Canadian voters cast their ballots yesterday to decide whether to extend Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s near-decade in power or return Canada to its more liberal roots. Harper is trailing Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, the son of late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in the polls.
Pierre Trudeau led Canada for almost all of a 16-year stretch from 1968 to 1984 and is a storied name in Canadian history. He is responsible for the country’s bill of rights and open door to immigration.
Harper got into politics to destroy Pierre Trudeau’s legacy and is seeking a rare fourth term in the hopes of safeguarding his goal of shattering Canada’s reputation as a liberal haven.
“We have a chance to bring real change to Canada and bring an end to the Harper decade,” Justin Trudeau said in Harper’s adopted home province of Alberta, traditionally a Conservative stronghold.
Trudeau, 43, ran an optimistic campaign and appears to have overcome relentless attack ads. In the final days of the campaign, he visited districts where the Liberals traditionally have not won, but now have a chance to win.
Harper, 56, ran a divisive campaign that played on fears of the Muslim face veil. He visited districts he won in the 2011 election in an attempt to hang onto them.
The Liberals lead the Conservatives by almost 9 percentage points.
According to the CTV/Globe and Mail/Nanos Nightly Tracking Poll, the Liberals are at 39.1 percent, followed by the Conservatives at 30.5 percent, while the New Democrats are at 19.7 percent. The margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.
A minority government in the 338-seat parliament appears likely no matter which party wins the most seats. That would mean the winning party would have a shaky hold on power.
Harper said he would step down as Conservative leader if his party loses.
If the Liberals win the most seats, they are expected to rely on the New Democrats for support on a bill-by-bill basis.
If the Conservatives win the most, the Liberals and New Democrats say they would defeat them in a vote in parliament, raising the possibility of a coalition.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS