Canada’s “Lost Liberal Decade” Just Got Longer

"Donald Trump just did what Trudeau couldn’t: make the Liberals electable again." And Canada will suffer from Trump's tariff wars.

From The European Conservative

By Jonothan Van Maren

Donald Trump just did what Trudeau couldn’t: make the Liberals electable again.

On Monday night, President Donald Trump single-handedly saved Canada’s Liberal Party from the electoral disaster predicted by pollsters for over a year. With 99% of polls reporting, the Liberals secured 168 seats in the federal election—just shy of the 172 needed for a majority government, but a stunning comeback for a party that, earlier this year, was expected to be nearly wiped out by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. It is the first time a Canadian government has earned a fourth mandate since William Lyon Mackenzie’s four consecutive terms from 1921 to 1935.

After a decade of economic stagnation, rising housing costs, belligerent social progressivism, and general incompetence, Justin Trudeau had poisoned the Liberal brand, with his party’s popularity sitting at just 14%. Then, Trump got elected, violated the USMCA free trade agreement he had negotiated in his first term, and began referring to Canada as the “51st state” and musing about annexation through “economic force.” Trudeau resigned on January 6, the Liberals held a hasty leadership race, and former Bank of Canada (and Bank of England) head Mark Carney replaced him as Prime Minister on March 14.

Overnight, the Conservatives faced an entirely different election: A new ballot question, a new prime minister, and a wave of anti-American nationalism consistently stoked by President Trump, who gave Carney a boost every time he spoke. Carney called a snap election on March 23 and campaigned on comparing Pierre Poilievre to Donald Trump, despite the fact that Trump constantly insulted Poilievre and stated that Carney would be “easier” to deal with. In a final act of sabotage, Trump took to social media Monday morning to urge Canadians to vote for him.

The Conservative Party secured 41.7% of the popular vote—the highest vote share for the Conservatives since Brian Mulroney’s 1988 landslide victory in 1988, and higher than former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority victory—but it wasn’t enough. In the standout story of the night, the New Democratic Party utterly collapsed with a mere 5% of the popular vote (from 15.98% in the 2021 election), going from 25 seats to 7 and consolidating the left-of-center parties under the Liberal banner. Even Jagmeet Singh, perhaps the most incompetent party leader in modern Canadian history, lost his seat and resigned as leader. Most suspect he propped up Trudeau’s government merely to secure his pension. 

All it took to unite the Left in Canada, it turns out, was Carney, a wealthy banker who funnels his wealth offshore to avoid paying taxes in the country he leads.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, surprisingly, also lost his seat—although he made it clear in his concession speech Monday night that he intends to stay on as leader and emphasized that “change takes time.” Poilievre cut his teeth as an attack dog in the House of Commons, and although he has worked hard to moderate his image, his leadership will be crippled if he is unable to take on Carney in Parliament. 

The Conservatives will also have to deal with the fact that Poilievre’s personal unpopularity likely hurt the party on Monday night; earlier this month, the pollster Angus Reid put Poilievre at a net favorability of -26, with 46% of Canadians viewing him negatively. Poilievre wasn’t winning, Trudeau was losing—and when Trudeau left, Poilievre’s lead collapsed.

Despite that, the election results and the near-constant belligerence from the American president likely mean that no important lessons will be learned. The Conservatives increased their parliamentary seat count and their vote share. The Liberal Party consolidated left-of-center voters and successfully ran against Trump effectively enough to capture the Canadian boomer vote. The reduced NDP may once again hold the balance of power, and Carney is surely looking at their seven seats covetously and calculating what sort of deal he can make with their new leader.

Trudeau’s resignation and Trump’s aggression have given the Liberals a lease on life, and Mark Carney promised a new dawn in a flowery victory speech filled with ramped-up rhetoric about Canada as a rising power. But despite his laidback demeanor (which, according to those who know him, disguises a “volcanic” temper), Carney is as extreme as his predecessor. He enthusiastically supports abortion up until birth (as does Poilievre). He supports puberty blockers and sex change surgeries recently banned for minors in the UK “without exception.” He did not respond to the UN’s condemnation of Canada’s euthanasia regime in March but has thus far given no indication that he will stop the planned 2027 expansion of assisted suicide eligibility to those suffering solely from mental illness.

Mark Carney is not as performatively woke as Justin Trudeau, but he was Trudeau’s top economic advisor and preferred successor because the two share the same values (incidentally, the title of Carney’s 2021 book). 

As evidenced by Carney’s willingness to jettison the carbon tax he himself had consistently advocated for in order to win the election, the prime minister may be willing to shape-shift in order to secure a majority government—but if his entire career is any indication, Canada’s “Lost Liberal Decade,” in which the country got measurably worse by virtually every standard, just got an extension.