Before this week’s federal election in Canada, Derek O’O’Let and his wife, Yesenia O’Lett, could not have imagined voting for anyone other than conservatives.
“We are both conservatives, and we are both kind of thought.
But Ouellette, a liberal leader who is predicted to secure a minority victory in this week’s poll, said he was proud of what he had never thought of before, voting for Prime Minister Mark Kearney.
Across the social media, many formerly full-time conservatives said they will be voting for the Liberals for the first time this week. Many say the vote appears to be pulling “Trump of Canada” (conservative leader Pierre Poilierble) and experts seem to be pulling the vote from President Donald Trump’s playbook.
“Some elements of his campaign reflected Trump,” said Roland Paris, director of the University of Ottawa’s School of Public and International Affairs.
It included talking about “about elimination of awakening” and “about mentioning his political enemies by nasty nicknames,” Paris added. “None of these features of his campaign helped Trump once he was seen as Canada’s enemy by many Canadians.”
A few weeks ago, it seemed the typical approach of Poiriebre, who had previously allied with the so-called Freedom Convoy, who protested the truck driver’s vaccine mandate.
His campaign focused on the scandal-hit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the economy, as he watched Prime Minister Justin Trudeau move 24 points ahead of the Liberal Party in January, according to a vote tracker run by the Canadian Broadcasting Station.
But within a few weeks everything changed. Trudeau announced his resignation on January 6th, but Trump gained power in the United States, threatening to use economic pressure to annex Canada as the “51st state,” imposing a 25% tariff on goods from neighbors in the United States, and imposing a nationwide attack.
Trump’s wary remarks have greatly boosted Canadian nationalism and vowed to boycott the US and its products.
As anti-Trump sentiment grew across Canada, Polyeive’s own bullish rhetoric quickly lost its luster for many Canadian conservatives.
When Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, was nominated as Canadian interim prime minister and liberal candidate for the 2025 election, he dislikes Trudeau and is concerned about the liberal ability to handle the economy.
When it happened, new ways emerged for those who were politically homeless.
Poilliebre, now a former opposition leader, even lost his parliamentary seat on Monday, where he had served as a liberal rookie for 20 years.
“Maple Magazine”
“You hear Polyebre talk and it’s like a topic from Trump,” Ullett said. “It just reminds me of what’s going on south of the border.”
In comparison, he added that Carney “showed he was extremely critical in dealing with Trump” by charging himself as a candidate who could stand up to the president.
“I can’t support the rhetoric of hatred…and this ‘Maple Magazine’ movement is happening here in Canada,” said Chantal Dougdale, 57, another conservative who voted liberal for the first time in his life Monday.
Dougdale said similarities between Poilierbre’s campaign and support base and Trump’s “make America great again” move found particularly unpleasant moves.
“We need unity. We need to be together. We need a positive message,” said Dougdale, a native of Barry, just north of Toronto, who works in marketing and sales.
In an interview last week, Trump appears to be aware of the possible impact on Canadian elections, and said it was released Monday by the Atlantic.
“Then I was hated by enough Canadians who threw the election into a close call, right?” he said.
Certainly, Oolett, Dougdale and political experts have noted that Carney’s victory is far from a landslide, so it is predicted that the next liberal government will fall into winning most of the seats in the parliament.
And while lifelong conservatives may have helped liberal leaders move forward, Paris said he believes “Mark Carney wouldn’t have won, if not for Donald Trump.”
“Canadians were tired of the Liberal Party 10 years later, but they were even more concerned about the Trump threat,” he said.
Still, Dougdale’s predicted results of the election are far from the conservative victory he felt more and more certainly just a few weeks ago, and Poilierbre is now out of work.
“That’s so ironic. Paul was screaming, ‘We need to change,'” Dougdale said. “He’s changed to okay.”