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Will Canadians vote to end minority rule?
Within hours of the end of polling, counting of votes and trends will start pouring in.
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Prabhjot Paul Singh - Sun, 27, Apr 2025
- 22:52 EDT
- 179
Representative Image. / Pexels
Nearly 20 percent of the total eligible Canadians have already exercised their right to franchise even before the actual voting day. The rest will vote on Apr.28. Within hours of the end of polling, counting of votes and trends will start pouring in.
According to Elections Canada, more than seven million voters took advantage of the advanced polling. There are 1969 candidates in the run for the 343 electoral districts. For a majority in the 45th House of Commons, a party will need 172 seats.
Going by the pre polls survey, the ruling Liberals under a new leader, Mark Carney, enjoy a clear edge over the main Opposition Party, the Conservatives. Until the end of the last Calendar year, Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre, were well ahead of all other parties.
But a master stroke played by Justin Trudeau to quit both the Liberal Party leadership as well as the office of the Prime Minister, turned the tables. The Liberals brought in a banking wizard, Mark Carney, as its new leader, who instead of facing the House of Commons, recommended to the Governor-General to dissolve the House and order a snap poll, ahead of the scheduled October polls.
Mark Carney has no experience in electoral politics. He took command of the party when it was torn by internal strife because of growing dissent against Justin Trudeau. The crisis was aggravated further by an aggressive tariff war launched by US President Donald Trump at the start of his second term in office on January 20.
The Canadians will now make a choice about their leader who can take the US President heads on. Canada and USA have strong trade and people-to-people relations.
Canada also has serious problems with two of the Asian powers – China and India – over the sensitive issue of “foreign interference”. Chinese and Indian communities wield a big political clout in Canadian politics.
For example, there is a record number of nearly one hundred candidates of East Indian origin in the run for the Monday polls. They represent all major political parties – Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, Peoples’ Party, Green Party, Marxist-Leninist Party, and Independents. They include 18 of 21 members of the community who sat in the 44th House of Parliament. Two former MPs are also back in the fray.
The Prime Ministerial candidate of the Liberal Party, Mark Carney, is contesting from Nepean riding in the country’s capital, Ottawa. He opted for a ride from where the sitting MP, Chandra Arya, saw his candidature being revoked at the last minute. Mark Carney is still being opposed by Barbara Bal of the Conservatives and Shyam Shukla of the NDP.
In Brampton South, where sitting MP, Sonia Sidhu, is seeking re-election, all candidates opposing her are also of East Indian descent.
Going by the overwhelming response to the advanced polling, the Monday poll may witness a moderate to heavy polling in most of the ridings as both Liberals and Conservatives are taking no chances.
Interestingly, some of the parties, including the Conservatives, came out with their Document we call the Election Manifesto in India, just a day before the final day of polling, indicating that voters did not even wait for the parties to announce their policies and programmes before exercising their right to vote in advance.
How many East Indians form a part of the 45th House of Commons will be known by late Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. Till then, the Canadians are keeping their fingers crossed hoping problems facing the nation to elect a majority government for stability and finding solutions to its vexed problems.
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