Canada on the Brink of an Election

When Justin Trudeau resigned as Canadian Prime Minister on 6 January, he was hoping to give the Liberal Party a chance of winning the election that had to be held by 20 October. But since Donald Trump's inauguration, the Liberal Party has leapt up in opinion polls. Now the newly chosen Prime Minster Mark Carney is expected to hold a snap election to try to benefit from that new popularity.

Since 2019, Trudeau had been governing with a minority government and by January was 20 points behind in the opinion polls. But recent polling puts the Liberals neck and neck with Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party.

Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister on 14 March, after being elected leader of the Liberal party with a landslide 85.9% of members' votes.  Carney is not an elected politician but has long experience of public service, as governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and as a deputy finance minister. In the current climate, having a financial expert at 24 Sussex Drive seemed a winning option for the party.

This short video from Canada's national broadcaster profiles the new Prime Minister:

Standing up for Canada
Since Donald Trump entered the White House, he has imposed, or sometimes just announced he is imposing, tariffs on Canadian goods imported into the U.S., just as he has on other countries such as Mexico, China and the E.U. But he seems to have a particular beef with his northern neighbour, repeatedly expressing a desire for Canada to be integrated into the U.S.A as the "51st state".

On the day he was sworn in, Carney said, "We will never, in any shape or form, be part of the U.S. We are very fundamentally a different country."

Tariffs are a serious issue, though. According to Statistics Canada, the United States is "Canada’s largest trading partner",  "accounting for close to two-thirds (63.4%) of the more than $1.5 trillion in worldwide trade."

Canada has imposed reciprocal tariffs on specific American goods and  Carney has promised to  keep them in place for as long as Trump maintains 25% universal tariffs on Canadian goods not covered by the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) trade deal.

With an international financial expert at its helm, the Liberal Party hopes Canadian voters will choose their party to continue to stand up against this financial threat. They intend to press home their advantage and Carney is expected to announce a snap election for 28 April or 5 May after he meets the Governor General Mary Simon on Sunday. King Charles III is the Canadian head of state, and the Governor General is his representative in Canada. It is her role to dissolve parliament and hold an election.