Canada is heading into federal elections, where Prime Minister Mark Carney is vying for a chance to continue leading the country, as tensions grow with its closest neighbor.
The former central banker’s main competition is Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s Conservative party leader whose political capital has declined as US-Canada relations nosedive amid threats from US President Donald Trump.
Canadians do not vote directly for prime minister – they vote for lawmakers representing political parties in their district or riding. The party with the largest number of lawmakers elected to parliament will form the government, and its leader will become prime minister.
While Carney’s Liberal Party and Poilievre’s Conservative Party are the frontrunners, other major political parties will also be on the ballot, including left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) led by Jagmeet Singh, the Green Party and the exclusively-Quebec-based Bloc Québécois.
Trade war and house prices
Poilievre was the favorite to win when former prime minister Justin Trudeau stepped down last month. But Trump’s steep tariffs on Canada, and threats to its sovereignty, dramatically transformed the race.
Trump’s decision to levy a 25% duty on Canadian steel and aluminum, cars and car parts, and threats to tariff pharmaceuticals and lumber have shaken Canadian businesses. It’s a reality Carney has not sugarcoated, warning of “tough days ahead” with pressure on Canadian employment.
“These tariffs are fundamentally damaging to the American economy and by extension to the global economy,” Carney told a press conference this month after Trump announced sweeping tariffs, which partially spared Canada but sent global markets into chaos.
Canadians are also grappling with the high cost of living, especially an affordable housing crisis – an issue likely to feel the sting of a trade war with the US.
The Ontario Home Builders’ Association warned last month that tariffs and counter-tariffs on steel and aluminum products would likely drive up the costs of construction materials, making building and buying new homes more expensive, worsening the housing affordability issue.
US and Canadian tariffs on automobiles, for example, will make cars more expensive on both sides of the border, says economist Randall Morck, a professor at the University of Alberta’s business school.
“Stock prices have gone down, so everybody is poorer,” he said, adding that this likely reflects investors’ estimates that recession and higher unemployment could be on the horizon.
Finance man versus the career politician
Carney, a political newcomer, has not ruled out continued talks with Trump, but he has been moving to deepen ties with more “reliable” allies. In an unusual move, his first prime ministerial trip abroad was to Europe where he spoke to French and British officials about deepening security, military and economic ties.
While a rookie politician, unlike his challenger, Carney’s decades in finance saw him steering governments through major global crises and periods of upheaval. As governor of the Bank of England, he helped the United Kingdom navigate Brexit – which he said mirrors what can happen to the US in the face of tariffs.
“I have seen this movie before. I know exactly what’s going to happen to them, the Americans are going to get weaker,” he said at a campaign event in Ontario this month.
Many Canadians see Carney as someone well-placed to navigate a trade war with a long-standing ally, experts say.
“In a crisis it’s important to come together and it’s essential to act with purpose and with force. And that’s what we will do,” Carney said earlier this month as he positioned himself as the person to take on the US president.
Tensions with the US have slowed the ascent of Poilievre, a career politician who served as a cabinet member in former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. Throughout his campaign he has aimed to appeal to working-class Canadians, painting himself as someone outside the “Ottawa elite” and casting himself as a family man.
Poilievre’s fiery rhetoric about slashing tax and bureaucracy, and his populist “Canada First” policy have won him supporters tired of Liberal rule. But Poilievre now appears to be distancing himself fro comparisons to US President Donald Trump; he has slammed Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st US state, supported reciprocal tariffs and repeatedly declared he is “not MAGA.”
His decades of political experience and modest background – as the son of two schoolteachers – also set him apart from Trump, says Charles-Etienne Beaudry, political science professor at the University of Ottawa and author of “Radio Trump: How he won the first time.”
Experts say Carney’s lead over Poilievre has widened primarily because the ex-banker has been more vocal than his opponent about how exactly Canada will forge trade ties with other countries and organize retaliatory tariffs.
“I expect that [voters] are going to vote for the candidate that they think will minimize the cost of the trade war with the US,” says Morck, the economist, pointing to the level of anti-American sentiment and distrust among Canadians. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the Vietnam war.”