If you doubted the old chestnut that politics can be a “fickle business,” the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, would like to have a word.
For several happy months, a succession of polls confirmed that Poilievre appeared poised to become the country’s next prime minister with a staggering plurality to boot.
Impatient voters had, on the whole, soured on Canada’s spent prime minister, Justin Trudeau, worried about the ever-rising costs of living, from groceries to homes.
Poilievre and his shadow cabinet exploited the prevailing zeitgeist and seemed destined to wrest power from an exhausted Liberal Party that faced a blunt and bracing political reckoning.
Then, Donald Trump returned to the White House, threatening to turn Canada into the fractured union’s 51st state.
The political terrain and stakes shifted like a sudden, disorienting earthquake. Fretting Liberals capitalised on the opening by ditching Trudeau and electing a new leader, former banker Mark Carney as a “serious” antidote to Trump.
With election day on the horizon, Liberal fortunes have made a stunning volte-face. Once trailing far behind like a wounded racehorse limping to the finish line, the party has edged slightly ahead.
But Carney and cocksure company should remember that other old chestnut that, beyond taxes, there are no guarantees in life or politics.
Some polls reveal a tightening contest, with one having Conservatives retaking the lead.
And while the subject dominating the short campaign has been the existential danger that a former continental confederate poses to Canada’s sovereignty, for many concerned Canadians, the state-sponsored genocide devouring Palestine and Palestinians with such ruthless and inhumane efficiency is the defining issue of these awful times.
Those same concerned and motivated Canadians have made it plain that genocide is on the ballot and Canada’s established political parties are obliged to take note, or they will suffer the inevitable and harsh consequences.
Last week in Ottawa, scores of Canadians demonstrated their resolve to hold Canada’s political leaders to stiff account if they continue to deny that Israel is guilty of genocide and refuse to put tangible pressure on Tel Aviv to end the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“We are here in Ottawa,” a concerned Canadian said, “to demand a two-way arms embargo … and to say to all politicians that if you do not endorse a two-way arms embargo, you will not get a single vote from any of our communities.”
That concerned Canadian is, of course, not alone.
They have been joined by thousands of like-minded Canadians who have invested time, money and energy to mobilise Arab and Muslim voters throughout Canada to exercise their agency and franchise on April 28 in solidarity with their besieged brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Large nationwide and energised grassroots movements, including #ElectPalestine, MuslimsVote and Vote Palestine, are seized with the overarching imperative to fix the fate of Palestine and Palestinians at the epicentre of Canada’s political dialogue.
Their “voices” must finally be heard and attended to.
The predictable cultural condescension – quick, election-time visits to mosques and cliche-ridden rhetoric meant to convey tissue-thin “sympathy” for the “sad” plight of Palestinians – has lost what remained of its vacuous currency.
Instead, powerful constituencies are demanding that Canada’s “major” political parties recalibrate fundamentally and unequivocally their longstanding backing for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – an indicted war criminal – and reject outright his oft-repeated, and international law-desecrating aim to reduce Palestine to dust and memory.
The crusade gathering momentum in Canada is reminiscent of the “Uncommitted” cause engineered by Arab and Muslim citizens during the 2024 US presidential election, who warned the Democratic Party and its standard bearer, Kamala Harris, that they risked losing votes in crucial swing states by continuing to arm and offer diplomatic cover to Netanyahu.
Harris failed to heed the urgent alarm and, as a result, forfeited the presidency to mollify Israel, its evangelical supporters in the United States and Netanyahu’s grotesque strategic aims.
Her reward?
An emboldened Netanyahu has embraced Trump like a brother-in-genocidal-arms.
The Democratic Party may or may not have learned an instructive lesson that may or may not influence its slavish Israel-coddling in 2028.
We will, in due course, see.
Meanwhile, Carney and Poilievre have been busy mimicking Harris’s scoffing at the pressing preoccupations of Arab and Muslim voters and their allies among the broader Canadian public.
Poilievre is a crude, irredeemable honorary Zionist zealot, describing mass pro-Palestinian protests as “hate marches”.
For his cavalier part, Carney was confronted at a rally in Ontario earlier this month by a concerned Canadian who asked the prime minister, “Why are you sending weapons to Israel via the US to kill our families?”
Carney’s response: silence.
The prime minister and his handlers ought to know that Arab and Muslim Canadians will play a decisive role in the election outcome and could determine whether or not the new parliament features a majority government.
Arab and Muslim voters make up a sizeable part of the electorate in 90 ridings – electoral districts – across Canada, and, of that figure, could tip the scales in more than 40 seats.
As a career-long numbers man, Carney surely understands that dismissing or alienating that many Canadians, in that many ridings, only invites disappointment and possible peril.
A recent public opinion poll commissioned by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) offers Carney a template for how he can win over Canadians who intend to vote with Gaza and the West Bank top of their minds and souls.
More than half of Canadians support a ban on weapons exports to Israel. Even more tellingly, almost 50 percent want that ban expanded into a full-blown, two-way embargo.
These are not trivial findings. They represent a clear, growing consensus among Canadians who are tired of moral evasions from their leaders.
So far, Carney has been content to hedge and adopt Canada’s so-called “balanced” approach. But hedging will no longer suffice; nor will calculated complicity.
Muslim and Arab voters have watched in despair as Canada’s political elites, through their silence and inaction, subscribed to the humanitarian catastrophe being waged against innocents in the shattered remnants of Palestine.
Today, 56 percent of Canadians say that Canada should recognise the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – and 70 percent of Liberal voters agree.
Carney needs to do much more than endorse the loophole-laden arms embargo that Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced in March.
If he is serious about justice, Carney has to support a two-way ban, stand with and by the ICC, and insist that Canada will not be a haven for alleged war criminals.
Anything less, and Carney will have treated Arab and Muslim Canadians with the signature disdain of his predecessors – even when the polling, for once, is squarely on their side.
Carney still has time to do the right thing, at the right moment, for the right reasons.
I suspect that the prime minister will squander the opportunity. Mark Carney is bound, like Kamala Harris, to pay a lasting and stinging price.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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