The room at the Oak Ridges Community Centre is full for a weeknight local candidates forum.
Staff from the Richmond Hill Board of Trade bring in extra chairs, but some residents remaining standing at the back of the room. At the front are three tables for the participants. Two placards are notably absent, for Costas Menegakis, the Conservative candidate for Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, and Danielle Maniuk, his NDP counterpart.
That makes for an exercise in local democracy that is both important but also somewhat pointless. Leah Taylor Roy, the Liberal incumbent, doesn鈥檛 have to make her case against Menegakis, a former Member of Parliament whose party has been successful in this region north of 海角社区官网in the recent past, but against candidates from the Green Party and the People鈥檚 Party of Canada, neither of whom pose any kind of electoral threat.
With less than a week to go until election day, Canada's five main political parties have released their costed platforms. Canadian Press reporter Dylan Robertson walks through some of what the parties are pitching to voters. (April 26, 2025 / The Canadian Press)
Taylor Roy is by far the most popular candidate, but mostly by default. The Green Party representative spends surprisingly little of his time talking about the environment, while some of the PPC candidate鈥檚 more outlandish claims earn him literal boos. 聽An observer who only had that event as a gauge might assume the Liberals will take the riding in a cakewalk, but recent history suggests otherwise.
Richmond Hill is part of a large swath of ridings above 海角社区官网that have been key to federal election fortunes in the past decade. It鈥檚 an entire bellwether region. Ridings have been redrawn and renamed over recent election cycles, but there are more than a half dozen across Markham, Richmond Hill, Aurora, Stouffville and Newmarket that voted for Justin Trudeau鈥檚 Liberals in 2021 and Doug Ford鈥檚 provincial Progressive Conservatives two months ago. The area was also fertile ground for Stephen Harper鈥檚 Conservatives.
As recently as January, Pierre Poilievre was counting on the cities and towns above 海角社区官网to help deliver him a majority win. If the polls are correct, and he does lose Monday, it will be in large part because he let the northern 905, and areas like it across the country, slip away.
I鈥檝e lived in this area for two decades. I鈥檝e watched it flip between right and left campaign after campaign. There are many theories for all the seesawing, but in this election, at least, I think I understand what鈥檚 making it so fickle, and so potentially fatal for Poilievre.
The northern 905 is largely a series of affluent bedroom communities, with a mix of ethnicities and steady employment. It鈥檚 a place for young families, that also has a growing number of multi-generational homes and empty nesters. None of that demographically suggests a place that should be particularly inclined to rush back to the Liberals in the face of Trump鈥檚 threats. But I don鈥檛 think Trump has been the key factor here in this campaign. Pierre Poilievre has.
When this area goes conservative, it does so softly. The voters here prefer the kinds of Tories who are more concerned with pocketbook issues than culture-war battles. In other words, there鈥檚 a reason they seem to like Doug Ford a lot more than they like Poilievre.
Canadians will vote for a new government on Monday in an election that has been upended by U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war and his threats to make Canada the 51st state. (AP video: Mike Householder / April 26, 2025)
The numbers back that up. Recent polls suggest one demographic more than any other has moved hard back into the Liberal column this year: suburban mothers. A Pallas Data survey published this week has the Liberals leading the Conservatives by seven percentage points (48-41) in the regions that surround 海角社区官网鈥 York, Durham, Halton, Peel and Simcoe-Dufferin 鈥 but by 16 points (53-37) among women.
My teenage daughter recently introduced me to a term to describe the online outrage related to the death of a major character on a terrible network TV procedural: 鈥淭he Facebook wine moms are really mad.鈥 It seems a reasonable bet that something similar is buffeting Poilievre: the same folks who fill their social-media feeds with shots of their kids and dogs and memes that say 鈥淪ave Water, Drink Chablis鈥 have decided that they do not care for the candidate for Prime Minister who has made a career out of being abrasive and decrying things like 鈥渨oke ideology鈥 and 鈥渞adical left Liberals.鈥
A recent riding-level Cardinal Research survey shows the Liberals with huge advantages among women in places like Aurora-Oak Ridges Richmond Hill (58-40), Mississauga-Erin Mills (63-32) and Oakville East (59-35). Carney outperforms Poilievre on poll questions about which leader voters trust more to deal with Trump. But more significant here is that Poilievre also trails Carney on likability. Fifty-four per cent of respondents had an unfavourable view of the Conservative leader in the Pallas Data survey 鈥 and 58% among female voters 鈥 while Carney was at 44% on the same question, and just 41% among women.
It is probably not a coincidence that one of the new Conservative television ads in heavy rotation features two older gentlemen, at a golf driving range, lamenting the Carney Liberals and vowing to vote for the Tories 鈥 a clear attempt at shoring up support among a key demographic they still think they can win. Poilievre, the leader, isn鈥檛 mentioned at all.
Poilievre鈥檚 favourability gap is something even his ideological allies have noted. Kory Teneycke, Doug Ford鈥檚 longtime campaign manager and a former senior Stephen Harper aide, told The Associated Press this week that Poilievre鈥檚 brash attitude reminds a lot of Canadian voters of their least favourite politician.
鈥淭he Trumpy hectoring of people, the slogans, the big rallies 鈥 like it all just seems like so Trump. And people are not loving Trump right now in Canada,鈥 Teneycke said.
鈥(Poilievre鈥檚) style and his approach to politics certainly channels a lot of Trump. It鈥檚 like a cheap karaoke version of Trump.鈥
These criticisms do not seem to have had much of an impact on the Conservative leader or the people advising him. As the campaign entered its final days, he held a rally in Vaughan, at the gleaming headquarters of a labourers鈥 union.
This was the second such rally I鈥檝e attended, bookending one from North York that took place on the first day of the campaign. The messages were surprisingly similar, considering that Poilievre has only managed to dent Carney鈥檚 polling lead slightly over the first four weeks of the election.
He talked in Vaughan about housing and inflation, and the 鈥渃rime, chaos, drugs and disorder鈥 on Canadian streets. He decried wasteful Liberal spending and vowed to cut back on consultants and bureaucracy and red tape. There were the slogans: Boots, not suits. Jail, not bail. Axe the tax. Stop the crime. Fix the budget. The one oratorial flourish Poilievre has added since March is that he appends 鈥渇or a change鈥 to the slogans. Sometimes it comes a beat late, when the crowd is already cheering the familiar refrain.
To a roomful of Conservative supporters, this was playing the hits. Indeed, when Poilievre vowed his government would ensure the Canadian Armed Forces were 鈥済uided by a warrior culture, not a woke culture,鈥 he received one of the biggest pops of the night.
But the people who came to LiUNA Local 183 in Vaughan aren鈥檛 those that Poilievre needs to reach if he is going to overturn the huge deficits in the 海角社区官网suburbs that could deliver 24 Sussex to Carney.
The people wearing Bring It Home t-shirts and waving flags that say 鈥淧oilievre 2025: Make Canada Strong Again鈥 have long been in the Conservative leader鈥檚 camp.
It鈥檚 their neighbours he needs to worry about.
When I saw the launch of the Poilievre show in late March, the question was: did he have another gear? A month later, the answer is that he never tried to find it. Only he and his advisors know if that was by choice, or necessity. Whatever the case, it may have cost him a chance to reverse his slide in a region Conservatives know they need if they want to win.
Without the Facebook Wine Moms, Poilievre never had a chance.
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