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    Alberta’s Conservatives Retain Power Behind Hard-Right Leader

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    But the United Conservative Party will hold substantially fewer seats in the legislature, in an apparent rebuff of the politics of its outspoken leader.Voters in Alberta, the oil-rich western province that is a bastion of conservatism in Canada, kept its conservative government in power on Monday but substantially reduced the number of seats it holds in the legislature, data from Canada’s national broadcaster indicated.The result, while a win for conservatives, is likely to be seen as a rebuff of the politics of Danielle Smith, the hard-right leader of the United Conservative Party who has been Alberta’s premier for seven months. Ms. Smith came to power after the party effectively rejected a more moderate conservative, Jason Kenney, as premier over his refusal to end pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates.That revolt, led by a socially conservative wing of the party, reflected the anger in Canada that also led to the formation of a truckers’ convoy that paralyzed Ottawa, the national capital, for nearly a month.The views of Ms. Smith, a former radio talk show host and newspaper columnist who previously led another conservative party, are firmly aligned with that faction. She has declared that the unvaccinated were the “most discriminated-against group” she’d seen in her lifetime and suggested that police officers who enforced pandemic measures had committed crimes. In May, a video surfaced of her likening people who chose to be vaccinated to Germans who came to support Hitler.She has previously stated that politicians on the right in the United States were her political models and floated ideas, like fees for services in public health care, that enjoy little support across the political spectrum.United Conservative Party supporters at an election night party in Calgary, Alberta, on Monday.Todd Korol/ReutersThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation projected early Tuesday morning that Ms. Smith and the United Conservatives would be returned to power. But the broadcaster’s data also showed that the party was leading or had been elected in just 52 electoral constituencies, down from the 63 it held before the vote. Unless the final number of seats turns out to be substantially higher, it will be the slimmest margin of victory in Alberta’s history.Many political analysts said before election night that the conservatives would have won overwhelmingly under Mr. Kenney or another more moderate leader.In a victory speech, Ms. Smith said her first act when the legislature reconvenes would be to introduce a law requiring that any future personal or business tax increases be approved by voters in a referendum, suggesting that it would make the province more attractive to investors.“We are throwing our doors wide open for businesses, large and small,” she said.She went on to reject planned federal limits on the energy industry’s carbon emissions, saying that they would not be “inflicted” on the province.As anticipated, the United Conservatives were strongest in rural areas. The New Democratic Party, led by Rachel Notley, a lawyer and former premier, had a strong showing in Edmonton, the provincial capital and one of the most left-leaning parts of the province, as well as Calgary, the largest city, which generally supports the conservatives.Rachel Notley, the New Democratic Party leader, said that despite her party’s campaign shortcomings, she would continue to lead it.Amber Bracken/ReutersAs of early Tuesday, the New Democrats, a left-of-center party co-founded by organized labor, had been elected or were leading in 35 electoral districts, a gain of 11 seats.Ms. Smith’s victory will be a challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. One of her first acts as premier was to introduce legislation that she said would allow the province to refuse to enforce federal laws, a measure that many legal experts believe to be unconstitutional.Under the United Conservatives, the future of the province’s carbon tax, which is deeply unpopular with the right, and other climate change measures may be in jeopardy. When the New Democrats held power in Alberta from 2015 to 2019, after an unprecedented victory that resulted from a fracturing of the conservatives into two parties, Ms. Notley agreed to introduce carbon taxes in exchange for Mr. Trudeau’s government purchasing an oil pipeline to the Pacific Coast to ensure its expansion.Canada’s oil and gas production, which is largely based in Alberta, accounts for 28 percent of the country’s carbon emissions.Mr. Trudeau has said that the federal government will enact caps on the sector’s emissions. Ms. Smith, on Tuesday morning, called the plan a “de facto cap on production” and promised to block the measure.The trucker protest in Ottawa last year. The views of Ms. Smith are aligned with the socially conservative wing of her party that sympathized with the protest.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThe New Democratic Party’s win in 2015 broke a string of conservative governments in Alberta dating to the Great Depression. But Ms. Notley’s victory coincided with a collapse in oil prices that cratered the province’s economy, sending the party’s approval ratings spiraling.On Tuesday morning, Ms. Notley said she accepted responsibility for the party’s campaign shortcomings but said that she would continue as its leader.“Although we did not achieve the result we wanted, we did achieve a major step toward it,” she told supporters. More

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      Alberta’s Vote Will Test American-Style Far-Right Politics

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      An election in Alberta will be a test of a premier who has said that she models her politics after those of prominent right-wing U.S. politicians.The NewsVoters in Alberta, the epicenter of conservative politics in Canada, will select a new provincial government on Monday. Albertans will vote for local representatives in the provincial legislature and the party that wins the most seats will form the government, with its leader becoming premier. The election pits the United Conservative Party, led by the current premier, Danielle Smith, against a leftist party, the New Democratic Party, led by Rachel Notley, a lawyer. Before the pandemic, the governing United Conservative Party appeared to have a firm hold on power. But last year, large and angry demonstrations against pandemic restrictions and against vaccine mandates helped spark a trucker convoy in the province that eventually spread, paralyzing Ottawa, Canada’s capital, and blocking vital cross-border crossings.A small group of social conservatives within the United Conservatives ousted their leader, Jason Kenney, ending his premiership, after the government refused to lift pandemic measures. The party replaced him with Ms. Smith, a far-right former radio talk show host and newspaper columnist prone to incendiary comments; she compared people who were vaccinated against Covid-19 to supporters of Hitler. Danielle Smith, the leader of the United Conservative Party, while campaigning this month in Calgary.Amber Bracken for The New York TimesThe BackgroundMs. Smith likes to extol right-wing U.S. politicians, for example, calling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican running for president, her hero. She also has floated ideas that most Canadians would never support, like charging fees for public health care.Ms. Smith now finds herself, analysts say, far to the right of many conservative loyalists, turning what should been a near-certain victory for her party into a close race that has provided an opening for their opponents, the New Democratic Party, a leftist party.“This would not be a close race if anyone other than Danielle Smith was leading the U.C.P.,” said Janet Brown, who runs a polling firm based in Calgary, Alberta’s largest city. Ms. Notley is seeking to steer the labor-backed New Democrats to a second upset victory in the province in recent years. In 2015, she led the New Democrats to power for the first time in Alberta’s history, thanks in part to a fracturing of the conservative movement into two feuding parties. The stunning win broke a string of conservative governments dating to the Great Depression. But her victory coincided with a collapse in oil prices that cratered the province’s economy. Ms. Notley’s approval ratings plunged and the United Conservatives took over in 2019.Ms. Smith’s support is largely based in the province’s rural areas, surveys show, while Ms. Notley’s path to victory on Tuesday will likely be through Alberta’s urban centers, including its two largest cities, Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton, the provincial capital and a city with a large union presence, is likely to back the New Democrats. That could make Calgary, which is generally more conservative leaning, a deciding factor. Calgary also has a growing ethnic population, particularly immigrants from South Asia, and Ms. Smith’s is unpopular with many of those voters because of some of her extreme statements.Why It MattersIf Ms. Smith’s brand of conservatism fails to return her party to office in Canada’s most conservative province, the federal Conservative Party of Canada may need to reconsider its strategy as it prepares to take on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party in the next national elections. The federal conservatives also replaced the party’s leader during the pandemic with a combative right-wing politician, Pierre Poilievre, who welcomed truck convoy protesters to Ottawa, the capital, with coffee and doughnuts. Mr. Poilievre shares Ms. Smith’s penchant for promoting provocative positions.Even a narrow victory for Ms. Smith could actually be a loss, if it means fewer conservative seats in the provincial legislature, said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary. In that scenario, Ms. Smith could find her position as premier and party leader tenuous and many of the policies she promotes could be cast aside, he said. “If she loses, she’s gone,” he said. “If she wins, I think she’s still gone.” More

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      Alberta Election Tests Conservatives’ Far-Right Shift

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      The pandemic took the conservative party in the oil-rich province of Alberta far to the right. An election on Monday will test if voters, traditionally among Canada’s most conservative, will follow.Sitting at a cafe terrace overlooking a park commemorating the birthplace of the vast oil industry in the western Canadian province of Alberta, Audrey Cerkvenac and Ernestine Dumont, wrestled with a political dilemma.In a province long the epicenter of Canada’s conservative politics, the two older women had been unwavering conservative supporters.But now, as Monday’s provincial election approached, they said they had been turned off by the strident right turn the province’s conservative party had taken as it ruled Alberta during the pandemic, fueled by extremist protests against Covid restrictions and baseless claims about vaccines.The hard-right turn of the United Conservative Party has put a province that was once a sure win for Canada’s conservatives up for grabs in Monday’s elections. Beyond a referendum on the ideological shift of the party, the vote could also serve as a gauge of the conservative standing nationwide.Led by someone who compared people vaccinated against Covid-19 to Nazi supporters, Alberta’s conservative party has moved so far right since the pandemic that it has created an opening for the left-leaning New Democratic Party to win control of the province. A conservative loss in Alberta would deal a blow to the political viability of Canada’s far right.“The pandemic has allowed a radical, right wing group to develop” here, said Ms. Cerkvenac, a retired health care administrator, who like Ms. Dumont, said she would probably deface her ballot to void it. “I have to do what I can to try and stop this.’’Anger over pandemic rules, especially vaccine mandates for cross border travel, gave birth to trucker convoys in Alberta that spread east, eventually paralyzing Canada’s capital for nearly a month and closing border crossings.Police officers began to make arrests at a trucker protest in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, in February 2022. The protest had paralyzed the city for nearly a month. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThe fury also upended the political landscape, paving the way for a small, socially conservative faction of the United Conservative Party to install the current premier and party leader, Danielle Smith, 52, a far-right former newspaper columnist and radio talk show host.After becoming premier last October, she declared that the unvaccinated were the “most discriminated against group” she’d seen in her lifetime and, in May, a video surfaced of her likening people who chose to be vaccinated to followers of Hitler.In a province with a large and longstanding Ukrainian community, she suggested that some parts of Ukraine may “feel more affinity to Russia” and should separate. One of her first legislative acts was to sign a law she claimed would allow Alberta to ignore federal laws.And Ms. Smith broke ethics laws to intervene on behalf of a prominent protester who was facing prosecution. Last week, the province’s ethics commissioner found that she broke conflict of interest laws when she spoke with her attorney general on behalf of a pastor facing criminal charges for inciting a border blockade as part of the protests.Danielle Smith, the leader of the United Conservative Party, during a campaign event in Calgary.“When you look at public opinion data from pre-Covid, during Covid and whatever this period is now; there is something different in the water in Alberta from a cultural-political perspective,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, the province’s largest city.That difference may also surface during the next federal elections.Canada’s conservatives will challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party in elections that must be held by October 2025.The federal Conservative Party also replaced its leader during the pandemic with a combative right-wing politician, Pierre Poilievre, who welcomed truck convoy protesters to Ottawa, the capital, with coffee and doughnuts and who shares Ms. Smith’s tendency for provocative rhetoric.On Monday, Alberta’s voters have a stark choice between the United Conservatives and the New Democrats, or N.D.P., which held power in Alberta from 2015 to 2019.A pumpjack, farmland and mountains near Longview, Alberta. While Calgary is contested, Alberta’s rural areas are more likely to vote for the United Conservative Party.The N.D.P. gained power then from conservatives, who had run Alberta from 1935 to 2015, by taking advantage of divisions among conservatives to narrowly win a stunning victory. They installed Rachel Notley, a lawyer for labor groups, but her approval ratings sank as oil prices plunged, decimating the province’s budget. The party lost power in 2019.Ms. Notley, 59, is representing the N.D.P. again in this election. During campaign stops, she portrays Ms. Smith as unpredictable and promoting ideas most voters would reject, like selling public hospitals to a for-profit business or making patients pay fees for public hospitals — both considered politically toxic in Canada.“This election is about leadership and it’s about trust,” Ms. Notley said at a campaign rally in Calgary. “Albertans don’t have a high level of trust that they can count on her to protect our health care. ”Ms. Notley said she plans to expand transit lines, and build new schools and hospitals.Rachel Notley, the leader of the New Democrats, speaking at a campaign rally in Calgary.For her part, Ms. Smith warns voters that Ms. Notley’s party is bent on embarking on a spending spree that would inevitably lead to higher taxes.Ms. Smith promises crime reduction and tax cuts. She also looks to the United States to define her conservative values, calling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who just announced his entry into the Republican presidential primary, “my hero.”During a debate between the two party’s leaders, Ms. Smith sought to focus on Ms. Notley’s performance as premier.“Ms. Notley likes to show grainy videos of things I said while I was on radio and the reason she does that is she doesn’t want to run on her record,” Ms. Smith said. “And the reason she doesn’t want to run on her record is it was an absolute disaster.”Calgary is among the urban areas of Alberta where support for the New Democratic Party is heavily concentrated though it is unclear if it can offset conservative votes in rural regions.To become the premier again, Ms. Notley would need to see her party win the most seats on Monday. Her hopes hinge largely on how well her party will perform in Calgary, which historically has been a fickle base of support for the left, according to Janet Brown, the head of a Calgary-based polling firm. The New Democrats are already solidly ahead in Edmonton, the provincial capital, and one of their traditional bases of support, according to surveys.“I’m not discounting any possible outcome,” she said.One deciding factor, she said, may be the large and rapidly growing ethnic communities in Calgary.At a sprawling community center in a Calgary neighborhood home to many South Asian immigrants, Rishi Nagar, the host of a local Punjabi language morning radio show, said the United Conservatives had already alienated many South Asian voters before Ms. Smith became leader.Rishi Nagar, the host of a radio show, said the United Conservatives have alienated many South Asian voters.Her predecessor, Jason Kenney, appeared on his program and suggested that the high rates of Covid infections in South Asian communities was the result of their failure to abide by public health restrictions, even though Mr. Nagar and other community leaders pointed out that they worked jobs that exposed them to the virus.“We are the people sitting at the cash counters of the grocery stores,’’ he said. “We are the people driving taxis. We are the people driving buses. Don’t you think this is the reason of the spread?”He said many South Asians voters trust Ms. Notley to provide more funding for schools and health care even if her party is further to the left than many of them are. Voters may not embrace her party, “but people like Rachel Notley,” he said. “People do not like Danielle Smith.”Members of the South Asian community at a community center in Calgary. The city’s growing ethnic communities could play a key role in Monday’s election.Ms. Smith still has support in rural regions of Alberta.At a junior high school event on the rodeo grounds in High River, Alberta, Ms. Smith’s hometown, Frank McInenly, a retired auctioneer, said he had little use for public health measures and was only vaccinated so he could vacation in the United States.“The whole Covid thing with these people walking around these masks on, how dumb was that?” he said.While Mr. McInenly will go on at some length about what he views as Ms. Notley’s shortcomings, he’s less than enthusiastic about Ms. Smith.“She’s OK,” he said.More than anything, Mr. McInenly’s vote reflects his desire to keep the New Democrats out of power. “It’s really scary,” he said. “Because if the N.D.P. get back in, we’re done.”Dylan Zakariasen, 3, leading a horse with Colton Zakariasen, 11, as their mother, Robyn Zakariasen, watched at a junior high school rodeo in High River, Alberta, Ms. Smith’s hometown. More

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      Alberta Fires Rage While Election Ignores Global Warming

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      For politicians, discussing climate change in a province enriched by oil money is fraught.When I arrived in Alberta recently to report an upcoming political story, there was no shortage of people wanting to talk about politics and the provincial election on May 29. But, even as wildfires flared earlier than usual and raged across an unusually wide swath of forest, discussions about climate change were largely absent.Destruction left behind by wildfires in Drayton Valley, Alberta.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesThe smoke that enveloped Calgary this week briefly gave the city one of the worst air-quality ratings in the world, as the fires to the north and west led to the evacuation of roughly 29,000 people across the province.[Read: A ‘Canadian Armageddon’ Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire][Read: Canada’s Wildfires Have Been Disrupting Lives. Now, Oil and Gas Take a Hit.][Read from Opinion: There’s No Escape From Wildfire Smoke][Read: 12 Million People Are Under a Heat Advisory in the Pacific Northwest]Smoke from wildfires has blotted out the sun in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver several times in recent years and kept runners, cyclists and walkers indoors. Charred forests, already burned in previous wildfire seasons, lined the roads I drove in Alberta’s mountains.I had been to Alberta in 2016 to cover the fires sweeping through Fort McMurray, but that blaze, almost miraculously, took no lives except in a traffic accident. But fires in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have become bigger and stronger, and research suggests that heat and drought associated with global warming are major reasons. When the town of Lytton, British Columbia, was consumed by wildfires in 2021, temperatures reached a staggering 49.6 degrees Celsius.Poll after poll has shown that Albertans are more or less in line with other Canadians on the need to take steps to reduce carbon emissions. But the candidates aren’t talking much about it.During Thursday’s debate between Danielle Smith, the premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, and Rachel Notley, the former premier and leader of the New Democratic Party, the subject of climate came up only in an economic context.Ms. Smith repeatedly accused Ms. Notley of springing a “surprise” carbon tax on the province, and warned that any attempt to cap emissions would inevitably lead to reduced oil production and reduced revenues for the province, (an assessment not universally shared by experts).A layer of dense smoke spread through much of Alberta this week.Jen Osborne for The New York TimesI asked Feodor Snagovsky, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, about this apparent disconnect in Alberta between public opinion about climate change and campaign discourse.“It’s very tough to talk about oil and gas in Alberta because it’s sort of the goose that lays the golden egg,” he said. “It’s the source of a remarkable level of prosperity that the province has enjoyed for a long time.”This year oil and gas revenues will account for about 36 percent of all the money the province takes in. And during the oil embargo of the late 1970s, those revenues were more than 70 percent of the province’s budget. Among other things, that has allowed Alberta to be the only province without a sales tax and it has kept income and corporate taxes generally low relative to other provinces.But oil and gas production account for 28 percent of Canada’s carbon emissions, the country’s largest source. While the amount of carbon that’s released for each barrel produced has been reduced, increases in total production have more than offset those gains.The energy industry is also an important source of high-paying jobs, though. So the suggestion that production might have to be limited in order for Canada to meet its climate targets raises alarms.“People hear that and they think: my job’s going to go away,” Professor Snagovsky said. “It hits people really close to home.”He told me that he had lived in Australia in 2020 when that country was plagued by extreme heat and wildfires. At the time, Professor Snagovsky said, not only was there very little discussion there about climate change, but politicians and others argued that it was not an appropriate time for such talks.Professor Snagovsky said he hoped that the fires and smoke will prompt Albertans to start thinking about the climate effects that caused them, but he’s not confident that will happen.“I think it’s unlikely, but you can always hope,” he said.Trans CanadaImages made from the scan of the Titanic wreck clearly show small details.Atlantic/Magellan, via Associated PressA hyper detailed 3-D scan of the Titanic’s wreckage off Canada’s coastline has produced evocative images of the doomed steamship.A dilapidated farmhouse near Palmyra, Ontario, which is a favorite of photographers, may face demolition.Canadian Tire is among the companies picking over the ruins of Bed Bath & Beyond.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      Canada Knows China Tried to Meddle in Its Elections, but What Should Come Next?

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      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls by the opposition for a full public inquiry.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have hoped that this week’s independent review of China’s meddling in the last two Canadian federal elections would tamp down debate on the subject in Parliament. Instead, the report seemed to revitalize the opposition parties.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has rejected calls for an inquiry into election subversion.Carlos Osorio/ReutersHere’s a short version of that report, which I wrote about when a redacted version was made public late Tuesday: There is evidence that China, Russia and Iran tried to subvert the 2019 and 2021 elections, but there is no evidence that their efforts “impacted” the results.[Read: Foreign Efforts to Subvert Canada’s Last 2 Elections Failed, Report Says]The federal government has long accepted that the Chinese government tried to sway those elections. And since November, a House of Commons committee has been looking into attempts by foreign governments to meddle in elections.But the issue flared up on Feb. 17 when The Globe and Mail published an article it said was based on secret and top-secret reports prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the agency most English-speaking Canadians know as CSIS.According to the article, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party did not want a Conservative government to win the 2021 election because it feared it would take a hard-line approach to China. The Chinese leadership, however, wasn’t entirely happy with the Liberals, either, and wanted to hold them to a minority government. While that ultimately was the result, it’s difficult to see how any outside government could engineer such an outcome.The documents, as reported by The Globe, laid out a variety of strategies, not all of them obviously feasible. China asked its diplomats in Canada to swing the vote in favor of the Liberal candidates in constituencies with large Chinese populations. And the documents the newspaper cited included boasts some of those diplomats conveyed back to Beijing that they had successfully defeated Conservative candidates, although there is nothing to back their claims.More on ChinaA Surge in Activity: After being battered by the pandemic in 2022, Chinese factories bounced back with vigor in February: Manufacturing activity rose to its highest level in more than a decade.Erasing Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’: The ruling Communist Party is waging a propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of its handling of the pandemic, which included some of the harshest restrictions in the world.Desperate for Babies: For generations, Chinese parents chafed under the country’s one-child policy. Now, facing a declining birthrate, China wants lots of children — but many families don’t.Courting Europe: Beijing, in urgent need of reviving its economy, wants to mend ties with Europe but is struggling to create distance between itself and Moscow.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, citing secrecy laws, has not addressed any of the specific allegations, but he has criticized the article and other reports for containing inaccuracies, without elaborating.The Conservatives, who of course were the target, swiftly demanded a public inquiry, and Pierre Poilievre, their leader, charged that Mr. Trudeau was covering up China’s actions.“He’s perfectly happy to let a foreign, authoritarian government interfere in our elections as long as they’re helping him,” Mr. Poilievre said at a news conference.The New Democrats also joined the call for the inquiry, and on Thursday, the committee looking into election interference passed a motion, not binding on the government, from one of its members. It called for a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s democratic institutions and during Canadian elections.Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, has charged the prime minister with trying to cover up Chinese meddling.Blair Gable/ReutersOn Friday, Mr. Trudeau again told reporters in Winnipeg that such a step would be unnecessary. He noted that a panel of senior public servants, who work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies during elections, found that no foreign government had managed to subvert the vote. In addition to the public hearings of the House of Commons committee, Mr. Trudeau said, a special committee of members of Parliament who meet in secret and have access to confidential intelligence was reviewing the issue.Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a former intelligence adviser to the federal government, told me that while more needed to be done about election subversion by foreign governments, an inquiry was not the way to go. It would, he said, most likely be conducted by a judge with little or no background in intelligence, would have little or no access to secret intelligence and would not issue its findings until after the next election.Instead, Mr. Wark said, he wants both the government and CSIS to follow Australia’s lead when it comes to interference by China in Canada.“The Australians are willing to to really talk about the threats very bluntly and provide, without getting into the very sensitive information, case-by-case examples of how these dangers are unfolding,” Mr. Wark told me.By contrast, he said, it has been over a year since David Vigneault, the director of CSIS, has made a public speech, and the latest report on foreign interference in Canada from the intelligence agency is from 2021.“It’s just not fulfilling what I think of as its responsibility as an authority on threats to the security of Canada to help educate Canadians about that,” Mr. Wark said.More broadly, Mr. Wark faulted the government for, in his view, being “super reluctant” to expel diplomats who are interfering in Canada’s affairs, whether through disinformation campaigns, illegal campaign activities or threatening and intimidating nationals of their countries who now live in Canada.That reluctance, he said, appears to come from a fear of retaliation. But he disagrees with allowing such concerns to hold back the response.“Expulsions are a way of sending a message to the governments engaging in that kind of behavior, and also sending a message to Canadians that we’re on this and we’re not going to turn a blind eye,” Mr. Wark said. “Expulsions and more naming and shaming are very appropriate.”Trans CanadaMigrants arriving in Quebec after illegally crossing the border from the United States.Nasuna Stuart-UlinNorimitsu Onishi, my Montreal-based colleague, has looked into the rise in the number of people who are illegally crossing into Canada from the United States: “Shielded by geography, strict immigration policies favoring the educated and skilled, and its single border with the United States, Canada is now being forced to deal with an issue that has long bedeviled other wealthy Western nations: mass illegal border crossings by land,” he writes.The New York Times Magazine this week includes a in-depth look at a truly revolutionary stroke treatment that promises to save millions of lives. Eva Holland, a writer based in Whitehorse, examined it in action in Calgary for her article.This week, the government of Canada joined those in other nations and banned the TikTok app from government devices out of security concerns.The Canadian actor Eugene Levy is, to put it mildly, not keen on travel. He discussed with Anna Peele what it had taken to persuade him to star in a travel television series.In her review of “Old Babes in the Woods,” a collection of stories by Margaret Atwood, Rebecca Makkai writes: “If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You’ve been missing out.”Brendan Fraser, the Canadian American actor who has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “The Whale,” spoke about his comeback with Kyle Buchanan, the awards season columnist for The New York Times.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      Trudeau Projected to Remain Prime Minister, but Falls Short of a Majority

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      OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political gamble failed to pay off Monday when Canadian voters returned him to office but denied him the expanded bloc of power he had been seeking in Parliament.Unofficial election results on Monday indicated that while he would remain as prime minister, it would again be as the head of a minority government.In August, with his approval ratings high, Mr. Trudeau called a “snap election,” summoning voters to the polls two years before he had to. The goal, he said, was to obtain a strong mandate for his Liberal Party to lead the nation out of the pandemic and into recovery.But many Canadians suspected that his true ambitions were mere political opportunism, and that he was trying to regain the parliamentary majority the Liberals had until they lost seats in the 2019 election.Whatever his motive, it did not work.With some votes still being cast or uncounted, the preliminary results were a near repeat of the previous vote. The Liberal Party won 156 seats on Monday — one fewer than it acquired in 2019 — while its main rival, the Conservative Party, won 121 seats, the same as before.“If you missed the 2019 election, don’t worry, we just did a rerun for you,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.The outcome left Mr. Trudeau in a familiar situation. To pass any laws, he will once again have to win members of the opposition over to his side. And, at least in theory, his party’s shaky grip on power leaves his government vulnerable to being overturned by Parliament.In his victory speech early Tuesday, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged the unpopularity of his call for a snap election.“You don’t want us talking about politics or elections anymore; you want us to focus on the work that we have to do for you,” he told a partisan crowd in a hotel in downtown Montreal. “You just want to get back to the things you love, not worry about this pandemic, or about an election.”In calling for the early election, Mr. Trudeau had argued that, like his predecessors in the aftermath of World War II, he needed a strong mandate from voters to vanquish the coronavirus and rebuild the national economy, badly damaged by the pandemic.But the announcement was not well received by many Canadians.Alarm that the government was holding an election when it did not have to, even as the Delta variant was straining hospitals in some areas, never abated for many voters during the 36-day campaign. And Mr. Trudeau’s opponents were quick to characterize his move as a reckless power grab. Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, went so far as to call it “un-Canadian.”In the end, Mr. Trudeau not only failed to secure a majority in Parliament, according to unofficial results, he may have also squandered the good will he had gained as he led his nation through the coronavirus crisis.“I’m wondering if the Liberals, in their minds, are saying: ‘Dang it, why did we — why did we call it?’” Kimberly Speers, a professor of political science at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said during the final week of campaigning.Now, she said, it is unclear how long any Liberal minority government will be able to hold together and what this will all mean for the party’s leader. “How long is Trudeau going to last?” Ms. Speers wondered.The Conservative Party leader, Erin O’Toole, at a campaign rally in Toronto this month.Blair Gable/ReutersWhen Mr. Trudeau first ran for office as leader of the Liberals in 2015, few political experts thought he could pull it off. He began that campaign in third place, behind the incumbent Conservatives and the left-of-center New Democratic Party.He won by presenting himself as a new voice in politics with a different approach and different ideas to go with itBut that fresh young politician was little to be seen this time around.Mr. Trudeau, 49, offered voters less a vision for the future than a warning, sometimes explicitly. A return to the Conservative government under Mr. O’Toole, he said, would wipe away his government’s achievements in a variety of areas, among them gun control, gender equity, climate change, child care, poverty reduction and, above all, fighting the pandemic and getting Canadians vaccinated.“Mr. O’Toole won’t make sure the traveler sitting beside you and your kids on a train or a plane is vaccinated,” he said at a campaign rally in Surrey, British Columbia, last week. “This is the moment for real leadership. Mr. O’Toole doesn’t lead — he misleads.”Mr. Trudeau at a campaign stop on Sunday in Burnaby, British Columbia.Carlos Osorio/ReutersBut in Mr. O’Toole, the prime minister was running against a different opponent than the Conservative leaders he had encountered in the two previous campaigns.“I am a new leader with a new style,” Mr. O’Toole, who took over the party just over a year ago, said at the outset of the campaign. “There are five parties but two choices: Canada’s Conservatives or more of the same.”A former air force helicopter navigator and corporate lawyer from Ontario, Mr. O’Toole, seeking to broaden Conservatives’ appeal, produced a 160-page campaign platform that essentially turned the party’s back on many once-central positions, like opposition to carbon taxes.After condemning Mr. Trudeau for running up large deficits with pandemic spending, Mr. O’Toole issued a plan that forecast similar budget shortfalls.He even reversed a major campaign pledge — to repeal Mr. Trudeau’s ban on 1,500 models of assault-style rifles — when it became apparent that it alienated voters who were not core Conservative supporters.Mr. O’Toole did, however, maintain his opposition to mandatory vaccination and vaccine passports.Mr. O’Toole also repeatedly attacked Mr. Trudeau’s personal integrity. He cited, as the Conservatives have repeatedly in Parliament, several low points in the prime minister’s career.The federal ethics commissioner found that Mr. Trudeau broke ethics laws when he and his staff pressured his justice minister, an Indigenous woman, in 2018 to offer a large Canadian engineering firm a deal allowing it to avoid a criminal conviction on corruption charges. Last year a charity with close ties to the Trudeau family was awarded a no-bid contract to administer a Covid-19 financial assistance plan for students. The group withdrew, the program was canceled and Mr. Trudeau was cleared of conflict of interest allegations.And while Mr. Trudeau champions diversity and racial justice, it came out during the 2019 vote that he had worn blackface or brownface at least three times in the past.“Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their lives — privileged, entitled and always looking out for No. 1,” Mr. O’Toole said during the campaign. “He’ll say anything to get elected, regardless of the damage it does to our country.”During the campaign, Mr. O’Toole chipped away at Mr. Trudeau’s personal integrity, reminding voters of the prime minister’s missteps.Blair Gable/ReutersMr. Trudeau returned the criticism, saying Mr. O’Toole’s willingness to ditch Conservative policies and alter his platform mid-campaign showed it was he who would say or promise anything to voters.While many voters eagerly bumped elbows and posed for selfies with Mr. Trudeau at campaign stops, his campaign was often disturbed by unruly mobs protesting mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports. One event was canceled out of safety concerns, and Mr. Trudeau was pelted with gravel at another.Mr. Trudeau did have a strong political challenger on the left nationally with Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats. Mr. Singh, a lawyer and former provincial lawmaker from Ontario, consistently had the highest approval ratings of all the leaders before and during the campaign.Mr. Trudeau will most likely rely on the New Democrats as his primary source of support in Parliament. But despite gaining three seats, the New Democrats’ total, 27, is a long way from holding power.In his victory speech, Mr. Trudeau evoked his “sunny ways” remarks of 2015, but in a very different context.“You are sending us back to work with a clear mandate to get Canada through this pandemic into the brighter days ahead,” he said to cheers. “My friends, that’s exactly what we are ready to do.” More

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      In Canada, Will Young Voters Turn Out for the NDP and Jagmeet Singh?

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      Ditching a collared dress shirt for a sleeveless hoodie, Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, sways to the music in a recent TikTok video recreating a viral dance trend, with text overlaid about how youth voters are “going to make history” this election.But political analysts aren’t convinced TikToks and streams on Twitch — another social media platform he has appeared on — will translate into votes.Mr. Singh has continued to leverage social media as a campaign strategy as he did in the 2019 election. The party is also emphasizing issues like income distribution and taxing the ultra-wealthy, said Lars Osberg, an economics professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, a move reminiscent of Canada’s 1972 election. That is when David Lewis of the N.D.P. rose to prominence on the campaign slogan of getting rid of “corporate welfare bums.”But is all this enough to get young voters, one of the least dependable demographics, to the polls, and to get them to vote for the N.D.P.?“Young people did turn out back in 2015, because they really wanted to get rid of Stephen Harper,” said Professor Osberg, referring to the former Conservative Party leader. (The current one, Erin O’Toole, has made himself a less polarizing figure by reshaping his party to broaden its appeal.)But it was Justin Trudeau who captured the youth vote in 2015.The New Democrats may do well in some areas with large Indigenous populations, whose vote is generally split between that party and Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party.The Liberals have the greatest number of incumbent candidates who are Indigenous, but 28 of the total 50 Indigenous candidates are running with the New Democrats, according to a list compiled by the Assembly of First Nations.In a campaign where Indigenous issues have largely been sidelined, Mr. Singh has hit on Mr. Trudeau for falling short on his promise to bring clean drinking water to all Indigenous communities. And Indigenous voters may be losing confidence in the Liberals.“Right now, it’s looking like a lot of people in the community are saying, no, we’re not with you this time,” said Cameron Holmstrom, an Indigenous consultant who has worked with the New Democrats.Ian Austen contributed reporting. More

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      How Canadian Leaders Campaign in a Pandemic

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      While the Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is still hitting the road, his party has also created a virtual method of reaching voters.After nearly two weeks of campaigning, it would be a stretch to say that election fever is sweeping Canada. Lawn signs are relatively scarce in Eastern Ontario, where I live, and others tell me similar stories from other parts of the country. Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, during a virtual town hall meeting this week.Ian Austen/The New York TimesPolitical scientists and pollsters expect, or hope, that the nation’s focus will turn to the campaign after Labor Day brings an unofficial end to summer’s all-too-short reign.Meanwhile, inside the campaigns, candidates and their teams are busy looking for new ways to get their messages across and interact with voters during the pandemic, without risking in-person gatherings.This week, I checked out a modified campaign event hosted by the Conservative Party in Ottawa, my first event of this campaign. The party has transformed part of a ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel into a television studio that Erin O’Toole, its leader, uses for what the party calls virtual town hall meetings, which it targets to specific parts of the country. On Tuesday, when I dropped by, the audience was in British Columbia.For about an hour, the Conservatives robot-dialed voters in the province and asked them if they would listen in and try to ask Mr. O’Toole questions.Mr. O’Toole had an answer for every question, of course. But the callers weren’t allowed to follow up, making it impossible to determine if his answers actually satisfied them. That said, it’s likely safe to assume that the man who asked if Mr. O’Toole would take the advice of a recent U.N. report to immediately start moving away from fossil fuels was not sated. After acknowledging that the Conservatives did not have a valid climate plan in 2019, Mr. O’Toole praised the party’s new proposal, a system that would aim for substantially smaller emissions reductions than the government’s current target.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigning in Surrey, British Columbia, this week.Jennifer Gauthier/ReutersMr. O’Toole has conducted 10 virtual town halls from Ottawa to date. The sessions are streamed live on YouTube and through Facebook, where questions can be submitted in writing. But the questioners, and the listeners, are found mostly through automated phone calls placed by the campaign, and none of them appear on video. The party declined to describe the screening process it uses before putting anyone through to Mr. O’Toole. But there are clearly people vetting the callers.Whether by chance or by design, many of the questions at the session that I attended, and others that I watched, were on issues that polls show resonate the most with Conservative voters, such as the budget deficit and rolling back recently strengthened gun controls. But at least two people called for action on climate change far beyond what the Conservatives are proposing.The session had the feel of a video stream of a talk radio show. Its moderator was Michael Barrett, a Conservative member of Parliament from Eastern Ontario, who never challenged any of Mr. O’Toole’s claims and promises, the way an independent host might.The vast ballroom-turned-studio, dominated by a flag lined stage that vaguely evokes the interior of the Parliament buildings, was utterly devoid of campaign atmosphere during the session.The only people physically present during the town hall were professionals. In addition to me, the very socially distanced, in-person audience consisted of a television producer, a television network camera operator, a handful of Conservative Party technicians running the show, Mr. O’Toole’s bodyguards and, briefly, a photographer.Despite the absence of a crowd, let alone crowd energy, Mr. O’Toole remained enthusiastic and energetic for the entire hour.Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party, during a stop in Winnipeg on Thursday.Shannon Vanraes/ReutersIt’s much too early to say if virtual town halls, like other pandemic make-dos, will succeed the traditional campaign road show with its jets and buses. Mr. O’Toole is, like the other leaders, still hitting the road. I’ll also be out there soon to see how the campaigns of Mr. Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats have adjusted to the pandemic.Trans CanadaCanadian and British troops helping an Afghan climb up onto a wall on Sunday.Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCanada ended its evacuation operation in Afghanistan on Thursday, shortly before explosions at the Kabul airport killed nearly 200 and injured scores of people.“We stayed in Afghanistan as long as we could,” Gen. Wayne Eyre, the acting chief of the defense staff, told a news conference. “We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. That we could not is truly heartbreaking.”The exact number of Canadians, permanent residents and others evacuated by the Canadian military in recent weeks is still not clear, nor is the number of people left behind. But General Eyre said that the country airlifted about 3,700 people out on a combination of Canadian military flights and aboard planes of allied nations.The Gurkhas who were hired by a contractor to guard Canada’s embassy — a task that had fatal consequences in 2016 for 13 of them — have also been returned to their homes in Nepal.Canada was effectively pushed out of Kabul by American efforts to finish its evacuation plan by Tuesday. The Times is continuing to provide constantly updated coverage which you can find at our home page.Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., is questioning the consensus view that the coronavirus naturally spilled over to humans from bats through an intermediary host animal. Now, Dr. Chan, who was born in Vancouver and who studied at the University of British Columbia, is in the middle of a maelstrom, Roni Caryn Rabin reports.R. Murray Schafer, the composer who pioneered the field of acoustic ecology, has died at his home near Peterborough, Ontario, at the age of 88.Rod Gilbert, who was born in Montreal and became the face of hockey in New York, has died at the age of 80.Chinese officials are cracking down on celebrity idol worship like that surrounding Kris Wu, the popular Canadian singer who has been detained on suspicion of rape.SUMMER GAME FUNThis week: Letter Boxed, where you try to create words using letters surrounding a square. All of The Times’s games, and tips on playing them, can be found here.A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More

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      A Possible Election Call as the Pandemic’s 4th Wave Gets Underway

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      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may call an early election as soon as Sunday despite rising Covid-19 cases. If so, it won’t be campaigning as usual.The country may, or may not, be headed into an election at the same time that a fourth Covid-19 surge is now underway thanks to the Delta variant.A polling station in Ottawa on election day in 2019.Ian Austen/The New York TimesBased on indications to officials in his government and the Liberal Party, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is contemplating a visit to Governor General Mary Simon, perhaps as early as Sunday, to dissolve Parliament and set an election for Sept. 20. That call on timing is Mr. Trudeau’s to make, and on Friday afternoon it was still unclear if he had reached a decision.[Read: Trudeau Weighs Snap Election in Canada]Whatever the precise date of the election call, it is widely anticipated that the vote will come soon. And it won’t be the first campaign Canada has seen during the pandemic. Including Nova Scotia, which votes on Tuesday, elections have unrolled in five provinces plus Yukon.In Alberta, any federal vote in the near future will come on top of municipal election campaigns as well as referendums on Canada’s equalization system and daylight saving time.While none of the provincial elections were blamed for major outbreaks, a surge in cases caused Newfoundland to switch to mail-in ballots just 12 hours before voters were supposed to visit polls on Feb. 12, and to extend the election period until March 1. Things only got worse after that, with the final results not being confirmed until the end of that month.Stephane Perrault, the chief electoral officer, has warned that a pandemic vote will likely lead to an enormous increase in mail-in ballots and perhaps a delay of a few days in announcing some results. Canada does not start counting mail ballots until the day after in-person voting to make sure that no one double-voted and to allow people to submit their ballots right up to the closing of polls.That may leave some close races in limbo. In-person voters will also see changes such as voting at movie theaters because many usual voting spots like schools are currently reluctant to open up to large numbers of outsiders.For weeks it’s been apparent that an election is coming soon. Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet members have been traveling the country making spending announcements, and the opposition leaders have similarly hit the road.If Mr. Trudeau goes ahead less than two years into his last mandate, it will be the third time since it passed in 2007 that Canada’s fixed election date law has been treated with roughly the same respect as highway speed limits. (After introducing that measure Stephen Harper, the former Conservative prime minister, made the first two early calls.)Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.Blair Gable/ReutersEarly elections are rarely greeted with enthusiasm. And a poll released earlier this summer found little enthusiasm for a fall election. Both Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, and Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democrats, have condemned the idea of a pandemic vote as reckless.Mr. Singh sent the governor general a note asking her to turn down any request to dissolve Parliament from Mr. Trudeau. (When that happened in 1926 to William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Liberal prime minister at the time, it set off a constitutional crisis over the powers of the governor general. Most experts agree that Ms. Simon will not refuse to dissolve Parliament.)The question, then, is whether voters will punish Mr. Trudeau for the early vote. Shachi Kurl, the president of the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit opinion research firm in Vancouver, told me earlier this week that history suggests it won’t be a worry for the prime minister.“At the beginning of every advantageously called election, there are always several days of grumbling,” she told me. “Then people get on with it and judge the leaders and the issues accordingly.”The other question, of course, is will it be safe? While announcing that Canada is now in its fourth wave this week, Dr. Theresa Tam, the chief public health officer of Canada, added that “cases are plotting along a strong resurgence trajectory.”Deaths, she noted, remain comparatively low.Dr. Theresa Tam said this week that Canada is now in its fourth wave of the pandemic.Blair Gable/ReutersOf course this resurgence of the virus comes at a time when vaccination rates are high in Canada and still rising. Vaccination does not 100 percent guarantee protection against Covid infections or death from them. But a team of colleagues at The Times went through data from 40 American states on so-called breakthrough infections — when fully inoculated people contract the virus.The findings of their analysis, which likely apply broadly to Canada, are encouraging: “Fully vaccinated people have made up as few as 0.1 percent of and as many as 5 percent of those hospitalized with the virus in those states, and as few as 0.2 percent and as many as 6 percent of those who have died.”The Times report also found that “people who were not fully vaccinated were hospitalized with Covid-19 at least five times more often than fully vaccinated people, according to the analysis, and they died at least eight times more often.”[Read: See the Data on Breakthrough Covid Hospitalizations and Deaths by State]Earlier this month, Dr. Tam said that in-person voting can be done safely with public health guidelines but added that mail-in ballots are an option for anyone who feels uneasy.That will likely lead to an unusual campaign, assuming it begins before the current infection wave ends. The leaders will be spared endless handshaking, and they won’t cozy up to voters for selfies and baby kissing — something that in my experience happens with astonishing frequency. Big rallies will likely be outdoors with participants socially distanced, and virtual events will likely be common.And perhaps I’m being optimistic, but the pandemic may also have the effect of creating a campaign, whenever it comes, that’s actually focused on issues and substance rather than personality and stagecraft.Trans CanadaA Chinese court sentenced Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison.Associated PressIn a case widely characterized as an act of hostage diplomacy by China, a court in that country sentenced Michael Spavor, a Canadian businessman, to 11 years in prison for spying this week. The decision followed another Chinese court’s rejection of a death sentence appeal by Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian convicted of drug trafficking. The decisions came as final arguments were underway in Vancouver at the extradition hearing for Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese telecommunications executive held in Canada who is facing fraud charges in the United States. The Canadian government contends that the two men as well as a Michael Kovrig, another Canadian arrested in China and accused of spying, are victims of political retaliation by China for Ms. Meng’s detention.Vjosa Isai continues to follow the disruption and devastation brought by wildfires in Western Canada and has also written an overview on how British Columbia is battling 300 wildfires all at the same time.Catherine Porter revisited Ted Freeman-Atwood, 90, a long-term care home resident who is now back in the greater world after nearly a year locked indoors because of coronavirus restrictions.I headed down to the border with the United States earlier this week when it reopened to fully vaccinated Americans for nonessential visits. While there were considerable delays crossing into Canada, largely because of new rules, the number of visitors heading north did not surge.Qianshi Lin, a botanist at the University of British Columbia, has discovered the secret of the Western false asphodel, a wildflower: It’s a carnivore.Tony Esposito, the Chicago Blackhawks’ goaltender for 15 seasons, died at the age of 78.As a director, David Cronenberg is credited with creating a subgenre of film known as body horror. Now he’s acting and starring in Season 4 of the Canadian horror anthology series “Slasher.”Joshua Barone, a music critic for The Times, writes that Robert Carsen, a Canadian, “might be the most, well, reliable director in opera. I meant it as high praise: His work is by no means repetitive, cautious or dull. But in more than 125 productions over three decades in the field, he has been peerlessly dependable.”A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.How are we doing?We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here. More