MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gambled last month on a snap federal election — more than two years before a vote was required under Canadian law — he believed the dice were loaded in his favor.
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The Liberal Party leader was flying high on relatively positive reviews of his government’s handling of the pandemic. After initial blips, Canada was a world leader in vaccinations. And he was well ahead in the polls of his main rival, a rookie leader who was doubted by members of his own party, and virtually unknown to many Canadians.
The moment seemed ripe to turn a minority government into a majority, one that would no longer have to rely on opposition party support to pass its agenda. But the campaign has been a bumpy ride, and as Monday’s vote approaches, his Liberals and Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives are deadlocked.
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Still, Trudeau, 49, has a long history of weathering storms that might have doomed other politicians. The question now is if he can do it again, or if his gamble will go down as one of this country’s greatest political miscalculations.
The likeliest outcome, polls show, is that Trudeau will finish the 36-day campaign back where he started: With a plurality of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, but short of the 170 needed to win a majority.
“That has to be disappointing,” pollster Nik Nanos said. “The big question is will they even win as many seats as they won last time, and that’s still up in the air.”
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One reason for the tight race, analysts say, is timing.
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When Trudeau kicked off the campaign on Aug. 15 — entering the contest not as the fresh face who swept into power in 2015, but as a veteran politician with six years of experience (and baggage) under his belt — he cast the election as the most important in Canadian history since the end of the Second World War.
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“The decisions your government makes right now will define the future your kids and grandkids grow up in,” he said. “So in this pivotal, consequential moment, who wouldn’t want a say? Who wouldn’t want their chance to help decide where our country goes from here?”
Turns out, Canadians weren’t so keen. Polls showed most felt an election was unnecessary, particularly during a fourth coronavirus wave driven largely by the unvaccinated. Trudeau’s failure to provide a convincing reason for calling an early vote didn’t help. He hasn’t had to work much to get opposition party support for his agenda.
“On the one hand, you can’t take credit for doing such a great job at fighting the pandemic, and on the other hand, say the House of Commons is toxic and we need to change things,” Nanos said. “That environment … was still able to produce the legislation the Liberals needed to fight the pandemic and push stimulus out the door.”
Opposition parties have attacked Trudeau for making what they describe as a “reckless” and “irresponsible” decision, charging that it’s for nothing more than personal gain. Griping about a snap election call isn’t unusual here, but it generally fizzles out after a few days. Not this time.
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“Every Canadian knows a Justin Trudeau in their lives: Privileged, entitled and always looking out for number one,” O’Toole said at a campaign event near Ottawa this week. “He was looking out for number one when he called this expensive and unnecessary election in the middle of a pandemic, a $600 million power grab.”
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O’Toole, who was elected Conservative Party leader in 2020, has run a better-than-expected campaign. His platform is more moderate and less socially conservative than those of his predecessors, and he’s making a direct appeal for blue-collar workers not usually courted by his party.
The former Canadian Forces helicopter navigator has cast himself as a low-key, affable “man with the plan.”
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“The Conservatives have finally put out somebody who looks friendly and as though he won’t chew your fingers off if you try to shake hands,” said Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history at the University of Toronto. “They’re presenting somebody who’s a very nice old grandpa figure or a nice uncle — and that’s different.”
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But O’Toole, 48, faces his own challenges. In tacking to the center, he has risked alienating his base and the social conservatives that helped him win the leadership. Much of his platform is at odds with positions he took during the leadership race, when he branded himself a “true blue” Conservative who would “take back Canada.”
O’Toole’s foes, meanwhile, argue he’s a shape-shifting chameleon, willing to say anything to win.
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“On child care, on gun control, on abortion, on climate change, he’s doing something I cannot do,” Liberal former prime minister Jean Chrétien quipped at a rally in the Toronto suburb of Brampton this week. “He’s speaking on both [sides] of his mouth.” Chrétien has suffered partial facial paralysis since a childhood attack of Bell’s palsy.
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In the final days of the campaign, Trudeau and O’Toole have doubled down in the key battlegrounds: The vote-rich suburbs outside Toronto — known as “the 905,” for the area code — Vancouver and the French-speaking province of Quebec.
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One big question is which role the other parties will play: kingmaker or spoiler?
The left-leaning New Democratic Party could snatch progressive voters from the Liberals, while the right-wing populist People’s Party of Canada could siphon support away from the Conservatives. In Quebec, the separatist Bloc Québécois could make several races competitive.
Trudeau has sought to prevent vote-splitting, arguing that a vote for the New Democrats is a vote for the Conservatives.
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“The choice is between a Conservative Party that would take Canada backward, or a government that always has your back,” he said at the Brampton rally. “This is the moment for progressive leadership and we are the best progressive choice and the only progressive party that can stop the Conservatives.”
Trudeau has faced head winds before — and overcome them.
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The son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, he began the 2015 campaign with his moribund Liberals polling third, behind then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and the New Democrats. Rivals charged that he was a political lightweight who was “just not ready.” A Conservative Party spokesman said Trudeau would exceed expectations in a leaders debate just by showing up “with his pants on.”
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But he orchestrated a surprise come-from-behind victory, riding a wave of youthful exuberance to power. He cast himself as a champion of women and Indigenous people. He promised “sunny ways,” bold action on climate and a more transparent government.
Trudeau enjoyed a relatively long political honeymoon. He drew crowds and posed for selfies. His support of liberalism as right-wing populists swept to power elsewhere landed him on glossy magazines. GQ branded him “that new suave Canadian leader dude.”
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Then cracks emerged in Brand Trudeau.
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He had cast himself as a climate warrior but bought an oil pipeline. The ethics watchdog twice rebuked him for violating ethics laws, including inappropriately pressuring his former attorney general to cut an out-of-court settlement with SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec-based engineering giant facing criminal charges.
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He limped into the 2019 campaign with the cloud of that controversy hanging over him. Then came another: Photographs and a video showing him in blackface and brownface makeup as a younger man. His opponents said he was a phony who acts one way in public and another in private.
On election night, his majority government was reduced to a minority.
It has since faced other controversies, including over a decision to award a no-bid contract to a charity with ties to his family. His brand as a self-described feminist took a hit amid his government’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations in the military.
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Still, glimpses of the rock-star presence that characterized his rise and his gift for drawing crowds were on display during a campaign event in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb.
He made an announcement in a private backyard, then stayed to bump elbows and snap selfies with the several dozen neighbors who’d spotted his red campaign bus parked on their leafy street and gathered on the driveway.
“Go Habs!” yelled one man as he tapped elbows with the prime minister, referring to Trudeau’s favorite hockey team.
“He’s quite the charmer,” one woman remarked to another.
But Trudeau has also drawn more hostile crowds during the campaign. For weeks, he has been dogged by protesters, many of them opposed to public health measures and supporters of the People’s Party of Canada, who’ve screamed obscenities at him and at one stop pelted him with gravel.
Trudeau has tried to deploy his support for mandatory vaccinations for federal public servants and domestic train and plane passengers as a wedge issue. O’Toole supports vaccinations but says he would not mandate them and has not required Conservative candidates to be fully vaccinated.
Chrétien likened politics to ice hockey.
“It’s not ballet,” the 87-year-old former prime minister told reporters in Brampton. “You have to go into the boards once in a while. But if the guy board you, you board him the next time — and at the end of the game, you go and have a beer with everyone.”
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