Canada elections: Mark Carney wins on anti-Trump platform

Canada’s Liberal Party won Monday’s national elections with voters giving a full term as prime minister to Mark Carney, according to the national broadcaster CBC/Radio Canada, choosing a seasoned economist and policymaker to guide their country through turbulent times.

The full results should be available later Monday or early Tuesday. But the voters’ decision sealed a stunning turnaround for the Liberal Party that just months ago seemed all but certain to lose to the Conservative Party, led by career politician Pierre Poilievre. Mr Carney has been prime minister since March, when former prime minister Justin Trudeau stepped down.

The election has been remarkable in many ways, with candidates and many voters describing it as the most important vote in their lifetimes.

It has been dominated by US president Donald Trump and his relentless focus on Canada, the US’s closest ally and trading partner. Mr Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods, pushing it toward a recession, and repeatedly threatened to annex it as the 51st state. Even as Canadians were heading to the polls Monday morning he repeated that desire, arguing on social media that it would bring economic and military benefits.

[ Canadians head to polls after car ramming killed 11 and Trump repeats call for ‘cherished 51st’ stateOpens in new window ]

Mr Carney (60) who promoted himself as the anti-Trump candidate and centred his campaign around dealing with the United States, ultimately benefited from Mr Trump’s stance.

Mr Carney has Irish roots. A grandparent emigrated to Canada from Mayo about a century ago. Two other grandparents followed a similar path.

The only change he made to the grandiose office granted to the boss of the Bank of England was to put an old map of Mayo on the wall. He obtained Irish citizenship in the late 1980s, a process that revealed a great grandparent that could “only put his mark on baptismal documents”.

“That Irish heritage is a big part of who I am,” he says.

However, he earlier this month said he had written to the British and Irish governments to begin the process of renouncing his citizenship of both countries, leaving him solely with Canadian citizenship if the process is completed.

He told reporters he believed that as prime minister, he should hold only one citizenship.

Mr Poilievre (45) and the Conservatives had been dominating polls for years, building a platform against the Liberals and Mr Trudeau around the argument that they had dragged Canada into prolonged economic malaise. But they watched their double-digit lead rapidly evaporate after Mr Trump’s aggressiveness toward Canada and Mr Trudeau’s resignation.

Canadians heading to the polls were preoccupied both with the country’s relationship with its neighbour to the south and with the state of the economy at home. Affordability worries, primarily over housing, were top of mind, opinion surveys conducted before the election showed.

[ Canada’s anti-Trump finds his moment as voters go to pollsOpens in new window ]

But Canada’s choice Monday also came as a kind of referendum against Trump and the way he has been treating America’s allies and its trading partners.

It’s the second major international election since Mr Trump came to power, after Germany, and Canada’s handling of the rupture in the relationship with the United States is being closely watched around the world. The election also highlighted that Trump’s brand of conservative politics can turn toxic for conservatives elsewhere if they are seen as being too aligned with his ideological and rhetorical style. Mr Poilievre, who railed against “radical woke ideology,” pledged to defund Canada’s national broadcaster and said he would cut foreign aid, seemed to have lost centrist voters, pre-election polls suggested.

For Mr Carney, Monday’s victory marked an astonishing moment in his rapid rise in Canada’s political establishment since entering the race to replace Mr Trudeau in January.

A political novice but policymaking veteran, Mr Carney’s measured, serious tone and defiance toward Mr Trump’s aggressive overtures helped sway voters who had been contemplating supporting the Conservatives, said polls and some individual voters. And his politics as a pragmatist and a centrist seemed to better align with Canada’s mood after a decade of Mr Trudeau’s progressive agenda.

There was ample evidence Monday that Mr Carney’s personality and background had boosted the Liberals. He is a Harvard University- and Oxford-educated economist who served as governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis and the Bank of England during Brexit. He later went on to serve on corporate boards and became a leading voice on climate-conscious investment.

Mr Poilievre and other critics tried to frame Mr Carney as an out-of-touch elitist who had spent much of his adult life away from Canada and knew little about the country or its people.

They also attacked Mr Carney for his experience working in China, which has meddled in Canada’s elections, and some of his policy proposals that they said would burden Canada’s public finances and make it harder for the country’s economy to thrive.

Despite Monday’s victory, the road ahead for Mr Carney and his new government will be hard. For starters, he will need to actually engage with Mr Trump and his unpredictable attitude toward Canada and discuss fraught issues, including trade and security.

And he will need to show voters that his economic policy credentials can truly be put to use to improve Canada’s slow economic growth and persistently high unemployment.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.