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“I’m just really pushing hard as it looks more and more likely that it could be a Liberal majority government,” Karpoche said Friday as she knocked on doors. “We need strong progressive voices to hold the Liberals accountable because they have let us down time and again, and we’re going to need voices to fight not just for our community, but also for our city.

“Almost every door I go to, people know me, and even if they’re voting Liberal, they say they know my work and the trust that has been built over two terms, and they feel very conflicted — there’s a lot of strategic voting pressure,” to keep Carney prime minister to fight U.S. President Donald Trump.

“There is so much fear in people, so we really need to have these conversations about not just stopping Conservatives on election day, but how do we move forward as a country for four years?”

Karpoche, an epidemiologist and the first Tibetan elected to public office in North America, is considered the NDP’s only chance of winning a º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøseat in Monday’s federal election. Even with her popularity and Queen’s Park profile, she is scrambling, along with NDP candidates across Canada, to stop support from leaking to the Liberals.

The Signal, the Star’s polling aggregator, says the riding, with rejigged boundaries and the Taiaiako’n name to honour a past Indigenous village, is leaning in favour of Bardeesy, executive director of a º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøMetropolitan University think tank focused on innovation, education and democracy.

Bardeesy said his campaign is strong thanks to volunteers from across the political spectrum. However, he rejects Karpoche’s argument that a Liberal majority is likely so voters can elect NDP MPs knowing Carney is in place to fight Trump’s tariffs and desire to make Canada a fifty-first state.

“I don’t see this as a done deal — I think many voters see this as a tight election and are looking at who is the best person to stand up for Canada, and to bring the kinds of benefits to the riding that come from a strong national government,” said the former journalist who held senior policy posts under former premiers Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty.

Carney’s name and experience as the central banker for Canada and later Britain are opening doors, he said, because “people want to be part of this larger national challenge for Canadian sovereignty, and they see that I offer a good complement to Carney in different but related domains.”

The old Parkdale-High Park riding flipped over the decades between New Democrats and Liberals, represented most recently by Liberal Arif Virani who declined to seek re-election.

At an all-candidates meeting Thursday night, which also included candidates for the Green, Communist, Marxist-Leninist, and Animal Protection parties, Bardeesy invoked Carney several times, while Karpoche never mentioned NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

Instead, she warned that medicare, pharmacare and other parts of Canada’s social safety net secured by New Democrats are at risk as Carney moves the Liberal party to the political right.

“Vote for a Canada where everyone is cared for,” Karpoche urged the crowd at a local church.

Although the Conservative candidate did not attend, Bardeesy warned that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s party, if allowed to govern, would be “explicitly divisive” instead of pulling Canadians together to fight the American threat.

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