RECAP | Canada election: Health care, home building on the agenda as campaign enters home stretch

With the party leaders’ early events wrapped up and not much on the campaign calendar for this evening, we’re finishing up our live updates for now. If you’re just getting here, you can scroll down to get caught up on the day’s events.

Remember, you have until 9 p.m. local time today to vote at advance polls. All the information about how and where you can do that is on the Elections Canada website.

Tomorrow, we’ll be on the lookout for the Conservatives to release their costed platform. Our colleague J.P. Tasker outlined what to expect, and what questions remain about the platform, in this piece.

The Liberals and NDP released their own platforms during the weekend. You can read more about the Liberal platform here and the NDP platform here.

And you can find everything we know about the major parties’ promises on the most pressing issues on our CBC Platform Tracker.

Thanks for reading. Until next time.

Canadian security officials said today they have spotted a foreign “repression” operation targeting Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate in the Ontario riding of Don Valley North and a vocal critic of Chinese government policies.

The operation features a mock "wanted" poster and disparaging headlines and comments about Tay. Last year, Tay was the target of an arrest warrant issued by Hong Kong police.

Paul Chiang, the former Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville, withdrew from the race earlier this month after suggesting at a Chinese-language news conference in January that people turn Tay in to the Chinese consulate to collect a bounty.

Federal officials told a media briefing today the operation is taking place on social media platforms where Chinese-speaking users in Canada are active, including Facebook, WeChat, TikTok, RedNote and Douyin, a sister-app of TikTok for the Chinese market.

The officials said a panel of senior bureaucrats that monitors elections has concluded that this online activity is not affecting Canada's ability to hold a free and fair vote, including in Don Valley North.

You can read the full story here.

I’m Ashley Burke, a senior reporter covering the Liberal campaign this week.

Carney is back in Atlantic Canada, where he’s dominating in the polls. It’s where his campaign started and he’s kicking off his final week by visiting all of the Maritime provinces in one day.

After a morning announcement in Charlottetown, P.E.I., we’re now at a corn maze in Upper Onslow, N.S., where Carney has joined a group of kids playing road hockey. The event is in the riding of Cumberland-Colchester, which was held by the Conservatives in the last Parliament. The Liberals think they have an opportunity to flip it red this time around.

Security is standing in front of a small group of protesters on the road nearby. They’ve been trying to disrupt Carney’s event, including attempting to drown out his remarks to the crowd by yelling “Carney is a liar.”

Carney addressed the protesters, jokingly saying, “We'll get to the World Economic Forum in a moment,” before putting his finger to his ear.

“Just waiting, listening for the orders coming home now,” he said. “Some things never change. You’ve got to move on.”

Elections Canada says it has removed one of its employees from working at polling stations while it investigates allegations that the person was attempting to influence voters at a polling station in the Greater Toronto Area during the weekend.

Nadeem Mahmoud, spokesperson for King-Vaughan Liberal candidate Mubarak Ahmed, said multiple people reached out to their office saying a woman wearing an Elections Canada badge was approaching people lined up to vote at a polling station in Vaughan, Ont., and encouraging them to vote Conservative.

A spokesperson for Elections Canada said in an emailed statement the worker "will not be present" at any Elections Canada polling stations as it investigates.

You can read more on this story here.

This morning, Poilievre said a Conservative government would build 2.3 million new homes in the next five years. While he has previously detailed the underlying components of his housing plan, that top-line figure is new.

That would require 460,000 new homes to be built across Canada in each of those five years.

According to Statistics Canada, over the last nine years the average number of housing starts was about 224,000 annually — so Poilievre’s promise amounts to roughly doubling the current pace of home construction.

That may sound familiar. Carney has similarly pledged that the Liberals would double annual housing starts, although the Conservative and Liberal visions for getting there are very different.

For the NDP, Singh has promised three million new homes by 2030. That would mean about 600,000 housing starts annually, or roughly two and a half times the average yearly pace of the last nine years.

If you want to know more about how the major parties say they’ll boost home building to such a significant degree, check out the CBC Platform Tracker.

Singh is back in British Columbia promoting his plan to expand the pharmacare program.

“New Democrats in the first year will fight to expand pharmacare to include essential medications,” he said, pitching it as a move toward true universal health care.

Singh defined “essential” as all of the most commonly prescribed medications.

“No one should have to worry about the cost of their medication,” he said.

Singh made a similar announcement earlier this month in Vancouver.

For the last few weeks, Singh has framed his announcements as reasons for electing more New Democrats, so they can push forward their policies in a minority government.

I'm Marina von Stackelberg and I’m travelling with the NDP campaign. We're on Vancouver Island today, where Singh's team has gone hard, hitting many ridings here during the long weekend.

This part of the country is an NDP stronghold, so it is notable that Singh spent this much time campaigning this close to the election in what are usually considered "safe" ridings. Many of these ridings could be at risk.

But for a campaign that felt like it had a sleepy start, I've noticed a renewed sense of momentum here in B.C., with Singh's team pushing harder with more and bigger events. Singh has increasingly changed his messaging too, calling on voters to keep their support with the NDP to prevent electing Conservatives here, and to stop a Liberal majority.

Poilievre returned to the all-important Greater Toronto Area today to sing his campaign’s greatest hits, including his promises to get more homes built, if elected.

From a construction site in Scarborough, Ont., Poilievre promised to build 2.3 million new homes over the next five years.

Poilievre blamed the Liberals — including former housing minister Sean Fraser, who first said he was leaving politics but is running again — for the housing crisis and suggested Carney’s housing plan won’t get Canadians into homes any faster.

Poilievre reiterated his promise to “unleash home building” by cutting the sales taxes on new homes, lowering development charges and rewarding cities “that permit over 15 per cent more home building.”

I’m Raffy Boudjikanian, a senior reporter with CBC News covering the Bloc campaign this week.

"If the Bloc Québécois can collaborate with Mark Carney, a fan of the Nordiques like me can throw a Canadiens jersey on," Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said, letting go of the defunct Quebec City team's jersey before turning his attention to an array of Montreal Canadiens jerseys on the walls of Logo Sport, a sports shop in Quebec City.

Blanchet joked about 3XL and 2XL being too wide for him before finding a size that was more suitable (which he did not disclose to the cameras).

But even as simple an event as picking out a jersey during the Stanley Cup playoffs can be a bit of an operation during an election campaign.

Before Blanchet arrived, a Bloc staffer took photos of different jerseys and sent them to a colleague who was with the leader.

Blanchet chose a classic red jersey.

The cashier told him he, too, is cheering for the Habs while waiting for the Nordiques to return, one day.

"It's like collaborating with Ottawa while awaiting independence," Blanchet said as he paid up.

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 Liberal lead in national polls has held steady, though it has slipped from around six or seven points to about five points on average,” Grenier wrote this morning.

“So far, it doesn't appear that last week's debates shifted voting intentions enough to bump the Liberals out of majority territory as the Conservatives have been unable to break the Liberals' electorally decisive advantage in Ontario. The Bloc Québécois and New Democrats remain on track to suffer significant seat losses.”