Justin Trudeau hands over to political newbie Mark Carney at ‘nation-defining moment’

In a 30-second video posted on social media on his last full day in the job, outgoing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau described himself as boldly and unapologetically Canadian.

“My only ask is that no matter what the world throws at us, you’ll always be the same,” he said.

The parting dose of jingoism might have come across as trite in normal circumstances, but things are far from normal. US President Donald Trump, his tariffs and his naked desire to annex his northern neighbour and turn it into America’s 51st state have taken US-Canada relations into strange and unprecedented territory.

When former banker and political newcomer Mark Carney became Canada’s 24th prime minister this morning (AEDT), he inherited a country equal parts roiled and bemused by Trump’s antics, and already doing more than most of its allies to take a stand against tariffs and bullying from Washington.

And Trudeau, though still diminished after nearly 10 years in power, leaves office partly rehabilitated, having bolstered his standing by fighting back against Trump’s threats, and with his Liberal Party competitive again in the polls (despite it being effectively leaderless until last weekend).

“Up until now, it was a blowout for the Conservatives,” Greg Lyle, president of the Innovative Research Group polling agency, told the BBC last week.

Trudeau’s long goodbye

Good-looking, well-spoken and the son of a former Canadian prime minister, Trudeau was born for the job. Indeed, during a state visit to Ottawa in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon joked that he’d “like to toast the future prime minister of Canada – to Justin Pierre Trudeau”.

The younger Trudeau was at that stage just a baby. But Nixon was right, and after an early career as a teacher, Trudeau entered parliament in 2008, and became prime minister in 2015 at the age of 43. At that time, Barack Obama was still in the White House, David Cameron was at No. 10 Downing Street and Malcolm Turnbull had just moved into The Lodge.

As a fresh-faced, Gen-X leader, Trudeau took pride in installing “a cabinet that looks like Canada”. It contained an equal number of men and women for the first time in Canadian history – something Australia achieved only this year when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reshuffled his front bench – as well as two Indigenous MPs and three Sikhs. When asked why he went for gender parity in cabinet, he famously stated: “Because it’s 2015.”

Trudeau legalised recreational cannabis in 2018, a year before an election, another issue that eludes the major parties in Australia (Canada had already legalised same-sex marriage in 2005).

The same year, he introduced national carbon pricing – or a carbon tax – which has survived two elections. However, the price that started at $C20 a tonne in 2019 has increased to $C80 ($88) a tonne, and is due to keep rising by $C15 a tonne each year until 2030.

It has also become more unpopular, and a political football familiar to most Australians. Trudeau’s opponents campaigned to “axe the tax” – taking a leaf from the Tony Abbott playbook – and in 2023, he agreed to exempt home heating oil from the levy for three years in the face of political pressure.

Early 2018 also saw one of Trudeau’s biggest blunders: an eight-day, scandal-plagued trip to India, described by one Washington Post columnist as “an absolute fiasco” and by a former Indian high commissioner to Canada as “a disaster”.

The Canadian PM did not meet his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, until day seven of the visit, prompting accusations he had been snubbed. The eventual meeting followed a run of bad headlines, after it was revealed a militant Sikh separatist, who served jail time in Canada for attempting to murder an Indian politician, had been invited to an official dinner Trudeau attended at the Canadian high commissioner’s residence in New Delhi.

The invite was ultimately rescinded, but not before the man in question, Jaspal Atwal, was photographed with Trudeau’s wife, Sophie, at an event in Mumbai, causing outrage in India.

That trip was not Trudeau’s only Indian misadventure: he had a frosty meeting with Modi at the G20 in New Delhi in 2023, and reportedly skipped out on the gala dinner. Then Trudeau’s plane broke down, leaving him stranded there for another two days.

More broadly, Canada’s relations with India have soured. Canada is home to some 800,000 Sikhs, the largest population outside India, and some maintain support for a separatist state of Khalistan in the Punjab region.

One such person, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the president of a Sikh temple in British Columbia, was murdered by masked men in June 2023. Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of being involved, and India in turn claimed Trudeau was trying to curry favour with Canada’s Sikhs for political gain.

In August 2023, the Trudeaus announced their separation after 18 years of marriage. By doing so while in office, Trudeau followed in the footsteps of his father, Pierre, who split from Justin’s mother, Margaret, in 1977 while prime minister. Justin and Sophie Trudeau have three teenage children.

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By late 2024, Trudeau’s leadership was becoming untenable amid voter anger over issues ranging from cost-of-living pressures to housing shortages and surging immigration. Support for his progressive Liberal Party was threatening to fall below 20 per cent – almost eclipsed by the New Democratic Party, its rival on the left. He headed off a caucus revolt, but when the then-deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, followed two other cabinet members out the door, it seemed to seal Trudeau’s fate.

On January 6, with preparations under way in Washington for Trump’s inauguration, Trudeau announced he would resign once a new Liberal leader and prime minister was chosen.

Turning the page

Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, overwhelmingly beat Freeland and two other candidates to win the Liberal leadership after a two-month campaign.

Unusually – but not unprecedented – Carney has never held political office. He becomes prime minister without holding a seat in parliament, meaning that if it were to return (it is currently prorogued), he would have to watch from the gallery.

As head of Canada’s central bank from 2008, Carney had to navigate the global financial crisis, and then as head of the Bank of England, he helped manage the impacts of Brexit. He was the first non-UK citizen to run its central bank since it was founded in 1694.

The Liberal Party leadership contest – along with an election in Canada’s most populous province, Ontario – was heavily influenced by Trump’s tariffs and treatment of Canada. Compared to Australia, there was little appetite for quiet diplomacy behind the scenes; Canadian leaders were competing to be the strongest or most effective bulwark against Trumpism.

A poll by Nanos Research and The Globe and Mail, published in late February, found a majority (58 per cent) of Canadians wanted immediate retaliatory tariffs on the US. Nearly 80 per cent supported removing American liquor from Canadian shelves. The same poll found voters viewed Carney as better at negotiating with Trump than Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, or Carney’s then-rivals for the Liberal leadership.

“We have to look after ourselves, and we have to look out for each other,” Carney said after his landslide win. “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. The Americans, they should make no mistake. In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”

The Trump factor is bad timing for Poilievre, who now must wear accusations he is a wannabe version of the belligerent American. Liberal Party attack ads highlight Poilievre using similar language to Trump, including assaults on “fake news”, “radical leftists” and “wokeness”.

Some critics have dubbed him “maple syrup MAGA” and Carney argues Poilievre is not the right man for the moment. “A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”

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The political turnaround, even before Carney’s elevation, has been dramatic. While Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC, says polling averages still have the Conservatives ahead by about eight points, that gap has narrowed from more than 20 points. And a tracking poll by Nanos Research, published this week, had Carney’s Liberals only a point behind Poilievre’s Conservatives.

“Mark Carney has that new-car smell about him and people are really interested in taking a test drive,” Ipsos pollster Darrell Bricker told Al Jazeera last week.

Nonetheless, a stubbornly high proportion of Canadians still say that after nearly 10 years of Trudeau, it’s time for change. Whether Carney represents enough of a change to meet that desire remains to be seen.

An election does not need to be held until October, but the widespread assumption is that Carney will call an election soon, rather than let parliament return on March 24 – where he could face a no-confidence vote, and where he does not have a seat.

Meanwhile, Trudeau leaves with his party re-energised and hopeful, rather than stale and morose. But he also hands over to an inexperienced politician just as his country is embroiled in an ugly trade war; albeit one that he, the man Trump dismisses as “Governor Trudeau”, is possibly not best placed to fight.

In a rallying farewell speech to the party faithful, Trudeau said Canada faced an “existential challenge” from Trump that it would need to tackle with its “elbows up”.

“This is a nation-defining moment,” he said. “Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given.”

with AP

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