Trump and tariffs are (kind of) on the ballot today in Canada. Here’s how the race is shaping up in the district north of Spokane
NELSON, B.C. – Voters across Canada go to the polls Monday in what some are calling a referendum on U.S. President Donald Trump.
The center-left Liberal Party of Canada had fallen in popularity under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but the party has resurged in the polls since Trump was elected and began referring to the Commonwealth nation as the 51st state and launched a trade war.
The parties agree tariffs are bad for Canada, but propose different visions for the way forward.
Projections favor the Liberals to win a majority of seats in Parliament, but recent polls show their margins tightening.
In British Columbia, a recent collapse of the progressive New Democratic Party is expected to help the Liberal vote. Even in the safely Conservative southeast, projections by 338Canada and Smart Voting show the Liberals overtaking the New Democrats in the Columbia-Kootenay-Southern Rockies riding (similar to a U.S. district), which borders Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alberta.
For the last election in 2021, the Conservatives won the riding with 43.6% of the vote, the New Democrats had 36.6% and the Liberals had just 9%. Even with a redrawn map that includes New Democrat-leaning Trail, those projections are flipped this year with the Liberals expected to outperform the New Democrats by a similar margin, but the center-right Conservative Party is still expected to win the majority.
Conservative incumbent Member of Parliament Rob Morrison, who was first elected in 2019, said he is concerned about tariffs, but it’s not his top issue. Rather, he sees it as part of a larger problem of affordability and inflation.
“Affordability was already a big problem, especially cost of housing,” Morrison said at a campaign barbecue Wednesday in Salmo, British Columbia, a town 15 miles north of the border of Pend Oreille County, Washington. “Our biggest issue here is people just want to have more money in their pocket to be able to afford to feed their kids.”
Like most Canadians of any political persuasion, Morrison is baffled why Trump picked a fight with his closest ally seemingly unprovoked. He says the best way to deal with it is to put a Conservative government in control to send a delegation to Washington, D.C., to work out a proper negotiation. But even if they come to an agreement, Morrison acknowledges, there’s still doubt whether Trump would honor it. After all, the two countries already had a free-trade agreement, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, which Trump signed during his first term.
“It’s not good for either side,” Morrison said. He lives in Creston, about 5 miles north of the Idaho border, and says it’s hurting small businesses the most. While Canada negotiates, it should expand to other markets overseas.
Morrison said the “51st state” epithet is insulting, but not a serious threat.
“I’m not afraid that he will bring a tank up to the border,” Morrison said. “I’m not worried about that at all. That’s not going to happen.”
Allan Muus, a Morrison supporter and Creston resident, said the government has overstepped the past 10 years under Trudeau.
“Trump, what he’s doing right now, is he’s flexing his muscles, throwing a bit of a stick into the world economy,” Muus said. “I think the 51st state comment was to wake us up. It’s not a nice comment, but in a way it woke us up.”
Morrison’s Liberal opponent, Reggie Goldsbury, agrees Trump has been a wake-up call, but he takes the threat against Canada’s sovereignty more seriously.
“It’s not just the threat of tariffs and the economic uncertainty that’s ahead,” Goldsbury said during an interview in Trail. “It’s how the threats of annexation have really driven this movement that we have in Canada.”
The former owner of a restaurant in Balfour who now works in the social investment office for the Ktunaxa Nation Council in Cranbrook, Goldsbury said Canada cannot be absorbed into the U.S. and stay the same.
The country is more of a mosaic than a melting pot, and its cultures, ways of life and institutions must be preserved.
“Canadians have pride in that we haven’t melted to become American,” Goldsbury said.
Mark Carney, the Liberal prime minister, is the right person at the right time to lead the country through the crisis, Goldsbury said. Carney is an economist and central banker who helped manage Canada’s response to the 2008 recession, and he has already taken important actions in his first six weeks in office by countering the U.S. tariffs.
“With the tariffs that are coming from the United States, it’s making us re-evaluate how we do trade and how we’re going diversify because we have to stand strong against the threats of annexation.”
Goldsbury said it makes no sense to fight an external trade war without growing trade within Canada by bringing down cumbersome trade barriers between provinces.
“We have free -trade agreements across many countries in the world,” Goldsbury said. “However, we don’t have free -trade agreements with provinces.”
Goldsbury’s mother and campaign manager, Robin Goldsbury, who ran as the Liberal candidate in 2019 and 2021, said she has been encouraged by a shift on the ground as Canadians unite against the tariffs.
“Canadians recognize this isn’t most Americans,” Robin Goldsbury said. “But people in Canada are really worried. It makes me sad because we have been allies and friends. But we have to look out for ourselves. Not that we want to, but we are forced to.”