When Mark Carney becomes Canada’s prime minister later this week, a list of simmering crises across the country will demand his attention: housing is unaffordable, healthcare is breaking, living costs keep rising and the climate crisis is ransacking livelihoods.
But most – if not all – of those concerns will be pushed aside, supplanted by a far greater threat to the country: the US president, Donald Trump.
The potential effects of Trump’s economic attack on Canada are so wide-ranging and so damaging that they are likely to overshadow all other issues in Carney’s in-tray. US trade tariffs, if held in place for an extended period of time, could push Canada’s fragile economy into a recession and unleash a cascading chain of knock-on upheavals.
“Without overstating it, the challenges are almost unique in Canadian history, if not unique in the post-war period,” Cameron Anderson, a politics professor at Western University, told Reuters.
“We have big challenges domestically in terms of cost of living and housing and healthcare and managing immigration … And then I think when we look at Canada as a country in the world, we’re probably threatened and have the sense of being threatened in a way we haven’t in many generations.”
Carney, who won an overwhelming majority in the Liberal leadership race, used his victory speech on Sunday evening to warn the “greatest crisis of our generation” came in the form of Trump, leader of Canada’s closest ally and largest trading partner.
“The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country. Think about that for a moment. If they succeed, they will destroy our way of life,” he said, pledging to supporters that Canada would remain unbowed to US threats.
“America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape, or form. We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.”
Carney’s predilection for a hockey metaphor was in full view on Sunday as he promised to keep Canada’s retaliatory tariffs in place until the American ones were fully removed, adding the country’s southern neighbor needed to show “respect” to one of its largest trading partners.
“So, Americans should make no mistake … In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”
A Nanos poll, conducted for CTV News and released on Sunday, found 36% of respondents saw Trump as the most important issue influencing their vote. The economy followed at 29%.
Before his victory in the Liberal party race, multiple polls showed that Carney was viewed as most capable of dealing with the economic fallout of a Trump-inspired trade war.
Carney, 59, was head of the Bank of Canada from 2008, when he helped Canada avoid the worst of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. In 2013, he became the first-ever noncitizen to run the Bank of England since its inception in 1694, and helped blunt the consequences of Brexit in the UK.
Carney also hinted at the degree to which Trump will feature as a foil in the upcoming national election against the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, whose lead in the polls is wilting.
“Pierre Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered,” Carney said. “Because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”
The shift in political sentiment has benefitted Carney’s Liberals but he nonetheless warned of “dark days” ahead for the country.
“I’ve learned from long experience that in a crisis, ‘plan beats no plan’, and that you need to first distinguish between what you can change and what you can’t change. We can’t change Donald Trump. We must understand what we can, and must change. We are masters in our own house,” he said. “We can give ourselves far more than Donald Trump can ever take away.”
