OTTAWA: Former central banker Mark Carney claimed a landslide victory on Sunday to lead Canada’s Liberal Party and become its next prime minister, setting him up for a clash with the Trump administration.
Liberal party members bet on Carney as the man best placed to take on U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened annexation as well as launching a trade war and punishing tariffs on the longtime ally. Liberal sources say Carney will soon call for a general election.
“The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country … if they succeed, they will destroy our way of life,” Carney said in his acceptance speech late Sunday.
Carney, who supports dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s measures, could speak to Trump as early as Monday, Politico said.
Carney, who has no political experience, is normally more reserved than Trudeau, who often had a combative relationship with Trump.
The United States is due to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum on Wednesday. Ottawa imposed a 25% tariff on C$30 billion worth of U.S. imports when Trump last month announced his initial tariff plans.
“My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect,” Carney said on Sunday.
Former central banker favored to replace Trudeau as Canada PM
Trump’s move triggered an angry backlash in Canada, where provinces pulled U.S. alcohol off the shelves and urged people to buy Canadian.
Ontario, the most populous of the 10 provinces, is due to announce on Monday that it is imposing a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to New York, Michigan and Minnesota.
Maintaining momentum
Carney won with 86% of the votes cast by party members. The Governor General, the representative of Britain’s King Charles in Canada, will soon invite him to form a government and formally replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister.
The Globe and Mail newspaper said the official handover could take place on Thursday or Friday.
The reconstituted Liberal government is likely to be short-lived. If Carney does not call an election, his political opponents have said they would defeat the government at their first opportunity when Parliament reconvenes in late March.
For months the opposition Conservatives led in the polls, often by double-digits ahead of the governing Liberals.
However, the political landscape shifted with the return of Trump to the White House, the prospect of tariffs and the threat of annexation. This coincided with a surge of support for the Liberals, who have ridden a wave of renewed national unity to come neck-and-neck with the opposition party, according to the latest polls.
Now the challenge will be to maintain that momentum and convince Canadians to give a party that spent a decade in power under Trudeau another go – while fighting a trade war on multiple fronts.
“Without overstating it, the challenges are almost unique in Canadian history, if not unique in the post-war period,” said Cameron Anderson, a politics professor at Western University.
Carney will be the first person to become Canada’s prime minister with no prior experience in electoral politics. The former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England shot to the front of the Liberal leadership race, ahead of two women who held seats in Trudeau’s cabinet.
Carney has promised to scrap an unpopular consumer tax on carbon, stop a planned increase in the capital gains tax and pledged to remove barriers to trade within Canada. He vowed to double the pace of new housing construction over 10 years and cap immigration levels, a shift in policy started by Trudeau in response to a backlash over a housing shortage and high prices.
Liberals sought to compare Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to Trump in a recent advertisement. Poilievre in turn ramped up attacks on Carney on Sunday.
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