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PM Trudeau to meet Canada’s governor general seeking call for snap polls
Justin Trudeau holds a lead in the latest opinion surveys, and is pushing for early elections in a bid to convert his minority Liberal Party government into a majority one
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to meet the country’s governor general Mary Simon on Sunday evening, India time, which is likely to lead to the announcement of snap polls. Those elections are likely to be held on September 20.
Trudeau holds a lead in the latest opinion surveys, and is pushing for snap elections in a bid to convert his minority Liberal Party government into a majority one.
At the scheduled meeting at Rideau Hall, the governor general’s official residence, Simon is expected to accept Trudeau’s recommendation to dissolve the House of Commons and call for fresh elections, a process called “dropping the writ” in Canadian electoral parlance.
The snap polls will take place despite Canada seeing the start of a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic with major parties opposing national polls under such circumstances.
The final results may not be available on night of the polling as Elections Canada is expecting the voting to involve as many as five million mail-in ballots due to the pandemic situation – up from 50,000 during the last general elections in 2019.
Elections Canada has already warned that the counting may take between two to five days.
The Trudeau-led Liberal Party government is in a minority in the House of Commons with 155 MPs as against 119 for the principal opposition party, the Conservatives.
At the 2019 national elections, the Liberals had captured 157 seats, short of the 170 majority mark, and also trailed the Conservatives in vote share, with 31.1% against 34.3%.
With Covid-19 cases on the rise, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam cautioned that the latest national seven-day moving average of 1,609 new infections reported between August 6 and 12 marked an increase of 70% over the previous week.
“Following the recent rise in cases, we are now seeing early signs of increases in severity trends,” she said.
