New Orleans Just like in a US presidential election; I found myself checking for early results before I went to sleep and scrolling at 4:30 AM to see the results to that point. It turns out that Trump does have long coattails in elections. It’s just that they may be in Canada, not America.
At this writing it’s still not certain if the Liberal Party won an outright majority of the ridings or legislative districts that seat members of parliament that will elect the Prime Minister. It is certain that the party has out polled the Conservatives. The right-wing, Trump-wannabe leading the Conservatives has announced his resignation as leader and also lost his seat in a rural area outside of Ottawa to a Liberal. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the progressive New Democratic Party also indicated he would resign, having also lost his seat, while the NDP at this point has managed to win only a handful of seats and will likely lose its status as an official party.
The topline in all of the reports on the election in its immediate aftermath are all about the comeback. That’s fair. The Liberals have now won a 4th straight election, but only a few months ago the Conservatives held a 20-point lead in the polls as their leader, Pierre Poilievre, lambasted Justin Trudeau and his policies, especially a controversial carbon tax, and beat on other issues as a mini-me Trump poser. Trudeau’s resignation early in 2025 and the elevation of a plainer vanilla Mark Carney by the Liberals, sucked the air out of that part of the campaign. Trump did much of the rest with his tariffs, disrespect for Canada, and his hollering that the country should be the 51st US state. Trump is so tone-deaf to his impact in the north that he repeated his 51st rant even as Canadian voters were going to the polls. The comeback is interesting, but it’s not the most important part of this story for either Canada or the USA.
The fact that the traditional left-liberal progressive supporters of the NDP left the party in order to defeat the Conservatives in one of these calls to show up on “the most significant election in our lifetime” appeals shows their love of country over party, but also diminishes a critical progressive force on the national scene. This is a huge loss. The NDP may still have a regional foothold in British Columbia and some other provincial parliaments, but this is bad news. The chaotic politics of France are a good lesson here, where voters have repeatedly been forced into being strange bedfellows in order to stop the right there as well. The Socialists have gone from fielding a prime minister as recently as 2017, but are now down to 27 seats, and falling below newer left parties.
The loss for the United States may be worse than the loss for Canadians. Carney victory was not based solely on being the anti-Trump, but also stood on a platform of changing the relationship to America. “As I’ve been warning for months,” Carney said in his address, “America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us.” The most trusted neighbor and partner for the US is now pushing to realign trading relationships where previously 80% of its exports were directed to the south. Carney has committed to reaching NATO’s 5% of GNP by 2030, given the tenuous relationship that the US is indicating about joint security. This will strain social spending. Trump could probably offer an olive branch and start rebuilding the bridges he has been burning, but that’s so unlike him that it seems ridiculous to even imagine. For Carney now, sidling up to the US would spell political suicide.
Talking to a former ACORN organizer yesterday, he told me he had wanted to go to a World Cup soccer match in Pennsylvania this year, but despite being a Canadian citizen, he was born in Latin America, and wasn’t sure that it was safe for him to cross the border. Canadians are boycotting American products, pulling back from travel, and more. The trust and love are gone. What a mess!
So, cheers for Canada on their election victory, even if that doesn’t erase concerns for the future of people in both North American countries.