Among the grand old men and women of world politics, Paul Biya stands out as a record holder, the oldest serving state leader at age 92, and president of Cameroon since 1982.

In America, where electoral politics is typically fairer, Chuck Grassley has been in office even longer, senator for Iowa since 1981, and he is chasing the late Strom Thurmond’s astonishing record of having made it to age 100 in office, and the late Robert Byrd’s record of serving in the Senate for more than 51 years.

Canada, as usual, is not out there at the extremes of global politics, with neither the oldest politicians nor the youngest. (South Africa elected 20-year-old Cleo Wilskut to the National Assembly last year.)

But in Vancouver Centre, a record breaking politician goes to the electorate today for yet another endorsement by voters.

Hedy Fry is not even the longest serving Canadian MP up for re-election today. That honour is held by Louis Plamondon, 81, Canada’s Dean of the House as the MP with the longest unbroken record of service, and his is the longest ever.

But Plamondon represents the Bloc Québécois in Bécancour–Nicolet–Saurel–Alnôbak on the rural South Shore of the St. Lawrence River across from Trois-Rivières, as he has done since 1984. As a Liberal in central Vancouver, Fry’s riding is arguably more vulnerable to changing political fortunes on the national scale, which makes her longevity as the longest serving female Member of Parliament all the more notable. Over the years, she has faced serious challengers from both the left and the right.

Also, Fry is older than Plamondon by about two years, each of which arguably counts for more bragging rights at that age.

What really sets Fry apart, though, is that her parliamentary career started with taking down a prime minister.

Fry was a doctor when she ran against short-lived Progressive Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell in 1993, beating her by 31 per cent of votes to 25, marking the end of Campbell’s time in elected office.

She was named to cabinet in 1996 as minister for multiculturalism and the status of women. She came to the greatest public notice across Canada for inflammatory and false comments in the House of Commons, while speaking in 2001 to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

“We can just go to British Columbia in Prince George, where crosses are being burned on lawns as we speak,” Fry said. That prompted an RCMP denial, general outrage, and an apology delivered in Parliament the next day.

Shuffled out the next year, she never returned to cabinet, but she continued to win the riding in every election, and to serve in lesser roles as parliamentary secretary with various portfolios. In Opposition under the Conservative governments of Stephen Harper, she was critic for Canadian Heritage, later Sport, and after the Liberal Party’s 2011 wipeout, Health.

Fry became the oldest serving MP after winning in 2015, which brought the Liberals back to power under Justin Trudeau, who named her to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. She remains the longest serving woman.

Polls suggest she has a lock on this election too, against competition that includes NDP candidate Avi Lewis, the filmmaker husband of author Naomi Klein and son of the former diplomat Stephen Lewis. Another victory could mean she is in office until approximately age 88.

• Heritage committee chair to ‘gauge’ if MPs want to probe Canada Soccer spying scandal
• Trump tells Canadians to ‘elect the man’ who will let Canada become the 51st state

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OTTAWA — Millions of Canadians are expected to cast a ballot today, capping a 36-day election campaign dominated by threats of annexation and tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump and affordability concerns.

The election has been deemed by

Liberals

,

Conservatives

,

pollsters

,

unions

and even

former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien

as the most consequential vote in a lifetime amid Canada’s trade row with its closest economic ally, the United States.

Polling suggests the campaign is uncommon in that it is largely dominated by only two parties, Mark Carney’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, while smaller parties such as the NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green Party might have

a “catastrophic” election night

.

The final Leger poll of the election suggested Carney’s party (43 per cent) maintained a four-point lead over the Conservatives (39 per cent), a gap that stayed roughly the same throughout the five-week campaign.

“You have two heavyweight political opponents slugging it out. Nobody’s giving an inch, but no one’s getting one either,” Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns told National Post Friday.

In a separate interview on Friday, Leger President Jean-Marc Léger said he had “never seen such a stable campaign” in his lifetime.

“Such a useless campaign is also unprecedented,”

Léger told the Journal de Montréal

, adding that no issue seemed to move the needle as much as Trump’s tariff and annexation threats.

He noted that the unprecedented stability in polling numbers suggested that most voters had already made up their minds before the campaign even started.

The fact the Liberals are perceived frontrunners in the race points to a stunning reversal of fortunes for the party.

Before former prime minister Justin Trudeau resigned in early January, the Conservatives had held a roughly 15 to 20 point lead over the Grits for over one year and many observers believed it a foregone conclusion that Poilievre would be Canada’s next prime minister.

But by the time the election began on March 23, the Carney-led Liberals

had made a “remarkable comeback”

and taken their first polling lead over the Tories since 2023.

Polling stations across the country

will be open for 12 hours

starting at 8:30 a.m. local time in the Atlantic and Central time zones, 9:30 a.m. in the Eastern time zone, 7:30 a.m. in the Mountain time zone and 7 a.m. Pacific time.

If you have not received your voter information card by mail, you can see where to cast a ballot in their riding

on Elections Canada’s website here

. Eligible voters who are not registered can do so at their local polling station.

Elections Canada said on Tuesday that

a record 7.28 million Canadian

s cast a ballot during early voting last weekend, a 25 per cent jump from the same period during the 2021 federal election.

That suggests that this year’s turnout could exceed that of the 2021 federal election, when only 62.6 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballot (down nearly five per cent from the 2019 vote).

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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• ‘Slugging it out’: Liberals up by four points ahead of election, poll finds
• Death toll in Vancouver ‘car ramming attack’ rises to 11 as parties recalibrate campaign plans

U.S. President Donald Trump’s message to Canadians on election day was simple: elect a leader who will surrender Canada’s sovereignty and allow it to become the 51st state.

But other than specifying that voters put a man in power, ruling out the Green Party’s Elizabeth May, Trump didn’t suggest who among the other four major party leaders would be best suited to acquiesce to his annexation desires.

“Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES,” Trump suggested in a Truth Social post Monday morning as polling stations were opening.

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) April 28, 2025

After again remarking on eliminating the “artificially drawn” border, Trump said Canada’s entrance into the union “WAS MEANT TO BE” and regurgitated his vow that the U.S. would no longer financially “subsidize” its northern neighbour.

“It makes no sense unless Canada is a State,” he ended.

Similar rhetoric and his imposition of tariffs on Canadian goods have significantly shaped the election, while also becoming an issue somewhat overshadowing inflation, housing, health care and other traditionally influential election-time topics.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney didn’t have a direct response to the president’s latest barb, but a video pinned to the top of his X profile deals specifically with the Trump threat with the heading: “This is Canada — and we decide what happens here.”

This is Canada — and we decide what happens here. pic.twitter.com/1baJGn7pwv

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) April 28, 2025

The Liberal Party of Canada reposted the same video, along with several others mentioning Trump specifically.

Never mistake our kindness for weakness.

Let’s go to the polls and send President Trump a message.

Vote #CanadaStrongpic.twitter.com/J0dZVrvd71

— Liberal Party (@liberal_party) April 28, 2025

Last week, however, Carney admitted that the president

suggested the 51st state route during their first one-on-one call

, which seemed to contradict the earlier reports that Trump “respected Canada’s sovereignty” in public and private comments.

This came after Trump told TIME magazine he was

“really not trolling”

when it came to talk of annexing Canada.

In response to Trump’s post, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre shot back on X, telling him to “stay out of our election” and reminding him that Canada will remain “sovereign and independent.”

“Today Canadians can vote for change so we can strengthen our country, stand on our own two feet and stand up to America from a position of strength,” he wrote.

President Trump, stay out of our election. The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box.

Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state.

Today Canadians can vote for change so we can strengthen…

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) April 28, 2025

Meanwhile, at Pope Francis’ funeral Saturday, former U.S. president Joe Biden encountered Assembly of First Nations Chief Cincy Woodhouse Nepinak, who was part of the delegation.

In a brief clip, Biden is prompted to comment on Canada’s sovereignty.

“Of course it’s an independent country. It’s a great independent country. If I were to defect, I’m going to Canada,” he said before walking away.

Today is

election day in Canada

. A new federal government will be chosen, but none of the party leaders fought the election he expected.

Jagmeet Singh

of the

NDP

, who for months seemed the main opposition to a looming Conservative majority, is now facing a wipeout in

seat count, even his own. He achieved some policy goals through his deal to prop up the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau through a third term that saw the collapse of its popular support, but he failed to turn that into votes for his own party. With his own seat in jeopardy, it looks grim for Singh’s own future as leader, though not perhaps for his legacy.

Mark Carney

has been toying with the

Liberal Party

for years, and Justin Trudeau’s resignation let him skip to the prime ministership without first winning an election. It could have been a recipe for a disaster of credibility with this politically untested central banker, but Donald Trump’s economic threats quickly transformed Carney from a long running Liberal daydream to the front runner in the polls.

Pierre Poilievre

presented himself and the

Conservative Party

as a government in waiting, led by a slightly prickly but detail oriented policy obsessive who wasn’t in it for the personal affection. His goal was common sense. Their foil was Justin Trudeau, leading a washed up, tired out Liberal Party, weak in his own caucus, and disliked by Canadians in general. But then, the volatility of Donald Trump’s trade war upended that tidy ballot question, and threatened to make this an election on sovereignty. A pivot might have come too late for Poilievre, and his real fight was against a reborn Liberal Party under Mark Carney, an accomplished central banker who managed to flip the narrative.

Read more about the three major party leaders in these profiles of the leaders.

‘They’ve cratered’: For NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh this election is do or die

Under Jagmeet Singh, Canada’s New Democratic Party has successes its leftist supporters can be proud of.

A national dental care program, pharmacare and anti-replacement-worker legislation are all in line with the party’s social democratic vision of governance.

But they came about in a curious way, as the NDP’s policy reward in a tit-for-tat arrangement that kept the governing Liberal party in power well past the end of its popular support.

The supply and confidence deal that gave Liberals control of the parliamentary agenda, supported by NDP votes, did not benefit Singh’s party as much as it could have, political experts say. It dragged on beyond its purpose. It needed a time limit, an earlier exit clause. For the NDP, it looked like all give and no take.

Singh made this deal in 2022 but never fully capitalized on what he had, and now it might be too late, because he has become a “bit player” in this current campaign, said Tamara Small, professor of political science at the University of Guelph, whose research focuses on the use of digital technologies in politics.

“He’s in a tough position,” Small said. “This race is coming down to two parties and there’s really no space for him.”

READ MORE

He saved the Liberal Party from oblivion. But can Mark Carney close the deal?

Now that Donald Trump has won two presidential votes, though he notoriously claims three, it is easy to forget how disorienting the Brexit referendum was to the political and economic establishment, and how similar a shock.

Brexit happened not long before the first Trump win in 2016, and it seemed to announce a new era. It took down a British prime minister who had argued, alongside the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, that leaving the European Union was a terrible idea for the U.K., tantamount to economic self sabotage, ginned up by a chaotic new populism that tugged on modern conservatism from the farther right.

So it fell to Carney, now Canada’s Prime Minister seeking his first election to public office, to use monetary policy to absorb those shocks. And he did. There were recriminations about him being a doomsayer, and accusations of being so unclear on interest rates that he got tagged with the “unreliable boyfriend” nickname in the financial press. But it could have been a lot worse. Doom was dodged.

Canada faces similar economic fears today, and similar imperatives to resolve volatile geopolitics with economic reality. These have transformed Carney from a long-running Liberal daydream to the front runner in the polls.

READ MORE

Why Trudeau’s exit was the worst thing that ever happened to Pierre Poilievre

For a second, Mark Carney didn’t know where to look.

The English language debate had just ended. Carney had to look somewhere, he couldn’t just keep shuffling his papers. To his left, host Steve Paikin was walking toward Yves-François Blanchet to say happy birthday. If Carney turned that way, the final image of the leaders all together before this tight election would be him shaking hands with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

From Carney’s right came a friendly voice. His head swivelled like a bird looking for food. It made for a striking moment, this little formality, and Pierre Poilievre seemed the more natural for initiating it. Carney leapt at the opportunity, leaning in with a smile to talk in his ear, patting him warmly.

It was funny to imagine Poilievre and Justin Trudeau looking like that, after such a long animosity. Trudeau especially would look like he was faking nice, as no doubt he would be.

Other moments like this have humanized Poilievre in the eyes of voters. He has shown off his family and told personal stories, talking about being adopted from a teenaged mother, and about his own young daughter who has special needs. But to emotionally familiarize the man behind the politician never seemed like core strategy for the Conservative Party of Canada.

People don’t swoon over Poilievre. That’s the point. Many Canadians are frankly embarrassed about having once liked Trudeau so much, whose life they had known since his childhood.

So it seemed fine just to be the guy who identifies big problems and proposes workable solutions, a slightly prickly but detail oriented policy obsessive who isn’t in it for the personal affection. It’s an election, not a date. This seemed to be the Conservative attitude, and for a while, it looked to be a winner. Odds are you’re never having that beer with the prime minister anyway, so who cares whether you’d have fun or not. On the other hand, if you elect him, you’ll definitely pay his taxes. This was to be an election about economic priorities and common sense.

READ MORE

• How to vote in Canada’s election today
• Here’s what the Liberal and Conservative election platforms say about defence