Foreign Desk Report
TORONTO: Voters rushed to polling booths on Monday to choose the Canada’s next parliament after a short campaign that saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in a neck-and-neck fight against the opposition Conservative Party.
The first polls opened in Newfoundland, on Canada’s east coast, at 8:30am local time (11:00 GMT) on Monday. More than 27 million people are eligible to cast their ballots, according to Elections Canada, which administers the vote. A day earlier, Trudeau and Conservative leader Erin O’Toole made their final pitches to Canadians.
“Canada is at a crossroads. We now get to pick the right direction for our country, to keep moving forward – or to let Conservatives take us back,” Trudeau said during a rally in Montreal, where he is seeking re-election in the Papineau riding.
Speaking to Conservative Party volunteers on Sunday in Markham, Ontario, just north of Toronto, O’Toole hit back at Trudeau, accusing the Liberal leader of calling “a $600m election rather than focus on the health of people”.
“So tomorrow we can vote for better, tomorrow we can make sure that we do not reward Mr Trudeau for a $600m election,” O’Toole said. The Canadian election campaign has been dominated by concerns over COVID-19 and mandatory vaccines, investments in health and child care, economic recovery plans and housing, among other key issues.
Trudeau triggered the vote in mid-August, two years ahead of schedule. While experts said the Liberal leader called the election in hopes his government’s handling of the coronavirus would give the party a majority, Trudeau has faced angry protests along the campaign trail and many voters have criticised him for calling the vote during a fourth wave of the pandemic.
Trudeau has been prime minister since 2015, but the Liberals lost their majority in the last federal election in 2019. The party was polling at 31.4% support as of Sunday, according to CBC News’s Poll Tracker, which aggregates all public polling data, compared with 30.9% for the Conservatives and 20% for the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) in third place.
