Canada elects Liberal Party prime minister; life issues fall by wayside

Canada’s prime minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney applauds at a victory party in Ottawa, Ontario, on April 29, 2025. Prime Minister Mark Carney won Canada’s election on April 28, 2025, leading his Liberal Party to a new term in power. / Credit: DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 29, 2025 / 11:57 am (CNA).

Canadians voted Monday to elect the Liberal Party back into power, making the party’s leader, Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada following a tight race against Conservative Party challenger Pierre Poilievre and a campaign in which tariff policies by the Trump administration loomed large.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) projected the victory for Carney approximately 15 minutes after the polls closed on Monday evening, Associated Press reported, marking a dramatic turnaround for the Liberal Party, which was not favored to win earlier in the run-up to the election after over nine years of leadership under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Carney, a former central banker, will continue on as prime minister after the win, taking on the role last month when Trudeau resigned. According to the BBC, the Liberal Party is projected to win 168 seats in Parliament but needs 172 to form a majority government.

While Carney is a practicing Catholic, he dissents from the Church’s teaching on abortion. On the campaign trail he stated that his faith would not lead him to interfere in “a woman’s right to choose,” which he has said he supports “absolutely, unreservedly.”

For his part, Poilievre also stated leading up to the election that his party would not pass laws restricting abortion.

In the run-up to the election, Bishop William McGrattan, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, told EWTN News that Carney’s position is symptomatic of the “disconnect” that is seen among many of the country’s politicians who claim to be living according to their faith.

In advance of the election, the nation’s bishops’ conference released a statement in which it noted “there are many issues which we, as Catholics, are called to consider thoroughly when voting. Among them is the fundamental right to life — from conception to natural death. This right is being undermined by the lack of legal protection for the unborn, the ongoing expansion of eligibility for medical assistance in dying (MAID), and the insufficient access to quality palliative care for those who are suffering at the end of life.”

On the subject of MAID, McGrattan told EWTN News correspondent Mark Irons that “we want to make sure that the politicians are aware of the fact that we do not want this to be expanded in terms of eligibility and even to consider repealing some of the laws that they put in place.”

During the campaign, Carney remained largely silent on the subject of assisted suicide, while Poilievre stated that he would neither prevent nor expand access to the practice.

“All these leaders, none of them are willing to champion the right to life,” Matthew Wojciechowski, the vice president of Campaign Life Coalition, told Irons. Wojciechowski said he had been encouraging Catholics to focus on their individual members of Parliament, as some Conservatives do hold pro-life views.

Following Trudeau’s resignation amid the country’s major economic crisis, polling had suggested that the Conservative Party led by Poilievre would overtake the beleaguered Liberal Party. However, the Liberal Party began to surge ahead in wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs and calls to make Canada the 51st state.