SATURDAY RECAP: Campaign pluses and minuses

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Follow the Toronto Sun’s live coverage of Canada’s 45th general election and tariff-related news, with contributions from Brian Lilley, Bryan Passifiume, Lorrie Goldstein and columnists Joe Warmington and Warren Kinsella, as well as contributions from the Sun’s editors and reporters covering the election ahead of the April 28 vote. Plus, you can find all of our election coverage here.

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KINSELLA: POILIEVRE AND CARNY HAVE PLUSES AND MINUSES

The debates are done. The candidates are finalized. The vote happens in just over a week.

So, who to vote for?

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As before, this writer sat down and listed what’s good and bad about the two main party leaders. Both Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney have pluses and minuses aplenty.

I even rendered it in a cartoon, because why not.

Read Kinsella’s column here.

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LILLEY: CARNEY’S PLANS MAKE TRUDEAU LOOK LIKE MISER

Mark Carney’s spending plans, released in his Liberal campaign platform, make Justin Trudeau look like a tightfisted miser.

The plans Carney released Saturday would see the federal government dramatically increase spending and add a further $130 billion in deficit spending over four years.

Instead of a $42 billion deficit this current fiscal year, the Carney plan would see a $62 billion deficit. Next year’s projected $31 billion deficit would be $60 billion. The $30 billion projected for the following year would be $55 billion and the projected $28 billion deficit for fiscal year 2028-29 would be $48 billion.

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Of course, that’s only if the Liberals make their targets, which they haven’t done in years. They always have much higher deficits than even their own projections call for.

Read Lilley’s column here.

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GUNTER: POLL SHOWS FEAR MOTIVATING VOTERS TOWARD 4TH LIBERAL TERM

This week, Postmedia and pollster Leger released the most disturbing poll of the federal campaign so far.

No, not one showing the Liberals under Mark Carney with a double-digit lead. I never believed those polls anyway.

I believe the Liberals are ahead, for now. And so long as the Liberals can keep distracting voters from their atrocious record of the past 10 years and keep focusing on Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats, they will tragically stay in the lead until April 28.

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Canadians’ voting intensions are, I believe, closer than the polls show. Pollsters tend to undersample younger voters, who are leaning Conservative this time. And they tend to undersample conservative voters. And an increasing number of voters (mistakenly) have come to believe pollsters report information on individual respondents back to the media outlets, parties and governments that sponsor their surveys. So, to avoid getting in trouble, they give what they believe are the politically correct responses.

Read Gunter’s column here.

ADVANCE POLL RECORD: ELECTIONS CANADA

Elections Canada says early voters set a new record for turnout on the first day of advanced polls.

Nearly two million people showed up to cast a ballot on Friday, the first of four days for advanced voting in the federal election.

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Many of those voters were met with long lineups at polling stations across the country.

Elections Canada says it will be making adjustments over the coming days to handle the high traffic.

Read the story here.

GOLDSTEIN: HOW MERCY TO GUILTY BECAME CRUELTY TO INNOCENT

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s election promise to use the constitution’s notwithstanding clause to give judges the option of imposing consecutive life sentences on those who commit multiple murders has prompted predictable outrage from Canada’s chattering classes.

Ditto his promise of a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out law,” which would deny criminals convicted of three serious offences bail, probation, parole or house arrest.

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Proposals to seriously toughen Canada’s criminal justice system are always greeted with opposition from “progressive” politicians, criminologists, criminal lawyers and the liberal media, all of whom ignore, have forgotten or never knew Adam Smith’s famous warning that “mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

Read Goldstein’s column here.

POILIEVRE PLEDGES PLATFORM ‘SOON’

The federal Liberals and NDP both released their costed campaign platforms Saturday as Canada’s 45th general election inched toward the finish line.

With just over one week left before election day, and on the second of four days of advance voting, Liberal Leader Mark Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh published documents outlining their full campaign commitments and what they say they’ll cost.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who was campaigning in Richmond, B.C. Saturday, said his full platform will come soon, but said “95 per cent” of it has already been announced.

Carney rolled out the party’s campaign commitments in Whitby, Ont., one of several battleground ridings in the seat-rich Greater Toronto Area.

Read the story here.

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