The new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, is expected to announce the SNAP elections on Sunday, looking for a stronger mandate while his country fights a commercial war and threats to annexation of the United States of Donald Trump.
The former central banker was chosen by the Centrista Liberal Party to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, but has never faced the broader Canadian electorate.
That will change on April 28, if, as expected, Carney announces that he is presenting parliamentary elections of several months from October.
Government sources said AFP which would announce the decision at 12:30 pm in Canada (4:30 PM GMT) (9:30 pm at the time of Pakistan) in a speech to the nation of 41 million people from Canada.
In power for a decade, the liberal government had slipped into a deep unpopularity, but Carney hopes to bring a wave of Canadian patriotism to a new majority, thanks to Trump’s threats.
Trump has irritated his northern neighbor by repeatedly discarding his sovereignty and borders as artificial, and urging him to join the United States as state 51.
The ominal comments have been accompanied by Trump’s commercial war, imposing tariffs on Canada imports that could destroy their economy.
“In this moment of crisis, the government needs a strong and clear mandate,” Carney told the followers on Thursday in a speech in the western city of Edmonton.
Survey Favorites
National problems such as the cost of living and immigration generally dominate Canadian elections, but this year a key topic exceeds the list: who can better handle Trump.
The president’s open hostility towards his northern neighbor, a NATO ally and historically one of his closest partners in his country, has overturned the Canadian political landscape.
Trudeau, who had been in power since 2015, was deeply unpopular when he announced that he was renouncing, with the conservatives of Pierre Poilievre seen as electoral favorites only a few weeks ago.
But surveys have been reduced spectacularly in favor of Carney since he took over the liberals, and now analysts are calling this overvalued race of Trump too close to call.
“Many believe that this is an existential choice, unprecedented,” said Felix Mathieu, a politicalologist at Winnipeg University AFP.
“It is impossible at this stage to make predictions, but this will be a close choice with an electoral participation that should be increasing.”
Pailievre, 45, is a career politician, first chosen when he was only 25 years old. A veteran activist who speaks hard, has sometimes been labeled as libertarian and populist.
Carney, 60, has spent his career out of electoral politics. He spent more than a decade in Goldman Sachs and directed the Central Bank of Canada, then the Bank of England.
The smallest opposition matches could suffer if Canadians seek to give a great mandate to one of the two greats, to strengthen their hand against Trump.
And as for the American leader, he professes not to worry, while advancing with plans to further strengthen tariffs against Canada and other important commercial partners on April 2.
“I don’t care who wins there,” Trump said this week.
“But a while ago, before getting involved and changing the elections, which I don’t care […] The conservative led by 35 points. “
