's alliances and trade relationships. In his acceptance speech on Monday, the Prime Minister said, "...as I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. President Trump is trying to break us so he can own us. That will never happen."

However, Carney also spoke with Trump in late March and said the two agreed to open talks on a new economic and security deal with whomever won the election. On Tuesday, Trump called Carney to congratulate him on his victory, and Carney's office said the two agreed to work together as independent sovereign nations. Today, we'll break down the election results and their implications with perspectives from the right, left, and Canadian commentators, and then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan.

You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying.

The left argues Trump's unpopularity with Canadians propelled liberals to victory. Some say Carney is the right leader to address Canada's economic challenges. In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore called Trump a triple loser in Canada's election. Elections are rarely defined by a single issue, but there's not much doubt north of the border that Trump personally turned a certain victory for his conservative counterparts into a stunning win for the left-for-dead liberals. The ruling party made mobilizing the country against Trump's various provocations the successful formula for a fourth consecutive national win under the leadership of recently

appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney, Kilgore wrote. Despite clear signals he was putting Conservative leader Pierre Poliev in an impossible spot, Trump had never let up. He was essentially offering to displace the entire Canadian election system and extinguish that country's sovereignty in exchange for his benevolent rule from Washington. So Trump has produced a revived government in Ottawa with a distinct mandate to fight him tooth and nail, but that's not the only way he was a loser on Monday.

It's not at all unusual for politicians to rally domestic support by picking a fight with other countries. It's a jingoistic political tale as old as time. In this case, there is zero evidence outside the hardest core of MAGA loyalists that Americans have rallied to Trump's Canada-bashing cause," Kilgore said. If that's not enough, the president's persistent bullying of Canada has drawn attention to

his single most unpopular economic policy initiative, the on-again, off-again trade war that has unsettled markets everywhere. In Bloomberg, Robert Burgess wrote, Canada just got the crisis manager it desperately needed. Trump's provocations on tariffs and musings about making Canada the 51st U.S. state probably would have been easier to laugh off if the country's leaders had taken steps to shore up its willful productivity, Burgess said. Productivity is Canada's Achilles heel. It's so bad that the 1.8% drop in labor productivity in 2023 was the worst among the 38 members

of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The poor performance, which carried into 2024, erased all productivity growth since 2017. Luckily for Canada, Carney is more economist than politician. Comments by Carney on the campaign trail suggest he understands the challenge, promising a capital spending budget that would allocate tens of billions of dollars to investments in productivity-boosting infrastructure, Bridges wrote. Carney can also help the cause by adopting a policy championed by Pierre Poliev, head of the defeated conservatives, to boost housing in a nation that doesn't have enough supply by tying municipal grants to a requirement that cities

increase home construction by 15% a year. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Some on the right worry about Trump's disruptive influence on the election. Others say Canadian voters alone bear responsibility for the outcome. National Review's editors called it the anti-Trump election. Trump personally played an enormous role in returning an incompetent and ideologically bankrupt Liberal party to power after a campaign where Prime Minister Mark Carney made himself the anti-Trump, and

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poliev couldn't adjust to Trump's truly bizarre late intervention, the editors wrote. Conservatives flipped seats in Ontario near Toronto, previously held by the Liberals and the NDP. That would ordinarily be a great sign for conservatives' chances of winning the most seats nationally. They romped in Western Canada, winning almost every seat in Alberta and Saskatchewan, similar to the last few elections.

What Donald Trump did more than anything was unify the Canadian left and elevate the issue of who the Prime Minister would be. In parliamentary systems, it can be common for voters to choose parties over leaders. NDP and BQ voters know their party leaders will not be prime minister, but they vote for those parties anyway because they support their party platforms or want to register a protest vote against the major parties, the editors said. Carney's case to voters was that he was the guy to trust in tough times because he would stand up to Donald Trump.

And that was just barely enough to get voters to overlook ten years of economic stagnation under liberal governments and cast their ballots for Carney. In PJ Media, Matt Margolis argued, stop blaming Trump for how Canada votes. Never Trumpers still want to believe they're right about Trump. Because they blame everything on Trump, they have no other strategy in their arsenal," Margolis wrote. The anti-Trump hysteria has become so unhinged that his critics are now abandoning common sense altogether. They are more comfortable embracing the delusion that Trump somehow manipulated millions of

Canadian voters than facing the obvious truth. Canadians voted based on their own interests and priorities. Blaming Trump for the outcome of Canada's election is as absurd as blaming Justin Trudeau for Kamala Harris's embarrassing defeat in 2024. Like it or not, Canada remains a center-left country, and no amount of finger-pointing will change that. Canadian voters are capable of making their own decisions. They don't need Trump's help to vote against their own interests. If they want to keep the same party in power that's been destroying their economy and freedoms,

that's their choice. Blaming Trump for their electoral decisions is not just ridiculous. It's infantilizing an entire nation of voters," Margulis said. And hey, let them pay the price for their stupidity. The Liberal Party's continued grip on power means that Canadians can expect more of the same policies that drove Justin Trudeau from office. Alright, that is it for what writers from the left and the right are saying, which brings us to what some Canadian writers are saying.

Some Canadian commentators praise Carney for deftly navigating the challenge posed by Trump. Others say Trump hurt Poliev, but suggest the country could come to regret keeping liberals in power. In the Toronto Star, Andrew Phillips said Mark Carney needs to govern as if he won a majority. It would have been better for the liberals, and more importantly, the country, if one party had an unambiguous majority to make it as strong as possible in the ongoing battle with Donald Trump, Phillips wrote.

But the last thing Carney should do is treat his win as something tentative or unsure. He needs to act as if he had a majority. He and his government will never be as popular or powerful as it is now. It's great to act with humility, as Carney has promised to do in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, but the times call for quick, decisive action no matter the seat count in the Commons. The best way the liberals can position themselves for the next election is to actually carry out what they said they would do, speed up resource development, wean the country off its dependence on the United States, work out a new arrangement with Trump, and launch

a massive program to tackle the housing shortage, Phillips wrote. Just as important, this is a personal victory for Carney, much more than a win for the Liberal Party. Carney put the bleeding liberals on his back and carried them to the finish line. The election turned into a referendum on leadership. Who was the best person to stand up to Trump? Carney resoundingly won that vote. In the Free Press, Rupa Subramania wrote, Canada's conservatives botched the election

of a lifetime. It is impossible to discuss how theatives lost without talking about President Trump, who has riled up the Canadian electorate since his inauguration in January. Given how close the results ultimately were, and the fact that the Conservatives won more seats in Parliament than expected, most Poliev supporters will be blaming him for the loss, Subrahmanya said. However, Trump's comment put Poliev in a near-impossible position. Much of his base, including many of his MPs, admired Trump.

But with Trump openly attacking Canada, and with Poliev's own anti-woke rhetoric and disdain for the mainstream media, he found himself trapped. Attempts to distance himself from Trump could alienate core supporters, while embracing the American president would push away everyone else. The Liberals' victory has reshaped Canada's political landscape in ways few could have imagined just months ago. With Mark Carney now at the helm, the country enters a new chapter marked by economic uncertainty, stagnating incomes, high housing costs, cost of living expenses that have skyrocketed,

immigration levels that are straining public services while creating a populist backlash, a rising separatist movement in the West, and a volatile relationship with its closest ally. We'll see now if Carney is up to the task. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, and of course, some views from our northern neighbors, which brings us to my take. So part of me sees what everyone else is seeing and what a lot of the writers above have touched on and it is an easy story to tell.

The Conservative Party had a huge lead in the polls until January when Trump started joking quote unquote about annexing Canada and when Justin Trudeau stepped down. Then Trump started slapping tariffs on Canadian goods and continued talking about Canada as the 51st state and liberals started steadily eating into conservatives lead. This epic 24-point collapse was based in large part on the liberals unifying around an anti-Trump stance that never would have been there had Trump not been so confrontational with our closest ally. A couple months ago, I watched some clips of Pierre Polly-Eve and genuinely thought I was looking at the future prime minister. He seemed made for the moment, not exactly a quote-unquote Trump- like figure, though many people describe him that way, but someone who is breathing a very specific kind of Canadian nationalism

into the country. The last thing I expected was to be sitting here two months later talking about how Poliev didn't just fail to lead the Conservative Party to a majority, but also failed to defend his own seat in parliament. Again, there's part of me that looks at all of this and thinks, of course Trump mattered. The US president promised to turn Canada into the 51st state, up to and including on the day Canadians went to the polls, and instigated a trade war that has had real and immediate impacts for voters all across Canada. However, there is another story to tell

about the Canadian election that does not make Trump the main character, and this story is driven by the following beats. First, this is the fourth consecutive term for liberals, a rarity in Canadian government, and a testament to the party's staying power and the left of center politics held by most of the country. Yes, this election bucked the global trend against incumbents, but liberals still have home-field advantage in Canada. Number two, the turnaround in polling didn't start with Trump's annexation rhetoric or his Canadian tariffs. It started when Trudeau resigned.

Candidates matter, and Carney's entire image is built around him being an experienced policymaker and economist. He used to head Canada's version of the Fed, and he's never been a politician. Trump's trade war played right into this strength, but he was made for the moment even without Trump. Carney was well suited to tackle Canada's relatively stagnant economy and the dissatisfaction with Trudeau, whom he is very distinct from. Number three, on the other side of candidates mattering, Poliev focused a lot of his campaign on denouncing

radical woke ideology, an obvious effort to inject some American conservatism into the lexicon up north. Trump impersonators notoriously flail and pre-election polls showed Polyev's Trumpian promises to defund Canada's national broadcaster and cut foreign aid hurt him with a lot of centrist voters. Finally, number four, we should not overstate this victory. Liberals did not attain a clean majority and they lost several key seats in this election. Yes, this was a resounding and unexpected victory given where liberals position three months ago was, but without a majority, it will form a fragile government that depends on the support of smaller

left-leaning coalitions. The damage Trudeau did to the party and the lack of trust that remains is very real. It isn't hard to imagine a near future where conservatives capitalize politically on whatever happens in the coming months. The accurate take is that all of these things contributed in various ways. Just like it's incomplete to say inflation is the reason why Vice President Kamala Harris lost in 2024, I think it's incomplete to say Trump is the reason Carney won. Carney was a better candidate, and Poliev clearly veered too far outside what many Canadians wanted. But Trump made staring down the US the primary story of the election, and it

would be foolish to ignore that basic fact. Looking at it, as an American, this election feels like a shot across the bow. Do you feel better about the tariff standoff with Canada now? I certainly don't. I was struck by the tone of Carney's acceptance speech. He said, quote, America wants our land, our resources, our water. President Trump is trying to break us so he can own us.

That will never happen. We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. This does not sound like a man ready to acquiesce to Trump, and I think it's safe to assume Canada's relationship with the U.S. will never be the same. We could feel the ripple effects through the Oval Office sooner rather than later. Oddly, Trump seems to have a more conciliatory attitude toward Carney than he ever did toward Trudeau, which is a reflection of how personal these political relationships are for Trump. In any case, the Trump administration will have to navigate a

decidedly more econocentric power center as it tries to bend global trade to its will. I'm certain Carney isn't the part ally, part foe Trump was hoping to navigate the trade war with, and I wonder how many other foreign leaders will try to follow a playbook Carney is now writing. I'm certain Carney isn't the part ally, part foe Trump was hoping to navigate the trade war with. And I wonder how many other foreign leaders will try to follow a playbook Carney is now writing. We'll be right back after this quick break. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff.

And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. All right. That is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Tom in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tom said, I'm curious how seriously you all take Trump's comments about not ruling out a third term. Do you view that as a throwaway statement or something more serious? Would it land in the abortant bucket that Isaac noted in his back from paternity leave publication

or a less serious level? Okay, so at the beginning of Trump's term, we were very dismissive of the idea that President Trump would run for a third term and spoiler alert, I still am. The Constitution's 22nd Amendment specifies that no person shall be elected to the office of vice president more than twice.

That is pretty unambiguous. Furthermore, Trump himself has said that he wouldn't run again if he lost in 2024. It seemed like an extreme overreaction from the left. Then in March, Steve Bannon went on Chris Cuomo's News Nation show and said again that he thinks Trump would win if he ran in 2028, adding, we're working on a couple of alternatives to solve the constitutional issue. A few days later, Trump told NBC News' Kristen Walker

that he is focused on the present, but open to a third term, adding, there are methods which you could do it and that he was not joking. In theory, Trump could squeeze through a loophole in the 22nd Amendment by running as vice president to JD Vance or another candidate, then have Vance resign and assume the office,

thus becoming president without being elected. That's one method, Trump told Welker, but he did not describe any others. Now, we no longer think it's a 10 out of 10 deranged theory, maybe more like eight out of 10. First, and most importantly, that workaround of the 22nd Amendment runs straight into the 12th Amendment, which ends by saying, no person constitutionally ineligible to the office

of the President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States. Second, you can't take what Steve Bannon says as Trump dogma. Remember, this is a person Trump fired during his first administration who admits that he loves flooding the zone with nonsense and who quite obviously enjoys nothing more than trolling the media. Third, you can't even take what Trump says today as dogma. I can obviously lead people into dismissing the wrong statements, see tariffs, but this idea feels more akin to Trump saying he'll put Hillary Clinton in prison, something he quite obviously never tried to do. Fourth, Republican congressional leaders like Representative Steve Scalise and Senator John

Thune, not known as people who regularly oppose the president, have said, respectively, that Trump was likely just getting people talking and having some fun with the media. We don't know of any way that Trump could run for a third term without amending the Constitution. This is, of course, to say nothing of Trump being 82 at the end of his term, the fact he'd have to change the constitution and then win the election, and all the very obvious backlash that would come

if he even attempted this. I know many Republicans are acquiescing to him right now, but this is a bright red line that I'm certain most wouldn't cross. In sum, no, I don't take it seriously. I think he's trolling the media and Republicans like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who just suggested Trump could also be Pope, are enjoying everyone's reactions. Though, I certainly wish he'd stop talking about it.

Alright, that is it for your questions answered today. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod and we'll be back tomorrow with a special edition on Trump's first hundred days in office. So we'll see you then. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. On Tuesday, Pakistan said its army shot down a drone controlled by India that was allegedly trying to violate its airspace in disputed Kashmiri territory, heightening tensions between the countries after a string of incidents in the past week.

India has accused Pakistan of supporting militants who carried out a mass shooting in the town of Pahalgam on April 22. In response to the incident, India threatened to cut Pakistan's water supply. Additionally, Indian and Pakistani forces have increasingly fired along the line of control, which marks the de facto border in Kashmir, and Pakistan's defense minister said he believes an Indian attack could be imminent. The incidents have renewed fears of nuclear conflict between the adversaries. Newsweek has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.

Alright next up is our numbers section. The total number of votes received by the Liberal Party in Canada's federal election as of Wednesday morning is 8,565,379. The total number of votes received by the Conservative Party is 8,089,721. The percent change in the Liberal Party's share of the vote from the federal election in 2021 is plus 11.1 percent. The percent change in the Conservative Party's share of the vote from the federal election in 2021 is plus 7.5 percent.

The percent change in the new Democratic Party's share of the vote from the federal election in 2021 is minus 11.5%. The percentage of registered Canadian voters who voted in the federal election in 2021 and 2025 respectively is 63% and 69%. The margin of victory for the winning candidate in Terra Nova, the peninsula's rioting as of Tuesday night is 12. The margin of victory for the winning candidate in Terban rioting as of Tuesday night is 12. The margin of victory for the winning candidate in terban riding as of Tuesday night is 35. And the percentage of Canadians with a favorable and unfavorable view of President

Donald Trump, respectively, is 14% and 75% according to an April 2025 Politico focal data poll. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. A two-year-old boy went missing on April 14th in Seligman, Arizona, but after 16 hours of searching by dozens of search and rescue personnel and law enforcement, a ranch dog seven miles away brought the boy back to safety. Tracks show Buford, the dog hero, walking with the boy for a mile to bring him to the ranch. He got a two-pound rib eye last night, Buford's owner said.

The boy was reported safe with only a few scratches. NBC News has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership. They get you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew,

this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Sahl, Lindsay Knuth, and

Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dyett75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.