A lot of reporters and pundits have been pushing for a snap election. Journalists should be discounted on this subject. They always want elections: they generate easy copy and are one of the few times these days when journalists feel important.

The last chapter of my new book Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre is called “on shifting ground”. The political environment is changing hourly. We are a few weeks into a revolution. Most of us thought a second Trump term would just be mayhem for Americans. We didn’t see the existential threat to Canada until late in the fall of 2024. Even then, many of the best-paid columnists in Canada laughed it off as Trump bullshit.

Here's my rule of thumb with sociopaths, having spent so much time around the “criminally insane”, politicians, lawyers and journalists – groups that are thick with sociopaths and psychopaths. If they mention something once, it might just be an impulse or a brain fart. If they talk about it a few times, it’s something on their mind, and the “jokes” are not jokes.

Sociopaths are inherently lazy and disorganized. Trump is both, and he’s an old man. You can see people feeding him simple ideas, and his staff is clearly putting Project 2025 policies into short executive orders that Trump signs without reading. You can see that in the photo op videos from the Oval Office.

Trump’s legacy project is an American-governed North America, from the Mexican border to the North Pole that includes Canada and Greenland. When he’s gone, anyone who challenges the idea that he was a great, transformative president will be told to look at a map. At the same time, he is not much of a doer. He wants our country to surrender to him, and, as I said last December in social media posts, he means to break us financially.

We are in the middle of this campaign. Fortunately, the incompetence of Trump and his team is showing. Still, Canada is already being damaged by new tariffs and by economic uncertainty that makes future investment in productive Canadian businesses seem risky. This spring, we need a government, not an election.

Here are the reasons why an election in April is a terrible idea:

Trump’s new reciprocal tariffs and the old tariffs he revives from the February and March climb-downs are supposed to be imposed April 2. And he may have more brain-waves. Conventional Ottawa wisdom puts that in the second week of the campaign. We need a full-time government when these tariffs and the usual drama around them happens.
By the fall, the tariffs – whatever they are -- will be rolled out and we’ll be able to consider the pitches from all the political parties on how to deal with them. Trump may try to throw a monkey wrench into a fall campaign, but the new government will have experience and be better prepared. Opposition parties will also be able to campaign on their proposed solutions to the problems created by tariffs.
Ministers and the PMO need to know their files before there’s an election. They need to be in sync with their departments, especially now. Or Carney, as seems likely, will take Trudeau’s cabinet as-is, and most of his PMO, too. Politically, that’s a bad idea.
If the Liberals are serious about helping affected workers, farmers (who, by the way, just had their cash crop plans scuttled by the Chinese, who just imposed new ag tariffs), and businesses, they have to bring Parliament back at the end of the month and pass a relief bill. We’re already seeing layoffs at Algoma Steel and we can expect carnage in the automobile assembly and parts industry. Calling an election, rather than dealing with this issue, would cement the idea that Liberals only care about winning, and that their talk of worker aid is bunk. People suspect they're opportunists. For many, this would prove it. Pierre Poilievre will, with good reason, make that point, even through he’s promised for more than a year to take down the Liberal government.
If there’s an April or May election, Parliament could not be called back until late May. After a throne speech debate, the Commons would not get to a relief bill before the second week of June. And, unless the Liberals win a majority, time allocation and closure are off the table. That means either Parliament sits through the summer or there’s no relief bill until well into the fall. Voters will find out about this timing and will be unimpressed.
If the election winner is serious about tariff relief, I believe they’d need all-party agreement for a summer sitting. I haven’t been able to find a time in recent history when Parliament sat through the summer. (There were committee meetings in 2020 but, as far as I can find, no House of Commons sittings). So that likely means there hasn't been an all-summer sitting since the Second World War.

The talking point about Carney not having a seat is irrelevant. He can govern through the Cabinet. PMs don’t debate bills in the Commons. They show up for some Question Periods. Stephen Harper was PM for 8 ½ years and never spoke in a debate on a bill. Relief bills would, as usual, be quarterbacked by the sponsoring ministers and House Leader(s). I believe PMs should be more involved in Parliament and accountable to it, but that's not how it works now.
Carney needs time to build a solid PMO team and a cadre of skilled ministerial aides and must attract the best campaign talent from the losing camps. This can’t be done while there’s an election campaign. It’s too late.
If Carney is afraid of being defined by Poilievre, he needs to deal with this now, not during the campaign. Communications strategy and tactics were, by far, Trudeau’s biggest failing. As I show in my new book, Poilievre and his media people have run circles around Trudeau, who had the worst comms people I’ve seen in 30 years in Ottawa. Carney needs a good YouTube team, outreach to potentially supportive online and traditional media journalists, and better ad people than Trudeau has. Money is not the issue. It’s the lack of a skilled Liberal team with knowledge of the new media landscape and how to communicate clearly in it.
Going into an election quickly because of leadership polling bumps proved disastrous for John Turner in 1984 and Kim Campbell in 1993. The last CROP poll before the 1884 election was called showed Turner’s Liberals ahead of the Tories by 10 points. Three weeks later, Brian Mulroney’s Tories were ahead by nine points.

In 1993, Kim Campbell didn’t have much elbow room when it came to election timing: the Tories were already more than 4 ½ years into their mandate. Still, the last poll results (Environics) before the election call showed the Tories one point ahead of the Liberals (34%-33%). Most polls showed the Tories ahead in the first week. Then the bottom fell out of Campbell’s campaign. Her support had been soft, and it dissipated to the point that the Progressive Conservatives won just two seats and were destroyed as a party.

Since Trump started making his threats, the Liberals have had six weeks of good polls. That’s not enough. Canadians will want to see how Carney performs and some real action on Canadian-Trump issues if this trend is to jell. I believed Poilievre’s numbers were soft. (A friendly stranger calls you and asks who you’ll vote for. Trudeau’s been in too long. Singh is, at best, a bit of fluff. So Poilievre gets the nod). I’m sure the same thing is happening here. And Poilievre is usually a tremendous campaigner. Why throw away “PM experience and success” as a selling point?
Time also seems on the Liberals’ side if they want to lump Poilievre with Trump in the public’s mind. We keep seeing more conservative own-goals, like Tamara Lich coming out in support of annexation and Daniel Smith playing footsie with Trump. We can count on more Albertans throwing shade on Poilievre’s claim that he (and other right-wing Albertans) puts Canada first.
The Liberals need a credible election platform and a campaign plan that is not just reactive to Poilievre's. Because of the voting system chosen by the Liberal Party, the leadership campaign did not rejuvenate the party’s already moribund local associations. These do make a difference.
The Liberals need to get out ahead of Charlie Angus on the nationalism message. Though he is not running again, smart New Democrats could rightly claim consistency on this issue and rebuild their shattered support (especially by sidelining Singh and having local candidates doing this messaging). Expect Angus to ride this into the NDP leadership after the election, but he might leave the new Liberal leader in the dust before that.

I doubt Carney and his team will read this. But I want it on the record, if just to say “I told ya”.

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