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News > Canada

Canada Holds Parliamentary Elections

  • Citizens queue outside a polling station, Quebec, Canada, Sept. 20, 2021.

    Citizens queue outside a polling station, Quebec, Canada, Sept. 20, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @epaphotos

Published 20 September 2021
Opinion

Polls of voting intention announce a technical tie between conservatives and liberals, who led voting preferences with 1.5 percentage points.

On Monday, Canadian citizens go to the polls to elect 338 new members of the Lower House amidst an increase in COVID-19 cases, which keeps the health system on the edge of collapse.

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In these elections, liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces the New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh and the Conservative Party (CP) leader Erin O’Toole, who is seen to be his greatest opponent.

Trudeau, who has held in office since 2015, is framing this election as a referendum on his pandemic leadership. “We’ve had your back. Now it’s time to hear your voice,” Trudeau said when announcing his administration’s decision to hold a snap election, with which they seek to recover the absolute majority in the Lower House to get legislation passed without relying on the opposition’s support.

However, polls of voting intention announce a technical tie between conservatives and liberals. So far, the Liberal Party (PL) has a voting intention of 31,5 percent, while the CP has a ballot preference of 31 percent.

Trudeau’s opponents have been calling him out for holding the election during a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already caused 27,395 deaths in this country. However, they rejected his plan to establish compulsory vaccination for travelers and boosting mass vaccination in the country.

Climate justice has also been a relevant issue in the electoral campaign, given that the effects of temperature changes are disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities and their traditional territories.

The Trudeau administration plans to ban certain single-use plastics and set binding emissions targets to reach net-zero emissions in 2050. The CP militants rejected this plan, stressing that they would replace their carbon pricing system with a maximum charge of up to US$39 per tonne for consumers instead. 

The major parties have also focused on the cost of living in Canada since home prices have jumped at least 30 percent year over year, affecting vulnerable communities across the country.

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