As the dust settles on the U.S. election and the world prepares for another Donald Trump presidency, Canadians may be wondering whether it raises the odds of a snap election here.
That’s not likely, experts say.
Canada’s next federal election is scheduled for the coming year and must happen no later than October 2025.
However, the possibility of an earlier election has been raised with recent attempts by the Conservatives to topple the Trudeau government as well as the collapse of the NDP-Liberal deal.
Trump’s election win comes at a time when support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal minority government has recently hit a “new low,” according to Ipsos polling exclusive to Global News in September after more than a year of trailing the Conservatives by double digits.
Meanwhile, there has also been growing pressure from Trudeau’s own caucus for him to step down.
Mary Anne Carter, a principal of government relations at Earnscliffe Strategies in Ottawa, said rather than the U.S. election result, Canada’s own domestic dynamics will influence the timing of the next vote, adding that there is “still a lot of uncertainty” if an election may be called sooner rather than later.
“I don’t think it’s going to impact us in the way in which there would be a snap election,” Carter told Global News in an interview.
If anything, a Trump presidency may prompt “a potential cabinet shuffle,” she said.
“I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a lot of repositioning and ramping up of engagement with the new Trump administration and identifying those key players ASAP.”
There is already some movement on that front.
On Thursday, Trudeau announced that he was re-establishing the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations that will focus on “critical” issues for the two countries.
Alex Byrne-Krzycki, a consultant with Crestview Strategy who previously worked for Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, said “time is in everyone’s best interests.”
He said the Liberals may want time to try to paint Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “as an authoritarian right-wing Republican” and the NDP may also want more time to fundraise for their own campaign.
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“If you’re looking at a snap election now, you’re probably looking at least until the budget in 2025, if not all the way to October 2025,” Byrne-Krzycki said.
Earlier this week, Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the government leader in the House of Commons, accused Poilievre of being “a new, shiny, far-right leader with MAGA principles” during debate.
And Trudeau has made similar attempts to cast Poilievre and the party as holding similar views.
“The ideologically-driven MAGA Conservatives are calling for pollution to be free again and for the government to take those regular cheques to Canadians away from them,” he said, also last year during a debate on carbon pricing.
“Mr. Speaker, everything the Prime Minister just said is factually wrong,” Poilievre responded at the time.
The Conservative Party led by Poilievre has already brought forward two non-confidence motions to try to topple the Trudeau government this fall. Both failed to pass, but the Tories are expected to table at least one more such motion before Christmas.
If a non-confidence motion were to be adopted, the government would fall and a snap election would be triggered.
The Bloc Québécois has also started talks with other opposition parties to try to bring the Liberal government down after its demands were not met by a deadline last month.
The Bloc had given the Liberals an Oct. 29 deadline to greenlight two key bills to avoid an attempt to trigger an election before Christmas.
Charles-Étienne Beaudry, a political studies professor at the University of Ottawa and author of Radio Trump: How he won the first time, said he does not think Trudeau will call a snap vote himself, adding that “there is no rush for an election in Canada.”
“We need to take our time to be sure of what kind of government we want in Canada,” he told Global News in an interview.
Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at political science at the University of Toronto, offered a similar assessment.
“Trump is unpredictable. He’s transactional. As long as you bend your knee to him and you compliment him, then he thinks you’re a good guy. A minute later, he can think you’re terrible if you say something,” he said on Wednesday.
“I can’t see any relationship between the election yesterday and having a snap Canadian election no more than it would have for a snap Ontario election or for any other thing.”
Trudeau last called a snap election in 2021, which led to the current minority government.
More than half (56 per cent) of Canadians who were surveyed by Ipsos in September said they don’t want an early election, but want all parties to try and work with the government on a case-by-case basis.
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