Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday called early elections for April 28, pledging to defeat U.S. President Donald Trump’s drive to annex Canada.
Carney was chosen by the Liberal Party to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister on March 9. But he has never faced the country’s broader electorate.
That will now change as Carney brought parliamentary elections forward several months from October. Carney made it clear that the barrage of threats coming from the U.S. president will be the crux of his campaign.
“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.
Trump “wants to break us, so America can own us. We will not let that happen,” Carney said.
In power for a decade, the Liberal government had slid into deep unpopularity, but Carney will be hoping to ride a wave of Canadian patriotism to a new majority.
Trump has riled his northern neighbour by repeatedly dismissing its sovereignty and borders as artificial, and urging it to join the United States as the 51st state.
The ominous remarks have been accompanied by Trump’s swirling trade war, with the imposition of tariffs on imports from Canada, which could severely damage its economy.
“In this time of crisis, the government needs a strong and clear mandate,” Carney told supporters on Thursday in a speech in Edmonton.
Poll favourites
Domestic issues such as the cost of living and immigration usually dominate Canadian elections. But this time around, one key topic tops the list: who can best handle Trump.
The president’s open hostility toward his northern neighbor — a NATO ally and historically one of his country’s closest partners — has upended the political landscape.
Trudeau, who had been in power since 2015, was deeply unpopular when he announced he was stepping down, with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives seen as election favorites just weeks ago.
But the polls have narrowed spectacularly in Carney’s favour since he took over the Liberal Party. Now analysts are calling the race too close to call.
“Many consider this to be an existential election, unprecedented,” said Felix Mathieu, a political scientist at the University of Winnipeg.
“It is impossible at this stage to make predictions, but this will be a closely watched election with a voter turnout that should be on the rise.”
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.
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.
As for the U.S. leader, he professes not to care who wins, while pushing ahead with plans to further strengthen tariffs against Canada and other major trading partners on April 2.
“I don’t care who wins up there,” Trump said this week.
“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.
Carney and his wef ideology on climate change is a scam to fill his pockets .cabon tax should be non existence. We need clarity on who is carney and his real plans .I have seen his wef meetings and he does not care about working class canadians ,we are basically slaves to his tax machine and frivolous investments with our money. Lits get consevatives in for all good in canada .liberals/ndp have destroyed cabada with no remoce.killing people by starvation freezing and focing people into depression causing a influx of opioid independency.