Good morning. The far-right Alternative for Germany party is on track to capture second place in Sunday’s federal election – more on that below, along with the PEI Premier’s abrupt resignation and waste giant GFL’s tumultuous year. But first:

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Last week, 80 years after American soldiers liberated Dachau, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance visited the memorial to the concentration camp and said the “unspeakable evil” committed there must “never happen again.” The next day, he flew to Munich, met the leader of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) – which has flirted with Nazi slogans – and insisted that European politicians stop sidelining parties deemed to be extreme. “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” Vance told the Munich Security Conference. “There’s no room for firewalls.”

It did not go down well. There were audible gasps in the conference hall. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – whom Vance didn’t bother to meet – said that “a commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD.” It means “never again fascism, never again racism, never again war of aggression.”

But Scholz is unlikely to be Chancellor much longer. His coalition government collapsed in November over spending disagreements, and on Sunday, German voters will elect a new parliament. Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats are currently polling in third place at 15 per cent. The centre-right Christian Democrats, alongside its Bavarian sister party, lead with 30-per-cent support. And at 20 per cent, the AfD are on track to be the second-largest presence in Germany’s Bundestag. No other party has seen a greater jump in popular support since the past federal election.

A dark mood

Sunday’s vote unfolds against a backdrop of serious economic anxiety. Energy prices are rising, thanks to Germany’s reliance on Russian gas, and companies are downsizing, with nearly 250,000 manufacturing jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. The country has posted negative GDP growth for two straight years. Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on foreign vehicles has further rattled Germany, which exports €36.8-billion in cars to the U.S. each year.

That economic unease coincides with a rise in anti-immigrant anger, fuelled by a recent series of deadly attacks by asylum-seekers in Germany, but which can be traced back to then-chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome more than 1 million refugees from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan a decade ago. “Make it absolutely clear to the whole world: German borders are closed,” AfD leader Alice Weidel said at a campaign rally in January. She’s taken up the term “remigration,” which is widely understood to mean deportations.

Weidel found a brief ally in that cause in German opposition leader Friedrich Merz. Together, they pushed through a hard-line immigration motion last month that included daily deportation flights – and that broke the long-standing taboo in German politics about working with ultra-nationalist groups. (That’s the firewall Vance referred to.) The motion failed amid dissent in Merz’s own party and a rebuke from Scholz, who called co-operation with the AfD an “inexcusable mistake.” Weidel countered that it gave her party new legitimacy.

Cracks in the firewall

The AfD is becoming harder to ignore in Germany. Last summer, Björn Höcke led the AfD to victory in Thuringia – the first time a far-right party won a state election in the country’s postwar history. Last Sunday, Weidel took the stage in a prime-time debate watched by millions of voters – the first time the AfD has done that, too. Young voters are powering the rise of the party, drawn in part to the AfD’s criticism of Germany’s culture of remembrance. Höcke has claimed that Germans possessed “the mentality of a totally vanquished people.” Elon Musk, who endorsed the AfD, appeared by video at a campaign rally last month and said it was time for the country to “move beyond” its Nazi guilt.

Merz – the clear front-runner in Sunday’s election – seems to have had a change of heart about the AfD, and now says his party would “never” work with it. Most likely, Merz’s Christian Democrats will form a governing coalition with Scholtz’s Social Democrats and the left-leaning Greens, shutting out the AfD from power. But analysts and politicians agree that Germany’s mainstream parties will have to act fast to address voters’ concerns about the economy and immigration before the next federal election in 2029. Otherwise, “we will finally slide into right-wing populism,” Scholz said at another debate on Wednesday. “And I am standing here to avoid exactly that.”

Patrick Dovigi – founder of the waste giant GFL – accrued billions of dollars of debt, had his house and his offices shot at, saw his garbage trucks set on fire, and somehow managed to still win back investors. Read more about his company’s made-for-TV ordeal here.

At home: Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King announced that he’ll resign today, saying his nearly six years on the job have taken a heavy toll.