Canada election: Poilievre pitches '100 days of change' while Singh defends propping up previous government

We'll be back on Sunday with live coverage of the leaders' final push of the campaign, as well as on Monday with live election results.

If you're still deciding who to vote for on Monday, you can compare party platforms here or use our Vote Compass tool here.

See you then.

Hi, I’m Sheena Goodyear, a digital producer with CBC Radio’s As It Happens.

A Canadian media legend has issued an unusual challenge to Poilievre.

Nardwuar the Human Serviette — real name John Ruskin — is widely known for his quirky persona, unique aesthetic and extremely well-researched interviews with celebrities.

But whenever there's a federal election afoot, he turns his efforts to interviewing the candidates vying to be Canada's next prime minister and challenging them each to a round of Hip Flip — a 1968 Hasbro game in which two people prop a metal rod between their bellies and attempt, in unison, to swing a plastic "flipper" upside down.

So far on this campaign, he's done the Hip Flip with Carney, Singh (for the third time!) and Green Party co-Leader Elizabeth May.

"We're just waiting for Pierre Poilievre,” Nardwuar told As It Happens host Nil Köksal, adding he’s emailed the Conservative leader’s team at least 10 times. "I'll keep trying. I won't give up, because that's what I do. I want to complete this.”

Earlier today, Singh had some fighting words for Blanchet, calling the Bloc Québécois leader “useless.” Asked about those remarks today, Blanchet didn’t hold his fire.

"If having been in the opposition or being in the opposition is being useless, the NDP has never had any kind of use,” he shot back.

“At least the Bloc Québécois is the proud representative of a proud nation. In a few days from now, I might tell myself, ‘I won't miss this guy,’" Blanchet said of Singh.

As my colleague Janyce McGregor put it earlier, there’s a race within a race happening here.

The two leaders have already given some indication of who they think will form government — Blanchet said outright he expects it to be the Liberals, and Singh said he doesn’t think it will be the Conservatives.

With that in mind, the NDP and Bloc Québécois are spending the 11th hour of the campaign justifying to voters why they’re each the better option to hold the balance of power in a possible minority Parliament.

We were expecting a significant endorsement from a notable business leader within the Muslim community yesterday.

The travelling press corps accompanying the NDP campaign was promised that the founder of Paramount Foods (and a prominent Liberal supporter) Mohamad Fakih would endorse Jagmeet Singh in front of cameras.

As we pulled up to one of the restaurants Fakih owns in Toronto, we were suddenly informed that it was closed to us. Instead, we were told the endorsement would be shared on social media later that day.

Today, your correspondent followed up with Fakih to see what was up.

Fakih said he remains a Liberal and wanted to meet with Singh, but he was not endorsing the NDP as a whole

“It’s a very difficult question because I do not want to harm the NDP, nor do I want to say that I am endorsing the NDP. It's not a blanket endorsement to the NDP. No, it's not true,” Fakih told me.

Fakih said he will be voting strategically in his home riding of Oakville East. He said he’s not pleased with the Liberal incumbent Anita Anand’s views on the war in Gaza, so he is voting for Hailey Ford, the NDP candidate instead.

Happy Friday, Canada! I'm Sarah Sears, a senior producer with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau.

The members of the media who travel with the prime minister (and, on this campaign, the Liberal leader) are used to appearances by RCMP sniffer dogs for security sweeps — both at events, or before flights. A security sweep means laying out all our suitcases, backpacks, purses and camera gear for the dog to sniff — usually looking for explosives.

Even the most hardened or most tired political reporter looks forward to seeing the dogs at work as we fly across the country. (I’ll note that CBC and other media organizations pay their own way on these campaigns, and are charged for the seats on parties’ planes.)

These security sweeps happen before every flight. I have been the unlucky person to have the RCMP handler plant a decoy object in my bag for the dog to find. It can briefly cause a moment of panic if you weren’t paying close attention to know you’ve been set up, but it’s a test for the dog, which gets a reward afterwards.

The dogs, and their handlers, are local to the region the prime minister or leader is visiting, so on a week like this when the Liberals are hopscotching across the country, we get to see lots of friendly and fluffy pups.

I’m Evan, a CBC staff photojournalist. I recently spent an evening in University-Rosedale, Chrystia Freeland’s Toronto riding, while she knocked on doors. She’s hoping to win her seat back for a fourth time.

We started at the campaign office, where there was pizza and the vibe was chatty. Freeland arrived, all smiles, in a red blazer and jeans.

On the street they move fast. Freeland, known to stand on a box in order to reach the microphone at news conferences, walks with purpose. I had to jog to keep up.

When she would ask if she could count on someone’s vote, the answer from many was, “Yes, I’ve already voted.” One couple, who recognized Freeland as she cut through a park, said they expected her to win. She knocked on a tree so as not to jinx it.

At another door, I listened as Freeland had a lengthy conversation with a resident who revealed he had voted early and for the Conservatives. His family, he said, were likely to have voted for her. He admitted he thought she was going to win and, had she parted with former prime minister Justin Trudeau earlier, might have won him over as well.

Trudeau’s name came up a few times in the hour or so I spent tailing Freeland’s team. To what extent his legacy dictates the outcome of this election, for the Liberals and Freeland, remains to be seen.

Blanchet said yesterday that he thinks of himself as an MP in a “foreign parliament.”

Pointing out that the Bloc leader is working hard to hold the balance of power in the Canadian Parliament, one reporter asked Blanchet today if he is, by definition, engaging in foreign interference.

“We are, [whether] we like it or not, part of an artificial country with very little meaning called Canada,” said Blanchet, who was in Shawinigan, Que. — famously the hometown of Liberals such as Jean Chrétien and François-Philippe Champagne.

Blanchet said he calls it a foreign parliament because “this nation is not mine,” and that he doesn’t feel any more at ease in Canadian Parliament than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith would feel in Quebec’s National Assembly.

“As long as we’re part of it and we get elected in this Parliament, we are entitled to any right and privilege and opportunity being provided by the person’s vote. And I will relinquish none of them,” said Blanchet.

A boost for Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet from popular provincial equivalents came late in this campaign, but it sure came in loud.

Late Thursday afternoon, after questions about why Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was not seen tagging along with Blanchet at all during the last month, Plamondon appeared to have found his voice.

In a blistering open letter called "Mark Carney is an existential threat to Quebec," Plamondon accused the Liberal leader of being a continuity candidate to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, with "the same politics that pushed Quebec back" during the last few years.

Plamondon then tore into Liberal immigration policies and accused the party of doubling Canada's debt. He pointed out Carney still intends to pursue legal recourse on two controversial pieces of provincial legislation, the secularism and language protection laws.

"Let's take stock of the danger they represent for Quebec before giving them a blank cheque and a majority government," he warned.

Plamondon is preparing for his own provincial election next year. His sovereignist party is ahead of Premier François Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec party and the currently leaderless provincial Liberals in voters' intentions at this time.

However, in 2021, Legault made his own recommendation to voters in the last federal election, saying the Conservatives were better for the province. Voters here instead largely split their support between the Bloc and the Liberals, suggesting a provincial leader's endorsement may not have the weight a federal candidate would hope for.

Here are the latest public polling developments as summed up by Éric Grenier of TheWrit.ca. He is managing the CBC Poll Tracker throughout the campaign.

“The Liberals are very comfortably leading in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and enjoy a wide lead over the Conservatives in Ontario. They are also narrowly ahead in British Columbia,” Grenier wrote this morning.

“The Conservatives lead in Alberta and the Prairies. The NDP's strongest support is in B.C., but even there the party is poised to suffer significant losses. The Bloc has rebounded a little in Quebec following the French-language debate.”

Singh says he stands behind his decision to not trigger a federal election sooner by allowing the Liberal minority government to stay in power until this spring.

“I could not stomach the idea of Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives forming a majority government. I knew that was going to be bad,” Singh said in response to questions Friday morning in Toronto.

“I knew that it was going to be bad because of their cuts, because of the division, because of the things they wanted.”

Singh said the other reason for his decision not to vote non-confidence against the Liberals was to ensure Canadians actually started to receive dental and pharmacare coverage.

“We wanted more time,” he said. ”We wanted people to actually benefit from the dental care and the pharmacare. We wanted people to actually get those benefits.”

“We wanted to improve people's lives.”

Singh said he thought if people were actually receiving the benefits by the time an election was called, it would make it harder for any future government to take them away.

The NDP pushed the Liberals to bring in the major health programs as part of the confidence and supply agreement between the two parties.

Right now, three million Canadians qualify for the Canadian Dental Care Plan. Before the election was called, the Liberal government promised to expand it to the remaining six million eligible Canadians in May.

And so far, the government has signed pharmacare deals with three provinces — B.C., Manitoba and P.E.I.