Justin Trudeau is unlikely to win the Canadian election

Justin Trudeau has begun what is almost certainly his final election campaign. The Canadian prime minister is defiantly seeking a fourth consecutive mandate despite a year of relentlessly sliding support. Such is the antipathy towards Mr Trudeau and his Liberal Party that three-quarters of Canadian voters disapprove of them, according to polls during 2024. An easing of interest rates, a steady drop in inflation to just over 2% and a breather in the dizzying ascent of house prices have done little to arrest the decline in Mr Trudeau’s support.

In September 2024 special elections in two constituencies, which had been reliable Liberal seats for years, provided direct tests of his appeal. The Liberals lost both, provoking pointed questions about Mr Trudeau’s leadership from once-stalwart supporters. Many of them cast envious glances across the southern border after the swift and bloodless switch made by Democrats in the United States at the top of their ticket. Some Liberals, including Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England, have started to assemble embryonic leadership campaigns in preparation for the possibility that Mr Trudeau, who singlehandedly revived their moribund party nine years ago, will choose to step aside.

But Mr Trudeau insists that he is not going anywhere. Aged 52, he is now the longest-serving leader in the G7 and is determined to host the group’s next summit in the Canadian Rockies in June. That showcase, along with an expected series of further interest-rate cuts that may kickstart an anaemic economy, is what keeps him turning up for work, his supporters say. So does the prospect of confronting the Conservatives’ pugnacious leader, Pierre Poilievre.

Mr Poilievre was first elected as a 25-year-old MP two decades ago. His assiduous wooing of the younger and working-class voters who propelled Mr Trudeau to power in 2015 seems to be working. Conservatives rarely do well with those voters, but Mr Poilievre’s early focus on inflation and the runaway cost of housing won him unexpected support. Polls suggest that his Conservatives will win a sweeping majority in the forthcoming elections, which must take place before the end of October 2025.

Whoever wins, there will be little time for celebration. Canada is heavily dependent on trade with the United States: trade in goods and services between the two countries was valued at $909bn in 2022. But that formidable economic activity is underpinned by a North American free-trade agreement which comes up for review in 2026, with negotiations beginning in 2025. Donald Trump’s personal disdain for Mr Trudeau, along with his promise to level a 10-20% tariff on all imports, will make those discussions nerve-racking for Canadian companies and their employees, given their dependence on access to the booming American market.■