In the summer of 1978, against his top political strategist’s advice, Pierre Trudeau called a full slate of byelections to fill 15 vacancies in the House of Commons, including seven seats the Liberals had won in the previous election. As recounted in John English’s Just Watch Me, the Liberal Party’s own pollster said the governing … Read more
Traditional allies appear to have abandoned Nicolas Maduro as protests rock Venezuela in the wake of Sunday’s election, which the longtime president claims to have won with 51.2 per cent of the vote. Maduro was quickly recognized as the winner by Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia, as well as Russia, China and Iran. But he got no recognition from … Read more
The Liberal government says measures to monitor and assess foreign interference threats will be part of all future federal byelections, not just general elections. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Monday the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) will be watching for signs of meddling in two September byelections: one in Quebec, … Read more
Canada’s deputy prime minister is echoing comments made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying Canada has “serious concerns” about the official results of the election in Venezuela. Speaking in Toronto, Chrystia Freeland said the government is in conversation with its allies over the results amid claims from Venezuelans that the vote was rigged. “Canada has … Read more
An NDP insider says New Democrats were surprised by the Liberals’ loss in the recent Toronto byelection — and now see the governing party’s weakness as an opportunity. Anne McGrath, principal secretary to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in the House of Commons, told CBC News the party thought the outcome of the Toronto St Paul’s byelection would be close … Read more
Newfoundland Liberal MP Ken McDonald says he thinks it would take “somewhat of a miracle” to turn the Liberals’ electoral fortunes around before the next federal election. Speaking with CBC’s Power & Politics, McDonald said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau still enjoys a high amount of support within the Liberal caucus after the party’s surprising byelection loss in a Toronto-area riding. … Read more
Months before a provincial election, Saskatchewan is urging the federal government to ban the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for voice cloning. Justice Minister and Attorney General Bronwyn Eyre said having rules to ban AI-generated voice cloning is in the best interest of protecting democracy and electoral integrity. “Those would become the communications rules for … Read more
One of the core policies the Liberals introduced to protect Canada’s elections has been criticized again for failing to alert Canadians to foreign interference it observed in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. In a recent report, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), one of Canada’s intelligence watchdog bodies, criticized the Critical Election Incident … Read more
“Contrary to many countries where voting is organized at the national level, in the American federalist system our elections processes are a state (and sub-state) competency,” Bridgett King, a lecturer at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Political Science, emphasized in her opening remarks during a recent briefing organized by the Washington Foreign Press Center. … Read more
Threats against politicians have become “increasingly normalized” due to extremist narratives prompted by personal grievances and fuelled by misinformation or deliberate lies, warns a newly released intelligence report. The report, prepared by a federal task force that aims to safeguard elections, says the Canadian violent extremist landscape has seen the proliferation of conspiracy theories, a … Read more
