Canada wraps up one of the most angry election campaigns in recent history this Sunday due to anti-vaccine protests, which focused their anger on Acting Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Party (PL), Justin Trudeau, on which points out that will renew the victory at the polls.
Trudeau, who unexpectedly dissolved Parliament in August and called a snap election just two years after the last election, planned to hold virtual and face-to-face rallies this Sunday in nearly every Canadian province, including Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, which they will organize. decide the winner of the contest.
Polls show Trudeau’s Liberal Party slightly ahead of Erin O’Toole’s Conservative Party (PC), although the margin of error in the polls means there is a technical link between the country’s two main parties.
According to the Canadian public broadcaster, CBC, the average of all polls indicates that Trudeau’s Liberals have 31.4% of electorate support, while O’Toole’s Tories add 30.7%.
With these figures, analysts believe that the Liberals have an advantage, thanks to the Canadian electoral system of direct suffrage, which means in practice that 338 elections will be held on Monday to elect as many MPs who make up the lower house of Parliament.
Radio-Canada forecasts that the Liberals will be able to obtain 154 MPs on Monday, while the Conservatives will have to be satisfied with 118. Behind, there will be the New Social Democratic Party (NDP), with 34 MPs; and the sovereign Bloque Quebequés (BQ), with 31 deputies. The Green Party would also win a seat.
In the 2019 elections, the PL obtained 33.1% of the votes and 157 seats, against the PC which, although having obtained more votes and 34.3% of the votes, obtained 121 deputies. The BQ added 32 seats, the NPD 24 and the Greens 3.
One of the big unknowns in Monday’s vote is whether the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), led by former Conservative minister Maxime Bernier, will get its first MP in an election.
Bernier, who held various portfolios under the governments of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper between 2006 and 2009, rallied support from the most radical sectors of the Canadian conservative movement, including anti-vaccines.
According to polls, the PPC has the support of 6.7% of voters, which puts it on the verge of securing an MP.
Bernier, who is known for his radical ideas and more of a scandal, staged several “freedom” protests in support of anti-vaccines last Saturday in Calgary, the heart of the Canadian conservative movement.
Bernier, who boasts of not being vaccinated against COVID-19 and is the only leader of one of Canada’s main political parties not to have been immunized, called protesters at the rally “freedom fighters “.
It was supporters of Bernier and his anti-vaccine message who harassed the leaders of other parties, including Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, of the NDP, during their protests, and made the election campaign that ends on Sunday l one of the most fights in the country’s modern history.
From the first days of the campaign, Trudeau was persecuted and insulted in the streets of cities in southern Ontario, the most populous province in the country and where 121 of the 338 members of the lower house were elected.
On August 17, the second day of the election campaign, an anti-vaccine group attempted to detain Trudeau and his entourage in Aurora, about 50 kilometers north of Toronto, sparking clashes with the acting Prime Minister’s bodyguards. .
In early September, in another rural Ontario town, Conservative protesters hurled insults and anti-vaccine slogans at Trudeau and several reporters, a rare occurrence in Canadian politics.
The last straw for Trudeau was when on September 13 a protester approached the politician and cursed his wife with a rude word.
Trudeau, who was waiting to be interviewed on Canadian television, lowered the mask that covered his mouth and confronted the protester.
Growing support for Bernier from more conservative voters favors Trudeau’s electoral outlook, especially in ridings where the PL and PC are linked by voting intentions.
Julio Cesar Rivas
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