Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney called a snap election on Sunday, sending Canadians to the polls for a vote on April 28 that is set to revolve largely around the question of how Canada will deal with President Trump.
Carney, a 60-year-old former central banker, called the election less than two weeks after he was sworn in to succeed Justin Trudeau. Carney begins a race against the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Pierre Poilievre , with some polls showing the Liberals leading public opinion for the first time in years.
The governing Liberals seemed headed for an electoral drubbing only a few weeks ago, but are now in a position to possibly win the election because of voters’ concerns about the harm Trump could do to the Canadian economy with his threats to levy punitive tariffs on one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners. Trump also has proposed using economic force to annex Canada, a threat that has animated a patriotic backlash and galvanized public opinion against the U.S.
“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” said Carney in remarks delivered in Ottawa Sunday.
The dynamic has helped shift the focus away from a Canadian economy that was already struggling before Trump’s tariff threats and an affordability crisis that had sent the Liberal Party’s approval ratings to historic lows.
“This election is definitely about one thing: Trump and the damage he’s going to do to the economy,” said Gerald Butts , an informal Carney adviser and vice chairman of the Eurasia Group consulting firm.
The election will be a race between two very different candidates. Carney is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who also led the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Poilievre, 45, and a two-decade veteran of Parliament, is a populist who rode a wave of discontent over Trudeau’s Covid, environmental and immigration policies.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney exits his campaign bus, before boarding an aircraft, after calling for an election, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada March 23, 2025. REUTERS/Blair Gable
Poilievre is trying to link Carney to Trudeau, noting that he served as the former prime minister’s economic adviser. Poilievre has argued Carney is part of the global and Canadian corporate establishment that populists detest, and highlighted Carney’s decision as chairman of Brookfield Asset Management to move the company headquarters to New York from Toronto ahead of Trump’s November election win. He has also been calling on Carney to provide details of his business interests. Carney has put his assets into a blind trust.
Poilievre said he shares Canadians’ concerns about Trump’s tariffs. “We must put Canada first and bring about a change,” the Conservative leader said as he kicked off his campaign on Sunday. He then moved quickly to a critique of the Liberal government.
“The question is whether Canadians can afford a fourth Liberal term,” he said, blaming the Liberals for feeble growth, elevated housing costs, damaging a once-admired immigration system, and thwarting projects in the country’s resource sector. The Liberals’ “radical, post-national globalist ideology has weakened our nation,” he said.
Carney has tried to tar Poilievre as “a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump .”
Scott Reid, a onetime strategist to former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, said Carney has so far successfully distanced himself from Trudeau, and that gives the Liberals a chance to complete a historical political comeback.
“The eye test tells you that Carney is a completely different creature, probably with very different instincts and priorities than Trudeau,” Reid said.
Conservatives will try to make the race about Trudeau’s unpopular decade in office, said Jim Armour, once a senior aide to former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper , a Conservative.
Carney is “still pretty much driving the dented old jalopy that Justin Trudeau drove into the wall,” said Armour. “You can call yourself the Mark Carney party, but eventually the election is going to be about 10 years of Liberal government.”
At Sunday’s election announcement, Carney sounded the theme of his campaign. He’s banking on his reputation as a steady steward of Canada’s interests who led the country through the global financial crisis in 2008, and then led the U.K. through Brexit.
In his week and a half as prime minister, Carney traveled to London and Paris to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France’s President Emmanuel Macron . Carney said during the trip that Canada needed to diversify its trading and security relationships because it was too dependent on the U.S.
He also visited the Canadian arctic where he unveiled a deal with Australia to buy new radar to bolster Canada’s defense capabilities. He has instructed Canada’ s defense minister to review a multibillion-dollar deal to buy U.S. jet fighters from Lockheed Martin.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney attends a Liberal Party election rally in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada March 23, 2025. REUTERS/Greg Locke
Carney told reporters he won’t meet with Trump to discuss the trading relationship until the president ceases musing about Canada as a 51st state and publicly recognizes Canadian sovereignty.
In a bid to sell himself as a pragmatist, Carney has moved to kill two legislative centerpieces of the Trudeau era: a consumer carbon tax, and a tax on capital gains that businesses said would crimp Canadian investment.
The shift in the Liberal Party’s fortunes since the beginning of the year has been dramatic. Over two months ago, projections from polling aggregator 338Canada called for a big Conservative victory with the Liberals in third place. Today, it has the Liberals winning a fourth straight election with a majority mandate.
“I have never seen something like this,” said Philippe J. Fournier, the head of 338Canada. “It doesn’t mean that it will last. But could it last for a five-week campaign? Yeah, it could.”
Last week, Trump weighed in, hinting he would prefer to work with a Trudeau-less Liberal government. “I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care,” Trump told Fox News. Trump said Poilievre “is stupidly, no friend of mine…I don’t know him, but he said negative things.”
Poilievre immediately tried to turn Trump’s remarks into an advantage. “It’s clear President Trump wants the Liberals in power because they will keep this country weak,” he said. “What Canadians need is a leader who is tough and firm and stands by his convictions.”
Poilievre, who used populist rhetoric similar to Trump’s in building his polling lead last year, has tried to capture some of the anti-U.S. energy in recent speeches. He unveiled a new “Canada First” slogan and warned Trump in a speech that, “I’m a tough guy to deal with.”
Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at Paul.Vieira@wsj.com
