Nowhere has Donald Trump’s return as US president shaken up domestic politics quite as much as in Canada. It is remarkable enough that Mark Carney, a former central banker with no experience in politics or parliamentary seat, has been catapulted into the prime minister’s job with at least a fighting chance of winning an election that had seemed lost to his Liberal party. More remarkable still is that a Canadian leader should be faced with such a moment of peril for the country’s economy and sovereignty, after Trump’s tariff threats and talk of turning Canada into America’s 51st state. “The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country,” he said in his acceptance speech. “Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form.”
Canada’s political landscape has been redrawn in the two months since Justin Trudeau stood down in the face of unhappiness over the Liberals’ handling of immigration, inflation and housing costs. Those domestic concerns have been eclipsed by Trump’s swingeing on-again, off-again tariffs and annexation talk — which many Canadians are taking very seriously. For more than a year, the opposition Conservative party and its Trump-inspired leader Pierre Poilievre had led Trudeau’s Liberals by up to 20 points or more. But the dangers the US president poses to Canada have revitalised the centre-left party, cutting the Conservative lead over a Carney-led Liberal party to 8 points.
The Liberals’ lack of a parliamentary majority means Carney will almost certainly call an early election, and political wisdom suggests it makes sense for him to try to build on his party’s momentum. It is in the country’s best interest, too, to rapidly choose a new government with a firm mandate. An election that had until recently been expected to cement a Canadian swing — as in many other western democracies — to the populist right is now set to hinge on which of the leading candidates voters trust most to stand up to Trump.