Former central banker Mark Carney is set to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after securing a clear mandate from the Liberal Party to take Canada to the mat against the United States.
The parliamentary outsider won a landslide victory at the Liberal Leadership Event in Ottawa on Sunday, receiving 131,674 votes, over 85% of his party’s internal electorate.
Standing up to the White House is a central pillar of his rhetoric as he prepares to be sworn in next week. Carney claims that the U.S. has become a “country [Canada] can no longer trust” under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
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“Donald Trump, as we know, has put unjustified tariffs on what we build, on what we sell, on how we make a living,” Carney said at the event. “He’s attacking Canadian families, workers, and businesses, and we cannot let him succeed, and we won’t.”
“We didn’t ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” he added. “The Americans, they should make no mistake — in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”
Carney is not a member of the Canadian parliament. Instead, his professional resume boasts a career marked with high-profile financial policy positions, first as governor of the Bank of Canada and then as governor of the Bank of England. He has also worked for Goldman Sachs and as the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance.
How long Carney will serve as prime minister is unclear. Canada needs to hold elections by Oct. 20, but the government could call an election sooner. His lack of a seat in parliament will create minor logistical problems, such as an inability to participate in lawmakers’ debates and votes. He would also be ineligible to participate in his parliament’s Question Period. There is some pressure for Carney, therefore, to call the election sooner to secure a tangible mandate from the Canadian public.
The situation parallels the resignation of Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, in 1984. The elder Trudeau stepped down and was replaced by Josh Turner, a former finance minister who never held elected office. Turner was among Canada’s shortest-serving prime ministers, and his election was widely regarded as a critical misstep for the Liberal Party.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has dismissed the transition from Trudeau to Carney as no change and a misstep toward weakness that will please the ever-aggressive Trump.
“And make no mistake, Donald Trump will have a big smile on his face as he exploits all of Carney’s many conflicts to attack Canadian workers and Canadian jobs,” he said following Carney’s election.
Carney is dismissive of his rival, accusing Conservatives themselves of bending the knee to Trump and forsaking national interests.
“Pierre Poilievre would let our planet burn. That’s not leadership; it’s ideology,” the soon-to-be prime minister said of his political opponent. “Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered. Because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”
The election of Carney, who was educated at Harvard and Oxford, is a strong step toward even more technocratic management of a country seriously threatened by the prospect of a trade war with its southern neighbor.
The White House accuses the Canadian government of failing to prevent the illegal movement of migrants and narcotics across its borders into the U.S., an assertion Canadians criticize as unserious.
With approximately 1.5 million illegal immigrants having poured into the U.S. since former President Joe Biden’s inauguration, only 24,000 came through Canada. The rate of trafficking drugs such as fentanyl is similarly disproportionate at the northern and southern borders.
Trump has routinely criticized Canada as America’s future “51st state” after meetings with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago revealed that the prime minister believed his country could become insolvent under the president’s proposed tariffs.
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Trudeau does not see his counterpart’s rhetoric as superficial insults, expressing a sincere concern that Trump intends to bring Canada under U.S. control through economic brute force.
“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” Trudeau told reporters earlier this month. “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us.”