As Canada’s federal election approaches, the Bitcoin candidate’s odds appear fleeting, but is there more to the story?
TORONTO, ON (April 16 20205) Canada’s next federal election begins April 28—in just under two weeks.
According to CBC’s poll tracker, the Liberal Party is leading national polls with 44% of the vote, well over the Conservative Party’s 38%. The site projects that Liberals “would be highly likely to win the most seats, and very likely a majority government, if an election were held today”—196 seats to the Conservatives’ 123 seats.
“The Conservatives are holding at more support than they’ve had in the last three elections, but it is not high enough to win when the Liberals have picked up so much of the Bloc Québécois and NDP vote,” the site reads.
If true (this is coming from the CBC) it’s a brutal turn of events for the political right, which held an absolutely dominant voter share of 44% as recently as January, compared to just 20% for the Liberals.
What’s changed since then? Two things—the first being leadership. Justin Trudeau is no longer Prime Minister or Liberal leader, replaced by Mark Carney, who is widely perceived as the less idealistic and more pragmatic of the pair.
After years of exhaustion with Trudeau, rounds of political scandals and an approval rating of just 22% prior to his resignation, replacing Trudeau with a new face has seemingly (and surprisingly) given the Liberals a blank slate.
The other thing to change is geopolitics. Aside from directly influencing the performance of bitcoin and all asset markets, Trump’s tariff agenda has dominated Canadian news and politics for months. While Canadians search for a leader to firmly stand against Trump in the trade war, some are convinced that Carney will make a better diplomat to handle the negotiations—unlike Poilievre, who Carney has accused of “worshipping the man” and in some ways, resembling Trump.
Combine that with how Carney has now scrapped the carbon tax that Poilievre long lambasted, and some commentators think the Conservative leader’s campaign has been left dry of a compelling narrative. While Canadians once viewed Poilievre as the fix for Trudeau’s inflationary economic policy, many now see Carney as the economics expert who can guide Canada out of difficult economic times.
This is all, at least, according to the mainstream.
It’s no secret that bitcoiners don’t like Carney—primarily for the same reasons that he is gaining respect.
Carney is a central banker. He served as Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and later became Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. He also spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs.
While views in commercial banking are starting to change, central bankers worldwide have consistently viewed Bitcoin in a negative light. From the Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank (ECB), their leaders have always dismissed bitcoin as a failed money, maintained that it is a highly speculative asset, and supported active control over the money supply, which bitcoin does not allow.
Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB and friend of Carney, has famously said about Bitcoin, “If there is an escape, that escape will be used”.
Carney is cut from the same globalist cloth. In 2018, he called Bitcoin’s fixed supply a “serious deficiency” that made it volatile and unsuitable as money, and said it “has pretty much failed” as money in a Bloomberg interview that same year. In 2021, he also suggested that cryptocurrencies could “destabilize financial systems” if left unchecked.
Unsurprisingly, there is one type of currency Carney favours: central bank digital currency.
“The most likely future of money is a central bank stablecoin, known as a central bank digital currency or CBDC,” wrote Carney in his book Values.
What goes unsaid is that CBDCs are a precursor to a social credit scoring system. They’re easily programmable and make things like limits on your fuel and red meat purchases trivial. Another Covid-style lockdown? At the flick of a switch you’ll only be allowed to spend your credits at Wal-Mart.
The most widely used CBDC in the world today is China’s Digital Yuan.
Then there’s Poilievre. While he hasn’t spoken about Bitcoin in some time, he praised it during his conservative leadership campaign in 2022, encouraging people to be free to use Bitcoin as an alternative to the inflationary dollar.
Poilievre is also famous in the Bitcoin community for lecturing Parliament about how money printing causes inflation, praising small businesses that adopted Bitcoin, and has appeared on Bitcoin podcasts.
On CBDCs, Poilievre has outright promised to ban their existence if he were to become Prime Minister.
These leaders’ views on Bitcoin and CBDCs could hardly be more contrasting. And although the “pro-Bitcoin” party won in the United States last November, and has now established a strategic bitcoin reserve, the literal odds of a Bitcoin victory in Canada are appearing slim—according to Polymarket—which shows Carney as a heavy favourite with a 74% chance of winning.
But, there’s more to this story.
Commenting directly on the Polymarket odds for the Canadian election, Elon Musk said, “Unfortunately, propaganda works,” presumably referring to how the mainstream narrative favouring Carney has swayed the Polymarket odds. The odds on Polymarket are determined entirely by the supply and demand of those betting.
Notably, Polymarket itself—despite its growing popularity as a reference—is not technically available to Canadians or Americans.
Where are we going with all this?
To data we can actually verify. Specifically, rally attendance.
The rally attendance for each candidate heavily calls into question the validity of the mainstream narrative, the polls and the Polymarket odds favouring Carney.
For Poilievre, reports from outside the campaign cite events ranging from 1,500 to 12,000 attendees, the biggest occurring in Edmonton. Other numbers include 3,500 in Winnipeg, 4,500 in Hamilton, and 6,500 in Oshawa.
Carney’s rallies are much smaller with 600 in Winnipeg, 1,300 in Richmond, 2,300 in Calgary, and up to 400-500 in smaller venues like Victoria.
While both sides have faced scrutiny for exaggerating numbers, there’s no denying the obvious. Poilievre is holding rallies in industrial warehouses while Carney rallies take place in hotel conference rooms. Poilievre’s smallest rally (1,500 in Brampton) is almost on par with Carney’s largest (2,300 in Calgary).
For those skimming we’ll lay it out once more. Poilievre’s largest rally of 12,000 in Edmonton (some reported up to 15,000) completely and utterly dwarfs Carney’s largest rally of 2,300 in nearby Calgary, leaving us with more questions than answers.
Ultimately, Poilievre and Carney’s division on the subject of Bitcoin and CBDCs makes this an election not just about Bitcoin, but about freedom, independence, and the people vs the globalist elite.
As Carney himself once said…
“People will charge me with being an elitist and a globalist … that’s exactly what we need.”
Debates between federal leaders start today in Montreal (french language debate), with the english debate taking place tomorrow, April 17.
Stay humble,
Andrew
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