Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney hinted at the possibility of calling an early election should he succeed to become prime minister after replacing Justin Trudeau as Liberal party leader on March 9.
“If Parliament needs to be recalled for certain reasons, it will be,” Carney told reporters in Vancouver Thursday. “If it makes sense to get a strong mandate at that point, that view we will follow.”
Parliament is slated to return on March 24, over two weeks after the Liberals have elected their new leader.
Carney said that if he replaces Trudeau, he’ll then decide whether to call Parliament to reconvene to pass an emergency relief package in response to U.S. tariffs or call a snap election to negotiate with the Trump administration.
Additionally, Carney announced plans to lower building costs to mitigate the housing shortage, however, no plans were provided on how that would be achieved.
‘It is time to build and we should do that now to strengthen our negotiating position as well,” said Carney. “This is a time to build, and we will catalyze enormous private investment to build millions of new homes for younger Canadians.”
Critics of Carney say he’ll call an early election for his own benefit as a means to skirt scrutiny regarding his history of opposing Canadian pipelines while supporting them in the Middle East and investing in American coal.
He has also come under fire for his decision to move his company headquarters to the U.S. and his long-standing support of the carbon tax.
In an interview with Juno News’ Candice Malcolm, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that while he thinks it’s important that Canadians “get a quick election,” Carney is well aware that it will also serve his political honeymoon.
“Let’s not mistake the real reason why Carney wants that: it is to avoid any scrutiny and to have the Liberal establishment, the Liberal media, basically rubber-stamp him as prime minister so that he can go on carrying out the same policies that have destroyed our economy, doubled our debt and housing costs after nine years of the Liberals,” said Poilievre.
Carney as the new Liberal leader would pose a threat to Poilievre if an election were called in the near future.
A new Leger poll indicated that the gap between the Conservatives and Liberals would disappear if Mark Carney were to square off against Poilievre in a general election.
The poll shows that if Carney took the reins of the Liberal party, the Liberals would be tied with the Conservatives for support.
Meanwhile, Poilievre’s recent messaging to voters has been that Carney is no different than Trudeau when it comes to policy, despite the leadership candidate portraying himself as an “outsider” to politics.
Carney served as an informal economic advisor to Trudeau from as far back as 2020, a role not lost on Poilievre.
“They’re saying: please forgive them for all the economic damage they did because we have to focus on the Trump tariffs. The economic damage Liberals did through taxes, debt, and blocking resource projects was bad before the tariffs. It’s lethal after the tariffs,” said Poilievre.
“The fact that we’re facing threats of these unjustified tariffs now is another reason we can’t afford to take a risk on these radical tax-and-spend Carney-Trudeau Liberal policies that have failed over the last nine years.”