Representative Image. / Pexels

The war of attrition for political supremacy is getting murkier with allegations and counter-allegations flying high with each of the main political players trying to woo voters with promises of cutting down the cost of living and making life more affordable.

Led by rookie Marc Carney, the ruling Liberals face an uphill task in countering the well-orchestrated campaign of the main Opposition party, the Conservatives.

After two terms of running minority governments, the Liberals are fighting with their backs to the wall. The change of leadership weeks before the electoral battle may have augured well for Marc Carney and his party. But that alone may not be enough to prevent the Conservatives from achieving their single-point agenda of wresting back the power they lost to Justin Trudeau and his Liberals in 2019.

Though Liberals have been rallying behind Marc Carney, he continues to be the target of all Opposition criticism and attacks. He has been accused of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis. A national daily came out with a startling revelation in this regard.

A report in the National Post has accused him of taking other people’s ideas as his own in the federal election campaign.

“It isn’t new,” the report said.

The newspaper obtained a copy of Carney’s 1995 thesis for his doctorate in economics from Oxford University titled “The Dynamic Advantage of Competition.” It showed 10 instances of apparent plagiarism, according to the judgment of three university academics who reviewed the material.

The newspaper report further says that in several sections of his thesis, Carney used full quotes, paraphrases, or slightly modified quotes from four previous works without proper acknowledgement or attribution.

“He’s just directly repeating without quotations. That’s what we call plagiarism,” said Geoffrey Sigalet, an assistant professor and member of UBC Okanagan president’s advisory committee on student discipline, which handles plagiarism cases for the university.

The National Post provided the 10 examples to Carney’s campaign team. He was sworn in as prime minister on March 14, and is currently running in an election that will be held on April 28.

Marc Carney heaved a sigh of relief as some academicians came to his rescue. “I believe you are mischaracterizing this work. As an academic of nearly 40 years, I see no evidence of plagiarism in the thesis you cited nor any unusual academic practices,” said American economist Margaret Meyer, Official Fellow of Economics at Nuffield College, in the provided statement.

“Mark’s thesis was evaluated and approved by a faculty committee that saw his work for what it is: an impressive and thoroughly researched analysis that set him apart from his peers,” added Meyer.

Besides the plagiarism controversy, power seekers – Liberals and Conservatives – are sparing no opportunity to convince an average Canadian of their policies and programmes through which they promise to make life affordable by cutting down costs of groceries, house rent and taxes.

Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois have been accusing Pierre Poilievre of benefiting from “external” support in his leadership run a couple of years ago. The accusing fingers point towards India. They have been mounting an attack on the Conservative Leader and Prime Ministerial candidate for refusing to go for security checks that enable the national leaders to get confidential security briefings.

One of the major issues facing Canada is its future relationship with its big brother, neighbour and biggest trade partner, the US, besides trying to rein in immigration and making housing affordable.

Excitement of the immigrant communities in general and the Indo-Canadians can be judged from the number of candidates they are putting up for the April 28 polls.

The response of the Indo-Canadian community is massive. Going by the lists of the contestants makes interesting revelations. Of all political parties, the largest number of candidates of Indian origin are being fielded by the Conservatives. It reveals a visible and significant shift from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

Three of the long-standing members of Indian descent who will be missing from the next house are Harjit Singh Sajjan, Arif Virani (both were Cabinet Ministers in Justin Trudeau’s government) and Chandra Arya, an ardent supporter of India.

While Harjit Singh Sajjan and Arif Virani decided to give a miss to the next election, the candidacy of Chandra Arya was revoked by the Liberal Party. Earlier, his candidature for the leadership race, too, was rejected.