By RILEY DONOVAN
In 1891, 1911 and 1988, Canada held “free trade elections” where Canada-U.S. trade deals took centre stage. The 2025 campaign will go down in the history books as the “Canadian sovereignty election.”
The Trump administration’s initiation of a chaotic trade war aimed at coercing Canada into becoming the 51st American state has become the clear focal point. To many voters, all other issues pale in comparison to the ongoing economic aggression and threats of annexation.
For the large majority of voters, elections with one clear theme essentially become a referendum between the Conservatives and Liberals. Themed elections are bad news for the smaller parties. A recent Leger poll had the NDP at six per cent, Bloc Quebecois at five per cent, and the Greens and People’s Party at three per cent. A full 82 per cent went to the Liberals (44) or Conservatives (38).
We are seeing this same phenomenon here in our local Saanich-Gulf Islands riding. According to poll aggregator 338canada.com on April 6, the Liberals and Conservatives were almost tied, with the Greens and NDP taking a corresponding dip. Clearly, both NDP and Green voters are defecting to the Liberals. Most probably, this is part of the national trend in which progressive voters are rallying behind the party they see as the defender of Canada’s economy, values and way of life.
This is entirely rational. If your top issue is ensuring the next government in Ottawa stands up to U.S. aggression, and you believe the Liberals best suited to the job, why vote for a small party and thereby potentially help the Conservatives squeak in by a hair?
But here in Saanich-Gulf Islands, we still have a three-way Green-Liberal-Conservative race. Up until Mark Carney became federal Liberal Leader, Green co-leader Elizabeth May was set to win this riding handsomely. Thus, in this riding, voters who distrust the Conservative approach to handling the trade war have the luxury of two choices: Liberal or Green.
Elizabeth May has taken an equally strong stance on the trade war as has Mark Carney — if not even stronger. At a defiantly pro-Canadian Parliament Hill press conference in early January, she proclaimed: “We love our country, and it’s a country. It’s a nation, and we do not aspire to be the 51st state . . . If it was a joke, it was never funny, and it ends now.” This speech went viral — quite a feat for a January press conference held in Ottawa.
338 Canada, the country’s foremost polling aggregator, forecasts that the Liberals could win 185 seats, 13 more than is required for a majority. If this holds true, then voters in Saanich-Gulf Islands sending one more Liberal to Parliament will do little to sway the fate of the country. But sending a Green MP will make sure that environmental concerns are not forgotten in the nation’s capital.
In the next Parliament, a voice for Canada’s environment will be needed more than ever. The Conservatives and Liberals are united in a push for rapid approvals of industrial and resource projects. Pipelines, critical mineral extraction and energy-guzzling data centres are on the menu. Controversial mining projects in Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” are on the table. Carney has already scrapped federal reviews for major infrastructure and mining projects, which can now proceed with provincial or territorial approval alone.
The push for industrialization and resource extraction is an understandable effort to establish Canadian economic independence from the United States. Voters in Saanich-Gulf Islands have the power to send a watchdog to Ottawa to ensure that this economic realignment proceeds without undue devastation to the natural environment that we as Canadians so deeply treasure.