The Current - The election is days away. Do voters have a surprise up their sleeve?

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

This federal election has had its fair share of surprises, from who’s pulled ahead to how engaged Canadians have been. Matt Galloway discusses what we’ve learned on the campaign trail — and whether tightening polls suggest more surprises in store — with the CBC’s Rosemary Barton, Toronto Star’s Ryan Tumilty and the Globe and Mail's Stephanie Levitz.

Fisherman John Coppock and his son Craig were hoping that their day on the water would finish with a good haul of cod. Instead, they reeled in way more than they bargained for. They had a net filled with fish and to their horror and surprise, the body of a man. I'm Kathleen Goldthar and this week on Crime Story, a body in the ocean untangles a sea of lies. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. This is the time for experience on experiments.

After a lost liberal decade of rising costs and crime, are we going to elect liberals for a fourth term? Let's have a voice chosen by and for Quebecers. Don't give Mark Carney all the power. Make sure there's some New Democrats there to fight for you and defend what matters to you most. Well, it's almost all over but the shouting. The main party leaders are making their final pitches to voters this weekend as we head into that final weekend of a federal election campaign.

And throughout that campaign, we have been guided by some of the biggest brains in Canadian politics. They are here for one last look at the race before Canadians vote on Monday. It's our national affairs panel. Stephanie Levitt, senior reporter for the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau. She's in Saskatoon this morning. Ryan Tomlety is a political reporter with the Toronto Star and here with me in studio, Rosemary Barton, the CBC's chief political correspondent and host of

Rosemary Barton Live. Morning everyone. Morning. It's nice to see Matt's face, you guys. We, you should try it as well. A face for radio. I'm sorry to let you down. Um, every time we have talked over the course of the campaign, we've asked,

what have you learned, uh, that week? What have you learned over the course of this campaign, we've asked, what have you learned that week? What have you learned over the course of this campaign? We'll talk about specifics, but just briefly and broadly, what have you learned over the course of this campaign? Is there one thing, Rosy? I think it's that Canadians can surprise you, I think is where I would land with that. That the things that you believe to be true about Canadian politics and about the country can change, um, and that they can see things

unfolding and respond in a way that might surprise you. And I say that, you know, as much for right now as for Monday night. Um, I didn't think we'd end up in a place where we'd have a two-party race, we do. And I don't know how that's gonna shake down exactly Monday night, and that is surprising to me.

Steph, one thing that surprised you over the course of this campaign? Politics still matters to people. In an age where everything seems so fractured and siloed and it's clear that there are big pools of support lining up behind each leader. When I've talked to candidates over the last few days and I say, tell me what you make a voter turnout. And I know we might talk about that a bit later.

The fact that younger Canadians, according to these candidates, are showing up in droves to vote means our democracy is really robust. And I know that sounds maybe a bit Pollyanna, but you always wonder with these elections, what if nobody cares? What if nobody shows up? And people are showing up. People do care. I mean, weather's been nice.

I've been sitting on the front porch and you listen to people on the sidewalk as they walk by talk. And people yesterday are talking about politics. You can hear the leader's names being dropped, which is really interesting. Ryan, is there one thing that surprised you in this campaign?

Yeah. I mean, I would build on what Steph and Rosie said, that people are paying attention. And I think that's because at this moment, when Canada feels under threat from an outside, we are valuing what we have. And I think there's a renewed sense of patriotism in this country. We didn't like being loud about it before. I'm not sure we like being loud about it now, but when we feel threatened,

Canadians are paying attention and they want someone who will respond to that threat. Well, there has been some suggestion, if you look at the polls and the poll aggregation, that the race could be tightening in these last few days. Is that a thing? Is that, do we, What do we think of that? For sure, it's a thing and it's a normal thing.

That is where a race should be at the end, if it's been a competitive race and this has been. Again, we've talked about it many times, it's tightening, but it is still not enough for the conservatives. Remember, the numbers that they are seeing in polling are actually very good numbers for the conservative party. They are numbers that they are seeing in polling are actually very good numbers for the Conservative Party.

They're numbers that would lead them to a win in a normal situation. We are not in a normal situation. So the collapse of the NDP, the block is, I'm not going to say surging, but it is catching up a little bit in Quebec, which will hurt the liberals and make it a little bit tighter of a race to the end. But the tightening in the polls is not the thing that can help the conservatives win, because the conservative voter base, as we talked so many times before, is really concentrated in particular areas.

And so it's a much harder path to victory for them in any election and particularly in this one. Ryan, how do you see that in terms of, again, people will take a look at those headlines around what poll aggregators are saying and where the race is now three days out. How do you see that? I see the polls as predicting what everyone says they're predicting, which is a liberal government, but they can be wrong.

Pollsters in this country have undercounted conservatives before. I don't think that's any sort of element of malice. I just think it's something that happens. We know there is movement and the last poll that is being done is probably being done now or tonight at the absolute latest. So maybe things move over the weekend. Maybe people talk to their family and change their mind.

And you know, we know things are moving, we just don't know how far they will move. Stephanie, you mentioned the issue of turnout. We have seen record turnout in the advance polls. What do you read into that? One, when people have the option to vote on a day where they don't have to go to work, they turn out. And I know that that sounds simplistic,

but it's something I was hearing from a lot of candidates that it made a huge amount of difference that these polls were over that long weekend. Because people, you know, you've seen all these ads the parties have them elections Canada has make a plan to vote. People could actually book that in to that weekend. And that's what the candidates were telling me that that made a big difference. It also people are motivated. People made up their minds early. The last few days I've been traveling with the conservative or following the conservative campaign I should say, and here, Pauli, the leader at the rallies, he says, how many people

here have already voted? And this massive cheer goes up. And yet they're still showing up at rallies. That's pretty cool, right? Like they just still want to engage. So people are really, really engaged. It'll just be, when I was talking to candidates, I said, okay, but what if that's it though?

Like do you think the people are still gonna come on Monday? Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, that this is just a precursor of more to come. Donald Trump has reinserted himself in this campaign. There are questions around Mark Carney's call with him last month. He once again, Mr. President Trump has been talking about how Canada should be the

51st state that we would be better off aligned with the US. What do you make of the call, Rosie? And there are questions around what Donald Trump did or didn't say to Mark Carney and what Mark Carney said about that call. What do you make of this? I actually don't make much of it. I'm going to be honest. I think it is, we know, we've reported, Hadiya Canada has reported that Donald Trump said the 51st state during that

phone call. And we also know that Mark Carney walked away from the call feeling a level of respect that allowed him to agree that Canada would sit down and negotiate a new deal with the next prime minister. I think both of those things can be true. I think it is, we all know that Donald Trump thinks that. Like that is not news to anybody, right? He said it again yesterday or the day before, and he will continue to say it. And Mark Carney and every leader has said, this will never happen. I think it is also just one of those other moments though for Mr. Carney, a teachable moment if you will. If you're going

to talk about a phone call out loud in public, you better be very clear about what happened on the call or don't say much at all. Like those are your options. And I think that that's one of those political novice moments again for Mr. Carney. Brian, the other party leaders are making hay of this, accusing Mark Carney of being misleading about the tone and the content of that call. Is that a thing? Certainly, I think party leaders are trying to make a dent in what Polk is telling us is his lead. His strength is that Canadians think by quite a wide margin that Mark Carney is best placed to take on Donald Trump.

And so anything they can do to muddy that water, I think is helpful. I'm not sure that this phone call tells us that, that he's somehow less capable of that job. I just think it does speak to his sometimes inability to be completely forthright. We had this with the Brookfield moving of the headquarters. He said, I wasn't there when the company made that decision, which was true in the sense that they voted on it after he'd left, but the movement was on its way

long before he did. And so, as you say, and as Rosia said, in some ways this is how to learn how to become a politician in real time? Absolutely, I mean, he really is learning on the job, and you've seen it in the election, even the basics of shaking hands and kissing babies. Mark Carney is better at that today

than he was on the first day of this campaign, or certainly during the leadership. In the fall of 2001, while Americans were still grappling with the horror of September 11th, envelopes started showing up at media outlets and government buildings, filled with a white lethal powder. Anthrax. But what's strange is if you ask people now

what happened with that story, almost no one knows. It's like the whole thing just disappeared. Who mailed those letters? Do you know? From Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and CBC podcasts, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Available now. Let's talk a little bit about the conservative campaign. Steph, you have a piece in the Globe this morning, and our colleague Kate McKenna has been reporting on this

as well, about Tim Houston, who's the Premier of Nova Scotia. He just won majority government. He He just won a majority government. He is somebody who has not been out campaigning with Pierre Poliev and the pieces suggest that there is a frosty relationship between, if not these two men, then certainly their two operations. Sam Houston also put out a video, which seems like the announcement of something.

I mean, he talks about how you properly pronounce the word scallop, but also talks about his role as somebody who loves Nova Scotia and I am Nova Scotian. What's going on there? What is this about? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's really easy to interpret that video as high level trolling of conservative leader Pierre Pauliev. Or a campaign announcement that I want to be the next leader. Yeah, and yeah, and so this, you know, this is interesting,

right? I mean, Pierre Poliev, for a very long time, his party was so ascendant in our Canadian political zeitgeist, you know, right up until let's say, Trump got elected, and the domino effects started from there. And over that period of time, lots of folks reached out and tried to become allies of the federal party, looked an eye on the fact that they were going to form the next federal government. And then lots of folks didn out and tried to become allies of the federal party, with an eye on the fact that they were going to form the next federal government. And then lots of folks didn't.

And there remains a tension there. And one of those folks would be Tim Houston, who made the choice to sort of distance himself from Mr. Poliev during the last provincial election. And that tension, you know, that was, didn't go over well in Mr. Poliev's circles, right? People expected a level of, well, yeah, you want to be a part of our movement and you want to be a part of our party and to have somebody like Tim,

a popular progressive conservative leader distance himself, that was a problem. And there's ripple effects of that everywhere. I mean, you can see it with Ontario premier Doug Ford, who has heavily, you know, I'm not saying heavily criticized but sort of swiped for sure at the Poliev campaign. You have other conservative premieres, of course, that have been very supportive of Mr. Poliev, but this tension between the old progressive conservative guard and Mr. Poliev

is certainly there. Rosé, what's going on with that? You have, again, Steph hinted at this, the campaign director for Doug Ford, Ontario premier, who talks about campaign malpractice, but you also have people within the conservative movement who are coming out now, Lisa Wright, former cabinet minister, saying she's been knocking on doors and what she hears is maybe people support some conservative policies, but it's the leader. That sounds like the knife, if it's not out, then the knife is near the table. What's going on?

Yeah. This is what happens when you're nearing the end of a campaign and it looks like you're not going to win. Someone has to pay the price for that and people start deciding who that's going to be. I think Monday, if Pierre Poiliev does not form government, he's in for a very, very challenging number of weeks. And part of that is, to Steph's point, what many conservatives have said to me is that Pierre Poiliev doesn't have a lot of friends. I'm not talking personal friends, I'm talking political allies, people that he can turn to in moments like this to help shore up support. He has Stephen Harper, for sure. He has his own team behind him that he has not featured prominently

in any way, but he doesn't have people to turn to when the going gets tough and he needs, he's looking for a way to hang on. And if he doesn't form government or if he holds the liberals to a minority, the conservative party and the people who believed for many months that they were going to be in cabinet and going to form government are going to be very angry and they're going to point the finger at the leader. Stephen Harper is in one of the final ads for the Conservative Party in the closing stretch of this campaign, as are these two gentlemen. Have a listen.

You know what Mark Carney says. Come on, do you really think that a fourth liberal term is going to change anything? You know, I've been thinking the same thing. Are we really going to give these clowns a fourth term? I'm voting to serve. There you go. Yeah, sorry, change. Ryan, this ad shows a couple of older men playing golf.

Pierre Poliev has nowhere to be seen in the ad. What do you make of this approach? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, they are trying to play to the Canadians who want change. And Mark Carney, despite joining a liberal government that has been in power for a decade, I think has actually been fairly successful as portraying himself as change, even with Justin Trudeau's cabinet standing behind him. And the last thing that the Conservatives want is to be losing that issue, you know,

losing the issue that they are change. I think they're also, you know, the fact that the ads no longer feature Pierre Polyev tells us that conservative polling tells them he's not very popular anymore, you know, which we've all kind of seen. So I do think they are trying to emphasize, you know, the need for change and the need that Mark Carney isn't that change and trying to forget, have people forget that Pierre Poliev is the change they are offering. Steph, what's the closing argument from the conservatives? Change was mentioned, what,

55 times in 30 minutes in a speech that Mr. Poliev gave in Halifax. He's also talked though about, you know, if you elect the liberal government again, there will be rampant crime. In his words, more despair, people might have to be forging for food because of the high cost of everything. What's the closing argument that the conservatives are making, do you think? It is change and it's both things melted together, right?

It's unless there is change, you are both things melded together, right? Unless there is change, you are going to get dystopia. Don't forget how bad it's been. We need change. It's interesting in his rallies, Matt, because yes, it seems to me that when he decants on all these horrible things that may in fact happen in the future in Canada, the crowd doesn't respond to that. They respond to the change.

They cheer, they get excited. They don't, that's the thing people seem to be vesting in for Mr. Polyev. And I anticipate over the next 48, 72 hours, we're gonna be hearing that a lot. Mark Carney's closing argument is about Donald Trump, obviously, and that he is the right person to handle Donald Trump, obviously, and that he is the right person to handle Donald Trump.

He made time to speak with the American podcaster, Scott Galloway, who's no relation to me, very popular now. He also spoke with Nardoir the Human Serviette, who is, how do you describe Nardoir? He's a music journalist, he's a guy who interviews people, he does more research for his interviews than just about anybody else,

and manages to surprise people. And he managed to pull this off with Mark Carney. Why should people care about Mark Carney? Why should people care? Because we're in a crisis, I can fix it, and I care about them. Anything else you'd like to add, Mark Carney? Thank you.

Well, thanks so much, Mr. Carney. Keep on rockin' in the free world and do, do, do, do, do, yeah. Rosie, you're one of the few Canadian journalists to land an interview with Mark Carney. He's not doing a lot of interviews. No. Right now, certainly. What do you think his closing argument is? What's his strategy there in doing something like that?

I mean, that is the strategy of a front runner who doesn't want to take any risks. If he was worried about how he's going to answer questions, he wouldn't sit down with you, right? He would sit down with... Or you. Yeah. He would sit down with someone where he can get his message across and not get into specifics. Or trouble. Or you. Yeah, he would sit down with someone where he can get his message across and not get into specifics.

Or trouble. Or trouble. And so, yeah, he is again going through that message of, I can manage a crisis. This is a crisis. The fact that Donald Trump popped up this week again and repeated it was a gift to Mark Kearney and to the liberals. And a headache for the conservatives, presumably. That's right. That's right. And it helped him again frame this question

as he has through the campaign, because I'm going to be honest, you know, sort of going into and out of the debates, it had kind of disappeared, this theme. And the reason, part of the reason we're seeing the polls tightened is because Canadians are also now saying, hey, what about affordability? What about all those things that have bothered me for the past two years? If the Conservatives had a week, two more weeks,

I'm not sure that they couldn't significantly close the gap. But Mark Carney is the Prime Minister, and he was the one who got to decide how long this would be. He wanted it to be as short as possible to make the case and get off the campaign, and that's what he's gonna do. So, 90 seconds left, and because I'm fair and balanced, I will divide it between all three of you. Brian, is there one thing, what's the one thing

you're looking to this weekend? Something you'll be watching. I mean, I'll be watching to see if any of the parties change their message in any kind of attempt to change the direction this campaign is going. The conservatives have not really changed their message, they've never pivoted. Do they try to make any kind of attempt to change the direction this campaign is going. The conservatives have not really changed their message. They've never pivoted. Do they try to make any kind of last pitch with Trump making a reemergence on the campaign

and that being a central issue? And then the NDP, remember them? Do they make some kind of big push acknowledging out in the open that they are not in a good space, but that they need the help. Steph, one thing you're watching this weekend? I'll look at geography, take a look at where the leaders are going, tells you a lot about what kind of campaign they're playing at this late hour, offensive or defensive. They have their own numbers, they'll be guided by those.

And when you see leaders going to writings their party has never held, that's an interesting sign. When you see them going to writings that their has never held that's an interesting sign when you see them going to writings that Their party is held for a long time That's also an interesting sign and tells us about the shifting voter dynamic in this election Rosie last word to you whether things get mean This is when things get mean in the campaign. They've started a little bit, but the darker things go I think also tells you a story about how desperate people are getting And they'll there'll be a campaign that campaign that is having a lot more fun than another. You all have been really generous with your time and insights over the course of this campaign.

We will bring you back at some point in future. But in the meantime, thanks for this morning. Thank you. Thank you. The finish line is in sight. Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter for the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau. Ryan Tomlte, a political reporter at the Toronto Star. And with me in studio, Rosemary Barton, CBC's chief political correspondent, host of Rosemary Barton Live. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.