It’s been an absolutely wild election. Polling predictions were a roller coaster, from a historic Conservative majority, to a Liberal majority, and everything in between. When we got off the roller coaster, we ended up with a parliament that is very similar in overall composition to the one that came before it—a Liberal minority with the NDP holding just enough seats to act as the balance of power.
A closer look, though, shows that a quiet earthquake took place in Canadian politics on April 28.
Two of the three major national party leaders lost their own seats. The vote share for third parties, especially the NDP, collapsed. It’s the first time in nearly 100 years that both the Liberals and Conservatives each received over 40 per cent of the popular vote. Stronghold regions—like Atlantic Canada for the Liberals or industrial southern Ontario for the NDP—were suddenly up for grabs.
The results of this election look more like a two-party system than Canadians are used to—with the accompanying levels of misinformation-driven polarization that we associate with U.S. politics, particularly emanating out of the Prairies. But, because we are in a minority parliament, even the significantly weakened third parties can still wield important power—and that will likely be important in the years to come.
And we are entering a challenging period in Canadian history, with the full weight of Trump’s politics about to crash down on our economy.
Our quick take on the election results, and what comes next.
A voice for the left
Disillusionment and disenfranchisement underpinned some of the shifts in voting patterns for this election, as the electorate decided which party should be held responsible for (and which one should benefit from) decades of bipartisan neoliberal policies that have gutted communities across the country and underfunded increasingly tattered social programs.
Seats in historically working class areas flipped from orange to blue—aided, to some extent, by the Liberals’ push to achieve a “strong, stable majority government.” And, as my colleague Katherine Scott has demonstrated, the economic prospects for young adults are not good and that important conversation was almost entirely absent from the election period. In that context, we need to reflect why young people (usually more progressive), and particularly young men, apparently showed up for the Conservatives (including in the 2025 Student Vote).
Rather than pulling up the proverbial drawbridge to protect their day-old minority status, the new government must address the deeply flawed electoral system. One antidote to “strategic voting” is proportional representation, where voters see their choices reflected much more directly, and where they feel their votes are earned, not owed. This is vital at a time of public disillusionment and disconnection from democratic institutions.
The sense of economic disenfranchisement among young voters is real and cannot be ignored: 54 per cent of Canadians ages 18-29 say they are worse off than their parents and almost 60 per cent think the next generation will be worse off (Environics Institute 2024). The ongoing underfunding of post-secondary institutions, and the increasing reliance on tuition fees and the downloading of debt onto students and their families has reached the breaking point. Debt should be forgiven, fees eliminated, and adequate financial support provided to institutions and students so that young graduates can contribute energy, ingenuity and creativity to our collective future—not spending their time repaying debt by cobbling together multiple part-time jobs (if they exist). Investment in post-secondary education and training will become even more important as we retool our economy and build out our employment capacity and infover the next decade.
End democratic and generational disillusionment. Reform electoral politics and invest in communities and the next generation of workers. And put our priorities and our money where our elbows are.
You can count on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) to be an important voice for the left. In the coming days, weeks and months, our experts will advance a progressive vision for Canada—one that addresses the myriad of deep challenges our country faces. Trump’s tariff war and threat to our sovereignty. The recession, high unemployment and increasing inflation that will inevitably result from Trump’s tactics. The doors that keep closing on Canada’s youth. The dire need for rent controls and housing solutions. And much more, including the role progressives need to play.
—Erika Shaker, director, CCPA National Office
A “build, baby, build” economic and energy agenda
In his victory speech, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to “advance the nation-building investments we need to transform our economy,” guided by “an industrial strategy that makes Canada more competitive while fighting climate change.”
We couldn’t agree more. Canada is in desperate need of ambitious public leadership to reorient our economy away from U.S. dependence all the while accelerating the transition to a clean economy. These are priorities that not only the Liberals, but also the Bloc, NDP and Greens, have committed to, which bodes well for cooperation in a minority parliament. We are now in a good position to make important progress on a number of nation-building infrastructure projects, such as high-speed rail and east-west electrification, that enjoy broad political support.
However, if the government has its way, the “build, baby, build” agenda will largely be delivered by and for the private sector. In keeping with the Trudeau-Freeland approach, the prime minister has promised to double down on tax credits and other incentives to get corporate Canada invested in the green economy, rather than by leading with public ownership. That’s the first red flag. The second is that the Liberal vision of a clean economy includes a big role for so-called “responsible energy production”—i.e., fossil fuel extraction for export. As it stands, the Liberal plan would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions nearly enough to meet our climate targets.
Whether we can keep the good from the Liberal plan (an ambitious green industrial strategy) without conceding the bad (a fossil-friendly corporate agenda) will likely come down to the Liberals’ junior partners in parliament. Despite suffering historic losses, the Bloc, NDP and Greens are, collectively, in a strong position to influence the economic and climate agenda moving forward.
—Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, senior researcher, CCPA National Office
Canada needs public solutions
While the federal election has been settled, uncertainty rules. The Trump administration is not just undermining Canada-U.S. trade, but diminished U.S. trade with the rest of the world, particularly China, is quickly pushing the global economy towards recession.
The next federal budget will be pivotal. Uncertainty is undermining business investment and cutting consumer confidence. It’s essential that the federal government be ready to run large deficits to support aggregate demand.
The federal government should consider deferring the proposed reduced rate in the bottom tax bracket. This tax cut is poorly designed because so much of it goes to higher-income earners who are less likely to spend the proceeds. Little goes to the folks who are facing economic insecurity because their income is too low to pay income tax at all, or if so, very little in tax.
The challenges facing Canada need public solutions, not tax cuts. While there are some positive developments in the Liberal platform, including a stronger federal role in building affordable housing, the devil will be in the details.
It’s not clear how much the Carney government is prepared to concede to Trump in order to restore something close to the pre-Trump status quo, which is ultimately what large Canadian businesses want. This is a crucial moment for progressives to articulate an alternative agenda of public investments, including a strategy around economic sovereignty and industrial policy, to really build Canada.
—Marc Lee, CCPA senior economist
Avoiding the worst in the short term—but grim in the medium term
Election night went, in some ways, the best that we could hope for. A Liberal minority, with an NDP balance of power, has been the formula that has brought Canadians major gains, from universal health care to the Canada Pension Plan and, more recently, dental care and the beginnings of a pharmacare program. Liberal majorities, on the other hand, tend to bring about austerity and corporate handouts—as was the case during the Jean Chretien era, arguably the most severe federal austerity program in Canadian history. The Conservatives, for their part, were itching to give them a run for their money this time around.
We’ve avoided that outcome, for now—but the future remains very uncertain. With a global economic crisis on the horizon, the party in power will be blamed for the effects, just as they were for post-COVID inflation. When that happens, the far right will be waiting to capitalize.
The situation becomes even more dire with the collapse of Canada’s nominally social democratic party. While the NDP continues to hold enough seats to, theoretically, hold a balance of power in the current minority parliament, the election results were disastrous, and many high-profile figures lost their seats. Who is lined up to take leadership—and rethink the direction of the party?
Most grim is the demographic breakdown of voters. We saw, in droves, working-class voters (including union workers) shift to the right—an acceleration of a long-term trend of class dealignment among political parties. Where working class voters used to reliably vote for their class interests—that is, for the left—they voted, in large numbers, for a right-wing, anti-worker party. We see the same trend now, shockingly, with age—where young voters used to overwhelmingly vote for the left, they have made a dramatic shift to the right. These are two of the core bases of left wing politics—and their rightward shift could spell doom for the electoral left in the years to come.
So, for now, we have avoided the worst outcome, and even opened up potential fields of action in the immediate term. But we need to do some real soul searching in the years ahead—Donald Trump won’t be a foil forever.
—Jon Milton, CCPA senior communications specialist
It’s the system
We desperately need electoral reform—proportional representation would help kill strategic voting and encourage plurality of thought and political representation. It would encourage voters to vote for something, instead of against. It would strengthen our democracy and ensure that everyone’s vote matters. And it would make for a very different minority government—one that works with transparency and collaboration with all parties. Read: 100 years of promising proportional representation.
—Trish Hennessy, CCPA senior strategist, senior editor.
We’re the opposition party
Canada held a referendum on the best leader to stand up to Donald Trump.
The Liberal Party put forward a central banker and financial investor who knows the ins and outs of global markets. The Conservative Party put forward a career politician who attempted to pose as an outsider, and who, until recently, sounded much like the American president. The central banker won.
The problem is, Donald Trump is our most pressing concern, not our only concern. Public services that have been starved for 40 years are failing to provide the social and economic security that people in Canada need and desire. Fixing public services requires someone who prioritizes people and communities, not markets.
With fewer progressive voices in parliament, labour and social movements will need to assume the role of opposition party.
À qui la rue? À nous la rue!
—Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and senior researcher, CCPA Ontario Office
We need a plan for Canada, not Trump
The consensus in domestic and international news coverage of the federal election is that the Liberals’ reversal of fortune and electoral win was down to Trump more than Carney. A critical mass of Canadian voters thought the former banker would be a better steward of Canada-U.S. relations under a hostile presidency than the candidate who looked and sounded more like Trump himself. The big question is, what happens now?
The prime minister says he wants to deal with Trump on Canada’s terms. That is unlikely to happen soon or later. Trump continues to promote annexation over negotiations to remove the growing list of absurd yet painful tariffs on critical Canadian exports. He’s preoccupied with China, waiting for a phone call from Xi Jinping that may not come, while U.S. officials try to negotiate “reciprocal” trade deals with dozens of other countries first.
This leaves the prime minister—and, more importantly, Canadian workers—in a bind. While Trump offered to lower tariffs somewhat on automobiles imported into the U.S.—so they are not double-dinged for the tariffs on their steel and aluminum content, chaos still reins one of North America’s most integrated, high employment and profitable sectors. We need a plan.
The Liberal platform proposed $2 billion in funding to develop a Canadian supply chain for automotive production, from minerals to finished vehicles. The prime minister says he wants to build more car parts in Canada so automotive components don’t need to cross the border as often in making a full car. These plans will need to be expedited while we wait for Trump to notice the economic calamity in his own country from imposing tariffs on America’s two most reliable trading partners.
With looming additional tariffs on trucks, copper, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and components, the federal government also needs to act now to protect jobs and Canada’s industrial capacity generally. Federal-provincial cooperation can redirect U.S. exports to domestic and other international buyers. Industry tables including worker and company representatives can provide a big picture look at current supply chain features to determine where vulnerabilities exist and how to close them.
—Stuart Trew, senior researcher, CCPA
Issues of social justice and equality were sidelined during the election. It’s time for a re-set
The Liberal win caps a remarkable reversal in its electoral fortunes over a few short months, Canadians placing their bet on leader Mark Carney to confront and contain American threats to our economic and political sovereignty.
There will be much to parse over the next months—including for progressive movements. The historic vote saw the emergence of a two-horse race between the Liberals and Conservatives and the collapse of NDP support. The Greens and the Bloc Quebecois also had very bad nights.
The NDP, for its part, failed to generate any kind of traction for its policy platform. Critical policy issues such as health care, poverty and unemployment, reconciliation and climate change were largely sidelined in public debate.
Women’s voices too. The decline in the number of female candidates was perhaps the most visible sign of the changing times. Women made up just 36 per cent of the Liberal roster, down from 43 per cent in 2021, and even less (23 per cent) among Conservatives. The idea of gender parity seems so “2015.”
This studied neglect of social justice—and outright attack on “woke ideology”— was made all the worse by the contention by conservatives and financial elites that applying a gendered or intersectional lens to public policy is performative, unnecessary, a distraction from important matters of economy and state.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As we contemplate the different future in a new global order, it would be a mistake to cleave to narrow neoliberal policy prescriptions that have fuelled the rise in inequality and economic precarity around the world. The private market won’t save Canada—or create a country where all can thrive. That’s on us.
—Katherine Scott, senior researcher, CCPA
Western separation will continue to be weaponized by Moe and Smith
Alberta and Saskatchewan Premiers Danielle Smith and Scott Moe will use the Liberal victory and the threat of western separation to try and extract as many concessions as they can from the newly elected Liberal government. In particular, they will be keen to do away with any federal environmental constraints on oil and gas extraction.
Already boasting some of the weakest environmental monitoring and enforcement in the country, both provinces want to see an end to any federal environmental oversight over natural resource extraction. Both governments have done little, if anything, to adequately address the climate and environmental impacts of resource extraction in their respective provinces. In many respects, federal regulation was one of the last constraints on the unfettered exploitation of these resources by industry.
Prime Minister Carney has already shown a penchant to try and placate western conservatives on these issues, ending the carbon tax, and promising to create a “one window” approval process for natural resources projects, as well as streamlining environmental impact assessments for new projects to two years. Despite these concessions, it did not seem to dampen the criticism of the federal Liberals, with Saskatchewan’s premier immediately pivoting to the demand that the federal government eliminate the industrial carbon emissions pricing system.
The fact is that Carney will never be able to placate prairie conservative premiers on environmental policy unless he is willing to do away with all federal environmental regulations, period—something he could not do without profoundly alienating the rest of the country. Even then, the federal Liberals are too useful as a political foil for western conservatives to ever not be cast as villains. While both premiers might strike a more diplomatic pose in the coming days, they have built their political careers in opposition to real and imagined slights from the federal Liberals.
It is only a matter of time until they both reach into that deep well of western alienation again. The more concerning question is—like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice—can they continue to successfully stoke the fires of western separation without losing control over what they have helped create.
–Simon Enoch, CCPA Senior Researcher
