RECAP | Canada election: Poilievre's vow to override Charter in crime crackdown draws fire from rivals

Here’s a quick recap of what happened today on the campaign trail.

Poilievre said he’ll invoke the notwithstanding clause — which allows Ottawa or the provinces to temporarily override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — to ensure people convicted of multiple murders die in jail. While the clause has been used at the provincial level, invoking it at the federal level would be historic and highly controversial.

His opponents aren’t crazy about the idea. Carney called it “a dangerous step,” while Singh said he doesn’t think the clause should be invoked. Blanchet said that anyone running for prime minister should try to improve laws instead of “removing yourself from their application.”

Carney, meanwhile, was also asked about Liberal staffers who planted buttons bearing Trump-style slogans at a conservative conference last week. He said the staffers have been “reassigned.”

The initial scoop was published by CBC reporter Kate McKenna, who overheard one of the staffers involved talking about it at an Ottawa bar. One of the buttons said “stop the steal,” an apparent reference to Donald Trump’s denial of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results.

Here’s today’s story on Carney’s response. We’ll see you tomorrow!

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that “sometimes the truth hurts” when asked about criticisms of Poilievre’s campaign.

Ford’s former campaign manager Kory Teneycke has been outspoken in his criticism of the federal Conservative campaign, saying on a recent podcast appearance that “blowing a 25-point lead and being like 10 points down is campaign malpractice at the highest level.”

Asked today about those remarks, Ford made some eyebrow-raising comments of his own.

“[Teneycke is] tough as nails, but he's the best campaign manager in the country and, to be very frank, if Kory was running that campaign, I don't think Mr. Poilievre would be in the position he's in right now,” said Ford.

“There's still a lot of time left. We still have debates. At the end of the day, the people will decide which way they want this country to move forward. But sometimes the truth hurts.”

Poilievre’s chief strategist is Jenni Byrne, who Teneycke worked with during Stephen Harper’s 2015 campaign. The Conservatives’ loss to the Liberals that year left many in the party with hard feelings, as my colleagues previously reported.

Poilievre, earlier today, said he would use the notwithstanding clause to introduce consecutive life sentences for people convicted of multiple murders.

It would revive a Harper-era policy that would give judges the discretion to hand out consecutive, 25-year blocks of parole ineligibility.

Nick Cake, a criminal defence lawyer and a former Crown counsel, said that Poilievre’s approach doesn’t “need to happen, because it already exists.”

“If you commit a murder — a first- or a second-degree murder — the mandatory minimum sentence is life in prison,” Cake said, adding that parole eligibility doesn’t automatically mean a person will be granted parole.

“They’re still in jail for the rest of their life until they get parole and, of course, there’s a whole number of hoops an offender would have to jump through in order to be granted parole. It’s not guaranteed,” he said.

Naiwen Cao works at the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary and just became a Canadian citizen in January.

He immigrated from China and will be voting in an election for the first time in his life. Cao says he was never encouraged to vote when he lived in China.

"I feel a sense of responsibility," he said. "I must hear different voices. And I'm very excited to even discuss my vote, before casting the vote, because for me, the process is more important than the result."

While he is concerned about Trump's annexation threats, Cao says he is watching for the parties' stances on immigration.

He isn't opposed to cutting immigration levels, but thinks that newcomers need to be better integrated into society. More job opportunities, access to affordable housing and health care for new immigrants are what Cao believes the party leaders need to address.

Hello! Producer Michelle Song here.

We spoke to a few new Canadian voters about the issues that they are focusing on, as it will be the first time they ever vote in a federal election. And they say it's all about Canada-U.S. relations.

Gaurav Marik became a Canadian citizen in 2023, but left India about a decade ago. Initially, affordability was one of the most important issues for him. But now he says the economic impact of tariffs and the threats to annex Canada are top of mind.

"I feel that when someone attacks you, and especially externally, you feel much more guarded and you try to defend, saying that, OK, this is an identity … we all stand for," he said.

Evaristo Vocaj came to Canada from Albania. He has been working at Calgary's Centre for Newcomers for five years now.

He says maintaining the spirit of being Canadian and fighting for Canadian values is weighing heavily on him before he heads to the ballot box.

Vocaj has always been politically engaged, but said that after going through the difficult process of becoming Canadian, voting matters even more for immigrants like him.

"Because of that long process that we've gone through, we feel like we deserve this now and we feel like we definitely have started feeling, more recently as well, that spirit of being Canadian," Vocaj said.

Carney's time living abroad, and where he paid his taxes, has become the focus of Conservative scrutiny in recent weeks.

The Liberal campaign said today that Carney has renounced the foreign citizenships he previously held. Carney gained Irish citizenship decades ago via his family ancestry, and he got his U.K. passport in 2018 while working overseas as the governor of the Bank of England.

"His other citizenships were renounced before Mr. Carney was sworn in as prime minister," a Liberal campaign spokesperson said.

During a morning stop in Quebec, Carney was also asked about his residency after his stint at the Bank of England ended. He said he returned to Canada in 2020, and has lived in Ottawa since then. He also stressed that he has paid his taxes in Canada during that time.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, when asked about Poilievre’s plan to use the notwithstanding clause, had this to say:

“When you are in the position of a person that wants to be prime minister of Canada, you should rely more on improving [the] justice system and laws than removing yourself from their application.”

“It hasn’t been conceived for the federal government to use it against federal law,” said Blanchet.

Blanchet also spoke briefly about the clause’s significance in Quebec, referencing what’s known among provincial nationalists as la nuit des longs couteaux, or “the night of the long knives.”

That evening, which occurred during Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s 1981 constitutional talks, saw former justice minister Jean Chrétien strike a deal to patriate the Canadian Constitution while agreeing to include the notwithstanding clause as a compromise with the provinces, who were worried a federal Charter would infringe on their autonomy.

Former Quebec premier René Lévesque wasn’t present at the talks and said he felt betrayed, refusing to sign the deal between the provinces and federal government as a result. The incident fuelled separatist sentiment in Quebec for many years afterwards and is considered a turning point in Quebec’s relationship to the rest of the country.

Good morning. I’m a senior producer with the Parliamentary bureau’s digital team.

We’ve just learned about the topics for the French- and English-language leaders’ debates, which are happening Wednesday and Thursday nights.

CBC/Radio-Canada, which is producing the debates for the Leaders’ Debates Commission, announced the following list of topics:

For the French debate:

• Cost of living.
• Energy and climate.
• Trade war.
• Identity and sovereignty.
• Immigration and foreign affairs.

For the English debate:

• Affordability and the cost of living.
• Energy and climate.
• Leading in a crisis.
• Public safety and security.
• Tariffs and threats to Canada.

The parties participated in draws last week to determine podium positions, as well as the order of arrivals and post-debate scrums.

Each debate will be two hours long, without commercials. Both will be broadcast live from the atrium of Maison de Radio-Canada in Montreal.

Asked about Poilievre’s promise to invoke Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to push through criminal justice reforms, Singh said, “I think we should not be using the notwithstanding clause."

“It undermines the Charter. The Charter’s important,” he said, adding that we “obviously” need to have “severe penalties” for people who commit serious crimes.

He said the NDP has raised concerns about the notwithstanding clause being used more often at the provincial level, and has tried to restrict its use.

In 2022, NDP MP Matthew Green called for an emergency debate over Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s plan to invoke the notwithstanding clause during a dispute with education workers in the province. Green was denied.

“What we’re focused on is how do we prevent crime before it happens,” Singh said today, adding that the NDP wants to stop illegal drugs and guns from flowing into the country.

Carney was asked this morning about Poilievre's vow to use the notwithstanding clause to introduce consecutive life sentences for offenders convicted of multiple murders. The Liberal leader called it a "very dangerous step.”

"We have a Charter of rights and fundamental freedoms in this country. And it is the responsibility of the prime minister and the government of Canada, in my view, to defend that Charter, those fundamental rights that Canadians enjoy," Carney said.

"Politicizing certain issues with respect to fundamental rights is a slippery slope that leads to further politicization."

A sentencing provision introduced in 2011 by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government gave judges discretion to hand out consecutive, 25-year blocks of parole ineligibility in cases where an offender has committed multiple first-degree murders. But that provision in the law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2022.