FIRST READING: Olivia Chow and David Eby seem to be spinning out in the same way

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

Right now, two left-wing campaigns in different regions of the country appear to be flaming out in similar ways.

Both are NDP or NDP-aligned incumbents. They both entered elections they assumed would be an easy win. And as their early momentum has stalled, they’re both turning to fear tactics in what looks to be a desperate bid to stave off defeat.

In B.C., NDP Premier David Eby’s snap election is now projected to yield his defeat at the hands of a B.C. Conservative majority in Saturday’s vote. And in Toronto, incumbent Mayor (and former NDP MP) Olivia Chow lost a 10-point lead and is now in a dead heat with challenger Brad Bradford days before Monday’s election.

With oblivion now potentially days away for both politicians, Eby is accusing his opposition of being hateful racists plotting to demolish health care, while Chow is accusing her opponent of trying to steal the water.

“This is the most negative, unbelievable crop of hateful candidates that we have ever seen,” Eby said at a Vancouver campaign appearance on Monday.

The B.C. NDP’s attacks against the B.C. Conservatives has included charges that it is filled with secret Western separatists.

Among the evidence is that three candidates for the B.C. Conservatives are members of a Facebook group known as the BC Prosperity Project, an offshoot of the pro-independence Alberta Prosperity Project.

Another NDP ad debuted on Thursday claiming the B.C. Conservatives have a “Trump problem,” citing among other things that some candidates had opposed a standing ban on U.S. alcohol being sold in province-run B.C. Liquor stores.

B.C. NDP messaging has also hammered particularly hard on the idea that health-care spending would suffer under a Conservative government led by Lorne Doerkson.

This included a bizarre Sunday Facebook post stating “NASA has confirmed that Lorne Doerkson’s planned health care cuts are now visible from space.” It then added an editor’s note saying that “the NASA part is satire” and that the alleged cuts were not literally visible from orbit.

The B.C. Conservatives haven’t actually promised any cuts to health care spending; their platform as written would probably result in an even larger deficit than the record overruns posted by Eby.

But B.C. New Democrats have hinged their argument on a B.C. Conservative pledge to cut $2 billion in “contingencies,” which they allege is just a “backdoor healthcare cut.”

Over in Toronto, the Chow camp is spending its final week of the campaign leaning hard into the accusation that a Bradford government would “give away control of our drinking water.”

Specifically, Bradford has proposed to spin off Toronto’s water department into a publicly owned utility that he’s compared to Toronto Hydro, a city-owned corporation that provides Toronto’s electricity.

The Chow team has called this a plan to “privatize” the water supply, and even brought in 90-year-old environmentalist David Suzuki to headline a “protect the water” event on Wednesday.

“We think we are the dominant creature on the planet and it’s all about us. Our very survival and wellbeing depends on what? Clean air, clean water, clean soil that gives us our food, and the energy from the sun that we get through photosynthesis and plants,” said Suzuki.

This morning, environmental titan David Suzuki joined me in speaking about the risks to our safety and pocketbooks that come with Bradford’s proposal to privatize our water.

I’m grateful to have David’s support. His decades of leadership on the environment remind us that… pic.twitter.com/I3hht7Mr8D

— Olivia Chow (@oliviachow) October 21, 2026

(So far, Suzuki hasn’t made any endorsements in B.C., where he actually lives, although he usually ends up endorsing the B.C. Green Party.)

Bradford, for his part, has countered that water privatization is illegal. Under Ontario’s Water and Wastewater Corporations Act, he wouldn’t be allowed to sell private shares in a public utility even if he wanted to; it would have to be wholly owned by a level of Canadian government.

One month ago, Eby and Chow were in much better shape, and for similar reasons; they enjoyed comfortable leads thanks in part to a divided opposition.

Chow faced two opponents seen as centre-right: Bradford and former Conservative MP Chris Alexander. With Alexander taking about one tenth of the dissident vote, it was as recently as mid-September that a poll by Canada Pulse Insights was showing Chow with 51 per cent against 34 per cent for Bradford.

After Alexander pulled out on Oct. 6, however, his support seems to have gradually crept over to the Bradford camp until, as of this week, Liaison Strategies charted him with a two-point lead over Chow (49 per cent vs. 47 per cent).

Just two weeks ago, prediction bettors on Polymarket were giving Chow a 90 per cent to win the Toronto mayoral election. As of press time, she’s down to 52 per cent, with Bradford at 48 per cent.

In B.C., Eby called a snap election on Sept. 22 only hours after the apparent immolation of his B.C. Conservative opposition under the leadership of Kerry-Lynne Findlay.

Following her May victory in the party’s leadership race, Findlay presided over a tumultuous summer that saw the defection of more than one third of her caucus, ultimately forcing her to resign after just four months into the job.

The chaos opened up a brief window in which Eby – who had been hemorrhaging public approval for some time – suddenly had a polling edge of as much as 10 points.

Instead, as soon as the writ was dropped, the lead vanished and Eby is now widely projected for electoral defeat. His party’s Polymarket odds now stand at just 14 per cent against 86 per cent for the B.C. Conservatives.

A Canadian politician appears to have once again forgotten to remove the AI prompts from a public statement.

The Saskatchewan NDP put out a document called the “Big Bold Health Care Plan” and it included these two suspicious passages:

• “Cost every health platform commitment against this return-on-investment logic. So the platform’s affordability story survives scrutiny from the press and the opposition alike.”
• “Publish a plain-language explainer of this note’s numbers alongside the platform costing. The thirteen-to-one figure belongs in a stump speech.”

The sections were noted in a social media post by Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who cited them as evidence that “no one takes the NDP seriously.”

In response, the Saskatchewan NDP took down the document and uploaded a new one without the suspicious sections – but still maintained the party had done nothing wrong and that no AI was used. The charge was “obviously false” and “stupid,” said Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck.

The incident occurs just four months after a Progressive Conservative MLA in New Brunswick gave a speech in the province’s legislative assembly, seemingly unaware that he’d both left in the AI prompts and was now reading them out loud.

“Here’s a more natural flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points,” Bill Oliver said in the most egregious example.

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.