This article originally appeared in National Newswatch.
By Ken Coates, May 26, 2025
Canada’s 45th Parliament, which gathers in Ottawa for the first time this week, is the product of a disappointing election.
The recent federal campaign was chock-full of calls to arms. This was the “most important election in our lives.” United States President Donald Trump represented an “existential threat” to Canada’s very existence.
If these threats are to be taken seriously—and they should be—the political parties never rose to the occasion. Instead, the tepid contest produced an unremarkable result. We were promised an election for the ages but received one of the most forgettable campaigns in recent memory.
The country spent some $570 million to produce a Parliament curiously similar to the previous one—and the one before it. A country allegedly eager for new direction—and particularly, a stalwart response to American economic chaos—looked at the offerings and chose the status quo.
In that sense, the 2025 election did produce one truly remarkable outcome: everyone lost!
The greatest loser was Justin Trudeau. The campaign was sparked by his un-mourned departure as prime minister. Yet his continued fall from grace was stunning. His signature policy—the carbon tax—disappeared immediately after Mark Carney took office. Trudeau’s ineffective outreach to Trump had reinforced the American president’s antagonism to Canada. So the new PM distanced himself from his predecessor’s legacy, converting Trudeau’s ultra-loyalist cabinet into Carney-ites in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the former prime minister was relegated to the distant margins of Canadian politics.
Now-former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh almost matched Trudeau’s slide into political oblivion. Prioritizing the defeat of the Conservatives over the survival of his New Democrats, Singh drove his party over the proverbial cliff. Having lost official party status, the NDP is now reduced—at best—to once again bargaining with the minority Liberal government. At worst, it risks its members abandoning it as floor crossers, all in return for a few social democratic crumbs. Singh will be largely unlamented, although his gracious concession speech won him admirers.
The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre entered December expecting to be winners but ended April with a serious case of the blues. Poilievre can point to more seats, more votes, and the fact that he stopped the Liberals from their desperately desired majority. But the Conservatives lost an election they seemed destined to win, upended by the unexpected conjunction of Trudeau’s departure, Trump’s unprecedented mocking of Canadian sovereignty, and serious Tory platform miscalculations.
The Green Party has become a spent force. Half-leader Elizabeth May maintained her local support, but as a national entity the Greens virtually disappeared. The loss of the excellent Kitchener Centre MP Mike Morrice demonstrated the limited appeal of the brand. While May is a personal force of nature, her virtue-signalling party is on its last legs.
Much the same is true of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada—a ‘movement’ known more for bluster than substance. It’s hard to imagine Bernier summoning the personal strength—let alone sufficient electoral support—for another attempt at even marginal relevance.
Finally, Carney held on as prime minister but came out a loser, too. The would-be central banker-messiah eked out a win as a retail politician, but offered no grand vision or leadership for a country begging for a sense of direction. It turned out that running on a resume with no memorable policy ideas could only take a new leader so far. Recruited to broaden Liberals appeal, Carney lost a big part of the party’s Ontario base—which he offset by stealing a significant number of seats from the separatist Bloc Québécois. That’s hardly the stuff of political transformation. There was no Red Wave: a slight bump in seat count but no grand sweep across the West.
Canada itself did not come off so well. There was a great deal of self-congratulations about the nation’s response to Trump. As has so often been the case, Canada’s sense of superiority rose to the surface.
Having led a campaign devoid of exciting ideas or even a sense of reality about the challenges ahead, Carney concluded the 2025 election with an enduring but inauspicious image: leading Liberal supporters in a Canadian politics-style “elbows-up” chicken dance.
Carney will now face intense scrutiny of his personal and business affairs, something he largely avoided during the election. He must deal with the complex challenges of cabinet management, minority Parliament coalition building, and urgent policy implementation. Eventually, he must tackle budget construction with the spectre of tormenting American tariffs hanging over the country. There is no easy path.
Carney is lacking a solid majority, challenged by Trump, and pumped up by the moral certainty of a social justice and environmental warrior. He’s wearing a Trudeau-delivered budgetary straitjacket, and has precious little room to maneuver.
One major dark cloud hangs over the nation. Andrew Coyne’s “what-me-worry?” protestations about national unity notwithstanding, Western anger is very real. Separation is a bridge too far for a region that really wants fairness, but the West will not be easily placated. To put yourself in Alberta’s shoes, imagine how a political party would fare in Ontario if its underlying campaign theme were the manufacturing sector must be constrained and eventually mothballed.
In a moment that begged for boldness, leadership, honesty, and vision, the 2025 election offered little more than platitudes, partisanship, and shallow rhetoric.
If Trump’s America represents an existential threat to Canada, the country emerged from the election weaker rather than stronger, mollified rather than informed, and bitterly divided about the path forward. To make matters worse, the minority Parliament produced by the “election for the ages” now creates the prospect of more political gamespersonship, and the likelihood of another national campaign sooner than later.
As in all truly democratic elections, the nation got the result it wanted and deserved. Unfortunately, the 2025 campaign speaks volumes about our political system’s shortcomings and the country’s fault lines, providing an excellent illustration of Canadians’ capacity for self-delusion.
Ken Coates is a distinguished fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
