Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents -Once again, the polls suggest Mark Carney's government could win a majority if there were an election right now. 338Canada suggests the Liberals could win as many as 185 seats, while the Conservatives shrink back to 125. In North Island–Powell River, Aaron Gunn is still projected as the winner with 36% of the popular vote, according to 338Canada, but the Liberals and NDP are right behind him with 30% each. Some believe Canada may have a spring election.

Gunn said, "If I were a betting man, I would bet there'd be an election within the next two years for sure, but this spring we'll see. I think it will be up to Prime Minister Carney and the Liberal government. Speaking as a Conservative, I don't think we're going to force an election this spring."

Jennifer Lash, the Liberal candidate in our riding during the last election, explained, "When you have a minority government, there's always speculation about whether there's going to be an election or not. There's a lot of talk, but I think that's also a conversation that's happening very much inside the Ottawa bubble of what's going to happen."

"I think there are two things we need to look at really carefully. One is, I don't think Canadians really want to go back to the polls. It's expensive; it's time consuming. I think in general, if Canadians feel that government is functioning and getting the job done, then they would like to see the work being done as opposed to spending time in an election."

"The other thing is, in the past week both the Conservatives and the Liberals have talked about how they're going to work more collaboratively to try to get some key pieces of legislation through — pieces that could have been confidence votes and caused the House to fall if they didn't have the votes."

"I think they're all hands on deck right now to try to avoid an election and get through some of these key pieces that need to be done in order to help us deal with this rupture that we're going through, as the Prime Minister calls it. Having said that, things happen. If the Conservatives start to block things and it becomes very challenging for this government to get anything done, I could see the Prime Minister going to the Governor General and saying, 'We need to have another election because this House, as it's currently formatted, is not being effective and we can't run the country.'"