Ironically, US President Donald Trump’s threat to reduce Canada into the 51st state of the United States of America has become instrumental in the remarkable victory of Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal Party in the just-concluded Canadian election. The Centre-Left party of Carney has got a reversal in electoral fortunes, courtesy Trump’s audacious announcement after he assumed office for the second term in January that Canada would be merged with the USA. Predictably, Carney made his neighbouring country his main electoral plank that seems to have paid rich dividends. His victory speech reflected it as well as the mood of Canada as a whole. He asserted: “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.”
Trump has also queered the pitch for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party, which looked highly probable to win the polls due to general dissatisfaction with the state of the Canadian economy and almost a decade of Liberal government under then-leader Justin Trudeau, whom Carney replaced just before the election.
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The past year has witnessed incumbent governments around the world falling like nine pins, with parties all along the political spectrum losing ground or outright control. This happened in the US, the UK, Japan, Germany and France, among the most prominent examples. Even India saw a spectacular fall in fortune of the ruling party in the 2024 Parliament election. But, the Canadian general election stopped this trend as the Liberals forced Trudeau to resign and picked a political outsider, former Bank of England and Bank of Canada chief Carney, as their leader. It goes to the credit of Carney that he turned the real threat Trump posed to Canada’s economy and its very sovereignty into his advantage to rally the voters behind him and his party, which had been going down in public reckoning till Trudeau resigned.
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With Carney’s victory, the political and policy interests of Canada and the US under Trump appear destined to diverge. Already, there are indications that Canada is looking more toward Europe as a reliable partner than Trump’s America. However, the real test of Carney’s new policy will be made in the next few days as he has pledged to quickly begin new trade negotiations with Trump in an attempt to stave off US tariffs on Canadian auto exports set to kick in on 3 May. The Canadian economy is heavily dependent on exports to the US, and it is at considerable risk if a full-scale trade war erupts. Carney, who is an economist by training and a veteran central banker, has promised voters that he will do everything in his power to keep Canada from plunging into a recession.
It indeed defies understanding how Trump could go on threatening to merge Canada into the US while voters were casting their ballots 28 April. He called the US-Canadian border “artificially drawn” and said the nation would be better off as a “cherished” American state.
Carney’s rise to political power has been rather sudden, and it has happened when his country is facing an unprecedented challenge from its superpower neighbour. The US and Canada falling apart from each other is something the world would not have believed as possible even six months earlier.
It is interesting that soon after it became clear Carney’s Liberals retained power in the country’s federal election, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing was willing to develop China-Canada relations based on mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit. Obviously, China will try to drive a wedge between Canada and the US just to get a strong and legitimate foothold on the North American continent.
The defeat of Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party and a known pro-Khalistan figure, is good news for India as it offers an opportunity to reset diplomatic and trade relations that were frozen by allegations levelled by both Singh and Trudeau that Indian “agents” were involved in the killing of the Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Overall, the spirited victory of the Liberals in Canada is a sign of encouragement for the international community at a time when global tension is rising due to Trump’s attempt to impose a new world order and a general increase in hate and intolerance on the global political and diplomatic stage.
