Canada election: With the consumer carbon tax officially dead, affordability back in campaign spotlight | CBC (2025)

Mexican-Canadian voter worried about ‘the future for our kids’

Hello from Kingsville and Leamington, two southwestern Ontario towns where I am reporting live today on CBC News Network. These communities are hubs for greenhouse vegetable growers, and I'll have more to report on that later today.

Leamington has a large Mexican community, in part because of farm workers who came to work here and stayed. We popped into Tacos Tony and met owner Maria Hernandez, who immigrated to Canada more than 30 years ago.

While serving tasty tacos and other authentic Mexican dishes last night to both Mexican and Canadian customers, Maria shared what's on her mind during this election.

"The future for our kids. We want all the best for them," said Hernandez, who has four grandchildren. She said a clean environment is also important to her, and was one of the reasons she moved to Leamington from Toronto.

On the trade war with the U.S., Hernandez said Trump is looking out for his country, and Canada has to do the same. She has made up her mind as a voter but kept her choice private.

When I asked two different customers what they want Canada’s leaders to prioritize, they both said affordable housing.

“What happened to the two- or three-bedroom family home for a few hundred thousand dollars, instead of the $800,000 monster homes?” said Hillary Leipold. “Yes, make homes, but make them available to everyone, not just one demographic all the time.”

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Some U.S. senators pushing to block Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods

There’s a bill that could deliver Trump’s trade policy a symbolic black eye — on Canada’s behalf.

It’s Senate Resolution 37, sponsored by Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, and it could be the subject of several hours’ debate and a vote over the next day or two. It would terminate Trump's national-security justification for tariffs on Canada.

It specifically repudiates the rationale involving fentanyl for the set of Trump tariffs that imposed a 25 per cent levy on some products and a 10 per cent levy on energy products.

Kaine said he already has support from three Republicans — Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis — and is close to locking up the necessary votes to pass it.

If it passes, it would be an embarrassing message for Trump to carry into tomorrow's tariff day — a rejection from the Senate, which his party controls.

However, substantively, it might mean very little. The bill will almost certainly not be brought for a vote in the House. Also, Trump could veto it anyway.

Plus, this would only rebuke one set of tariffs. The legislation doesn’t mention Trump’s other tariffs — on steel, aluminum and cars, plus the rest he’s announcing tomorrow.

Still, Kaine said this could create pressure for the president to start backing off.

“I [just] travelled around my state of Virginia, including in Republican parts of the state, and my … constituents are furious about this. They’re pro-Canada. They’re pro-trade with Canada,” he said.

“I think if we get a good, solid bipartisan vote in the Senate, that’s going to be a powerful message to Donald Trump and his economic advisers: you are playing with fire. Don’t raise taxes on Americans on their groceries and building supplies at a time when the economy is softening.”

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The eve of ‘liberation day’

Tomorrow, Trump’s latest round of sweeping tariffs is expected to go into effect — an occasion the U.S. president is calling “liberation day.”

Trump plans to slap a 20 per cent reciprocal tariff on all countries that have imposed retaliatory duties on the U.S. in response to its trade actions. Think of it as tit for tat for tit.

The U.S. administration might also deliver more sectoral-based tariffs that target specific industries — including a tax on imported vehicles that would devastate Ontario’s auto industry.

After a conversation with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Ontario Premier Doug Ford indicated last week that those tariffs might be less severe than initially thought.

But as the world has learned many times over, we won’t really know what’s happening … until something happens. So we’ll be watching closely tomorrow and, in the meantime, we expect that some of the federal leaders will field questions today about the looming April 2 date.

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Conservatives drop Ontario candidate

Mark McKenzie is out as the Conservative candidate in the southwestern Ontario riding of Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore.

A CTV report this week unearthed a 2022 podcast during which McKenzie expressed support for public hangings and jokingly suggested then-prime minister Justin Trudeau should receive the death penalty.

A Conservative party spokesperson said the comments were “clearly unacceptable.”

McKenzie, a local city councillor and former radio personality, was no longer listed as a candidate on the Conservative’s campaign website as of this morning.

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Poilievre checks off oil and gas commitments, literally

Poilievre says he’s committing to five asks from the Canadian oil and gas sector, after a group of industry executives sent a letter to the major federal parties last month calling on them to speed up the approval of new projects.

“This is going to be like jet fuel — no, rocket fuel — to launch our economy above the Americans, and make us truly an economic fortress,” the Conservative leader said.

The sector’s demands: simplify regulations; commit to a six-month deadline for project approvals; scrap the oil and gas emissions cap; repeal the industrial carbon tax; and guarantee loans for Indigenous co-investment.

Poilievre broke out a dry erase marker and white board to show that the Conservatives would commit to checking off each demand (and scrawled a big X in a separate column to suggest that the Liberals wouldn’t).

The oilpatch execs framed their demands as a way to reduce Canada’s dependence on the U.S. and reinvest in the sector. But Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson criticized the letter, saying that rolling back environmental policy will hurt Canadians long-term.

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The latest Poll Tracker update

Here are the latest public polling developments as summed up by Éric Grenier of TheWrit.ca. He is managing the CBC Poll Tracker throughout the campaign.

From Éric:

“The gap between the Liberals and Conservatives continues to grow as the Liberals gain more support from the NDP and Bloc Québécois.

With growing leads in Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, the Liberals would win a big majority government if an election were held today, with all other parties likely to suffer seat losses.”

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Chiang drops out

In case you missed this bit of midnight breaking news: Paul Chiang has officially quit the race.

The Liberal candidate for the Ontario riding of Markham-Unionville, who came under fire for saying that Conservative candidate Joe Tay be turned in to the Chinese consulate in exchange for a bounty, said last night he was stepping aside so as not to distract from other election issues, like U.S. threats against Canada.

Hong Kong police put out a bounty and arrest warrant for Tay — who is running in Don Valley North — and other democracy advocates in December. The bounty is worth $1 million HK, or $184,000 Cdn.

Chiang was widely condemned for the comments about Tay, which were made in January during a Chinese-language news conference.

As calls mounted for Chiang to quit, Liberal Leader Mark Carney called the comments “a terrible lapse of judgment” but said yesterday that the former police officer had apologized and would stay on as a candidate. We’re waiting to hear what he has to say about Chiang’s decision today.

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Anxiety on the eve of Trump’s tariffs announcement

Hi there, I'm on the road for CBC News Network talking to voters ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which are expected to kick in as early as Thursday.

This week I was in Ingersoll, Ont., home to the GM CAMI Assembly auto plant where they make electric vehicle delivery trucks. Nearby Woodstock has a Toyota plant. The auto sector employs a lot of people in the Oxford County area, and they are worried about their jobs.

That's what Brent Tree, president of Unifor Local 88, told me when we stopped by his office this morning. He started working at the CAMI plant more than 30 years ago and has seen his share of ups and downs in the auto sector.

Tree said 79 workers were recently laid off, and his union is bracing for more possible layoffs, depending on the fallout from the U.S. tariffs on the auto sector.

"People are very concerned. They're not sure what to do. They're not sure how permanent their jobs are going to be with the tariff situation," he said.

Tree said he wants to hear commitments from the Canadian government "to make sure that if the tariffs do go into place that we secure our jobs and they do not cross the border.”

Trump and tariffs were a common theme I heard when I was at The Olde Bakery Cafe on Ingersoll's main street, talking to voters about their priorities in this election. Residents like Brenda Jeffrey, a retired teacher, talked about how important the CAMI plant is to the town.

"If CAMI goes down, if there are layoffs, it affects our restaurants, our grocery stores,” she said. “Without our auto workers and our industry, it's going to be pretty bleak."

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‘The famous carbon tax’

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is in St. John’s, N.L., this morning to talk about energy production. But he took a minute to address the elephant in the room: “the famous carbon tax.”

“Up until about two months ago, the Liberals said that if we didn’t have a carbon tax, the whole planet would be lit aflame,” said Poilievre.

Carney signed a directive to remove the carbon levy last month, and it officially took effect today, removing a charge of 17.6 cents a litre on fuel, for example.

“After having this tax in place for seven years, and keeping the carbon tax law on the books as we speak, what they now say is that they’re going to hide the tax from the pump for 28 days leading up to the election,” said Poilievre.

Poilievre claimed the Liberals will “reinstate the full tax” at a higher rate with no rebate after the election is over, and said Carney wants a “bigger” industrial carbon tax on materials like steel, aluminum, potash, cement and concrete.

Carney once supported the carbon tax, but said it had become too divisive to keep in place. As for the industrial carbon tax, the Liberal leader has said he’ll maintain and improve that system, but hasn’t said exactly how.

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Liberals edge out Conservatives on Facebook ad spending

I'm a producer with CBC's fact check team covering the federal election.

Here's what the parties are spending on Facebook ads since the start of the campaign. From March 23-29, data from Facebook's advertising library shows the Liberal Party is just ahead of the Conservative Party in spending.

The total spending for the Liberals — spread over their page and Mark Carney’s page — is $676,647, while the Conservatives have spent $622,129.

The Liberals are also running a much larger variety of ads with more than 5,700 different ads spread across the two pages, while the Conservatives have a library of 758 ads.

After those two parties, Elections Canada is the next biggest advertiser, spending $73,907 on English ads and $19,804 on French ads.

The NDP spent $13,458 with a library of 166 ads while the Green Party spent $8,627 with 214. And while the Bloc Québécois stopped advertising on Facebook in 2023 when Meta decided to block Canadian news as a result of Bill C-18, they have reversed that with a spend of $9,142 and 37 ads in their library.

If you have a fact or statement you want checked, please send it to ask@cbc.ca.

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