With an election on the horizon, Poilievre's Conservatives sign up dozens of new candidates
CBC
The next federal election could be more than a year away but political parties are already deep into planning their next campaigns — and recruiting new candidates.
Well ahead in the polls and reporting record-breaking sums in political donations, the Conservatives are also leading the pack on nominating candidates new to federal politics.
To date, the Conservative Party of Canada has nominated about 40 new faces as candidates. The party currently has 118 members of Parliament.
Elections Canada records, coupled with publicly available information, show the Conservatives have been naming new candidates almost every week since the beginning of the year, especially in Ontario and British Columbia.
The newly-recruited Conservative candidates include:
Other new Conservative nominees include a former provincial Progressive Conservative leader, the former mayor of Trois-Rivières and a British Columbia MLA.
Pollster Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said being able to attract new candidates is a sign of the Conservative Party's political momentum.
"When you've got a 20-point gap in terms of polling across a number of different polls, there's one party that looks like it's got that momentum," she said.
It's not clear how many current Conservative MPs are reoffering, or how many have been nominated already. A handful of Conservative MPs — including Colin Carrie, Ed Fast, Ron Liepert and Gary Vidal — have said they're not reoffering.
The party came in for criticism last week when a former journalist dropped out of the race for the nomination in Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, claiming the process had been "corrupted." The party has rejected Sabrina Maddeaux's claim.
The Conservative Party did not respond to a request for comment about their nomination process.
Liberal Party spokesperson Parker Lund provided a list of 88 nominees for the next federal election. So far, all of the nominees are current members of Parliament.
Most of the Liberal cabinet, including Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, are on the list to reoffer.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not yet nominated in his longtime Montreal riding of Papineau.
An ongoing debate in the House of Commons could push some government departments into a cash crunch and run up against other deadlines as the end of the fall sitting approaches.
Celebrity chef Vikram Vij is partnering with a Toronto charity to help raise funds for cash-strapped food banks.
The federal government did not meet the targets for its program to plant two billion trees during the program's third planting season.
Governments in Canada, the U.S. and abroad along with tech giants are all eyeing nuclear power to meet a growing demand for electricity and climate goals at the same time.
Allison McCabe's own story of medical dismissal began last August with a trip to an emergency room in Vancouver.
The leader of Canada's Green Party had some strong words for Nova Scotia's Progressive Conservatives while joining her provincial counterpart on the campaign trail. Elizabeth May was in Halifax Saturday to support the Nova Scotia Green Party in the final days of the provincial election campaign. She criticized PC Leader Tim Houston for calling a snap election this fall after the Tories passed legislation in 2021 that gave Nova Scotia fixed election dates every four years.
Manitoba business owners are gearing up for a temporary federal tax break this holiday season, and while some welcome it, others worry about its timing and the amount of work it will require.
A 36-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly trying to set a fire outside Vancouver City Hall late Friday night, police say.
Calgary city council reversed its decision to close the Inglewood Aquatic Centre Friday.
The Vancouver Police Board says its vice-chair has resigned following statements she posted to social media that were inconsistent with its code of conduct.
Hundreds of people showed up outside Queens Park Saturday afternoon to push back against the Ford government's controversial bike lane bill that would remove certain Toronto bike lanes to help address congestion.