Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday called early elections for April 28, pledging to defeat US President Donald Trump’s drive to annex the US’ huge northern neighbor.
Carney, a former central banker, was chosen by Canada’s centrist Liberal Party to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, but he has never faced the nation’s broader electorate.
That is to change as Carney brought parliamentary elections forward several months from October. He made it clear that the barrage of trade and sovereignty threats coming from the US president would be the focus of his campaign.
Photo: Reuters
“I’ve just requested that the governor general dissolve parliament and call an election for April 28. She has agreed,” Carney said in a speech to the nation, referring to King Charles’s representative in Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth.
In power for a decade, the Liberal government had slid into deep unpopularity, but Carney is hoping to ride a wave of Canadian patriotism to a new majority.
“I’m asking Canadians for a strong, positive mandate to deal with President Trump,” Carney said, adding that the US president “wants to break us, so America can own us. We will not let that happen.”
“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” Carney said.
“Our response must be to build a strong economy and a more secure Canada,” he added, pledging not to meet Trump until he recognizes Canadian sovereignty.
Trump has riled his northern neighbor by repeatedly dismissing its borders as artificial and urging it to join the US as the 51st state.
The ominous remarks have been accompanied by Trump’s trade war, with the imposition of tariffs on imports from Canada threatening to severely damage its economy.
Domestic issues, such as the cost of living and immigration usually dominate Canadian elections, but this time one key topic tops the list in the nation of 41 million — who can best handle Trump.
The US president’s open hostility toward his northern neighbor — a NATO ally and historically one of his nation’s closest partners — has upended the Canadian political landscape.
Trudeau was deeply unpopular when he announced he was stepping down, with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives seen as election favorites just weeks ago, but since Trump’s threats, the polls have spectacularly narrowed in favor of Carney’s Liberals and analysts are now describing the race as too close to call.
“Many consider this to be an existential election, unprecedented,” said Felix Mathieu, a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg.
Poilievre, 45, is a career politician, first elected when he was only 25. A veteran tough-talking campaigner, he has sometimes been tagged as a libertarian and a populist.
Poilievre — seen by some as too similar to Trump in style and substance — set the tone on Sunday.
“I want the opposite of what Donald Trump wants,” the Conservative leader said in Toronto, promising to base his campaign on bread-and-butter economic issues and the worries of “regular people.”
Commencing his campaign in Labrador and Newfoundland, Carney told supporters that the nation needed “big change” to turn its economy around and “fight Donald Trump’s tariffs.”
Carney, 60, has spent his career outside of electoral politics. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs and went on to lead Canada’s central bank and then the Bank of England.
Smaller opposition parties could suffer if Canadians seek to give a large mandate to one of the big two, to strengthen their hand against Trump.
The US president professes not to care who wins the Canadian election, while pushing ahead with plans to further strengthen tariffs against Ottawa.
“I don’t care who wins up there, but just a little while ago, before I got involved and totally changed the election, which I don’t care about ... the Conservative was leading by 35 points,” Trump said.
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