WATCH: St. John’s East 2025 Federal Election Candidates Debate

On Wednesday night, The Independent hosted a federal election debate on the Signal Hill Campus of Memorial University, this time with candidates in the riding of St. John’s East (watch our first debate in Corner Brook, in the Long Range Mountains riding, here, and a fact-check of that debate here). As with Monday’s debate, just three of the five candidates on the ballot participated: Otis Crandell (Green), Sam Crete (Communist), and Mary Shortall (NDP). They answered questions on topics ranging from the economy, jobs, the energy transition, immigration and population growth, racial justice, and transportation.

Once again, the candidates representing Canada’s two biggest political parties declined to take part in the debate. Liberal Joanne Thompson, the incumbent, won the seat in 2021, garnering 4,000 more votes than runner-up Mary Shortall. Conservative David Brazil is a former provincial minister of Transportation and Works who previously served as the interim leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador from 2021 to 2023.

St. John’s East has elected Conservative MPs in the past, including Ross Reid and Norm Doyle, but has seen a string of NDP and Liberal MP wins over the last two decades.

As was the case during Monday’s event, this debate was convivial and relaxed. All three candidates fall squarely on the “progressive” or left-wing of the political spectrum and clearly share many of the same viewpoints on the major issues dominating this election cycle: the economy, cost of living challenges, worsening social supports, and the environment.

The need to build a more resilient and self-sufficient economy in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats was front-and-centre during the debate. All candidates agreed that some level of “Trump-proofing” is needed for Canada’s economy, whether that takes the form of expanded worker supports, subsidies for domestic or local companies, or, as Communist Party candidate Sam Crete argued, the outright nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, including energy and telecommunications. For her part, NDP candidate Mary Shortall made the strong point that affordability and joblessness were issues well before Trump launched his trade war—the tariffs are just making the problems worse. Similarly, the Green Party’s Otis Crandell spoke convincingly about tax reform and cracking down on tax avoidance by the country’s biggest corporations (according to a 2022 report by Canadians for Tax Fairness, Canada loses as much as $30 billion per year to corporate tax avoidance).

The vast majority of the claims made by the candidates were accurate, but some of the statements were ideologically-driven and lacked clarity. Others were overstated or aspirational, lacking key details on feasibility.

Below, we set the record straight on some of these comments.

On taxation and corporate subsidies

According to the Green Party’s Otis Crandell, “Many large companies do not get taxed, they get subsidized.” While corporate subsidies exist in Canada (estimates suggest around $30 billion in various forms annually), most large corporations do pay taxes—albeit often at lower effective rates due to deductions, credits, and loopholes. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer and Corporate Tax Gap reports, some multinational firms use tax havens and aggressive tax planning, but outright non-taxation is rare and not systemic across all large firms. Crandell’s statement glosses over the nuance between legal tax avoidance, evasion, and government subsidies. So, his claim is mostly true, but exaggerated.

On housing

Housing was discussed passionately during the early part of the debate, and all three candidates cited it as a key concern of voters in the riding. Sam Crete of the Communist Party had the most to say on the issue, calling for “an enormous social housing project to make two million social housing units.” While the scale of Canada’s housing crisis demands bold ideas, building two million social housing units would be an unprecedented undertaking. For comparison, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has estimated that 3.5 million new homes are needed by 2030 to restore affordability. But those are not exclusively social housing units—a broad term covering publicly owned or heavily subsidized housing. Canada currently builds about 20,000–30,000 social or community housing units per year. To reach two million would require massive increases in federal and provincial funding, labour availability in construction, significant zoning reform, and supply chain stabilization, all of which are acknowledged bottlenecks that Crete did not address. Overall, his plan is aspirational, but lacks key details on feasibility.

On energy jobs and ‘just transition’

In various ways, each of the candidates expressed that oil and gas workers can and should transition to green energy jobs, with guaranteed support. This aligns with broad expert consensus on the need for a “just transition” for oil and gas workers, especially in Atlantic Canada. But transitioning is not just about retraining. It requires regional investment in green industries, long-term planning (which is currently inconsistent), and worker mobility and wage comparability—after all, green jobs don’t always pay what oil jobs do. So, while just transition measures to compensate for unintended social disadvantages that are caused by changing economic structures have been discussed, even at the federal level, their implementation remains incomplete and untested. This means that the candidates’ claims, while ambitious, lack clarity on the current constraints.

On immigration

On the subject of immigration and the treatment of newcomers to Canada, Sam Crete declared that, “We need to ensure there are never any deportations.” While morally defensible, Canada’s foundational immigration law (the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act) includes provisions for deportation in cases of criminality, fraud, or expired status. Suggesting an end to all deportations would require wholesale immigration law reform, and raises questions about enforcement, national security, and international obligations. No major political party or legal scholar has seriously proposed this at scale, so Crete’s statement is ideologically driven and legally implausible without major overhaul.

Hearing only from progressive candidates offered a beneficial glimpse into the diversity of ideas that exist within Canada’s political spectrum, free from the usual push and pull of centrist or right-wing talking points. While this made for a more collegial debate, it also meant less of the ideological friction we have seen in the federal leaders’ debates, the second of which takes place tonight. With less than two weeks to go before Canadians cast a ballot in this historic election, the absence of the Liberal and Conservative candidates was more than a little disappointing—especially for voters in St. John’s East.

The Independent’s debates and federal election coverage is supported by the Covering Canada: Election 2025 Fund.