Trudeau calls snap election, seeks third term as Canadian PM

OTTAWA -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday called a snap national vote for Sept 20, less than two years after he led the Liberal Party to a second term in government.

The announcement also came more than two years before he would be required to call an election under a fixed-election-date law.

"Canadians deserve to have their voices heard ... in this extraordinarily consequential historic moment," Trudeau said, referring to the choices voters must make in terms of which party is best to lead the country toward recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, now in its fourth wave in Canada.

Under his Liberal government's watch, Canada has become a global leader in vaccination rates, with almost 82 percent of eligible Canadians, aged 12 and older, having received at least one dose as of Aug 7, and 70 percent fully vaccinated.

On Friday, Trudeau's government announced that it would require travelers on domestic planes, trains and cruise ships to be fully vaccinated, and make vaccination mandatory for federal public servants and potential employees of federally regulated industries, such as banks and airlines, affecting more than a million people.

The current election campaign will cost $400 million, which for Canada's opposition parties, is an unnecessary expense and exercise and a raw power-grab by Trudeau to restore the majority of seats which his Liberals held in the House of Commons following the 2015 election, but which were reduced to a minority in the 2019 election.

Earlier in the summer, public-opinion polls showed the Liberals were poised to regain a majority government with 170 out of the 338 seats in the Commons.

But over the past week, the margin has shrunk between them and the Official Opposition Conservatives led by Erin O'Toole, now in his first election campaign to become prime minister.

The left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) could also prove to be a wild card in the 36-day election campaign -- the minimum period required by Canadian law.

Led by the popular Jagmeet Singh, the first non-white leader of a federal Canadian party, the NDP shares the progressive-voter space with the Liberals and has already promised universal drug coverage, a guaranteed livable income and a wealth tax -- campaign pledges that could attract younger voters who in 2015 threw their support behind Trudeau.

Canada's 44th general election campaign will be different from any other as all political parties will be forced to adapt to the pandemic realities of limiting public gatherings.