Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party won the nation’s federal election, a development being attributed to President Trump’s tariffs and talk of the country becoming America’s 51st state.
"America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country—never,” Carney said in a victory speech in Ottawa. “But these are not idle threats, President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen.”
He expressed “shock” over what has happened to the U.S.-Canada relationship since President Trump came into office.
“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration is over,” he said. “The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that while not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades, is over.”
“We are over the shock of the American betrayal but we should never forget the lessons,” he added.
Voters have returned Canada’s Liberal Party to power for a fourth consecutive term but it remains to be seen whether Carney has won a majority or will need coalition partners to govern.
A party needs 172 seats to form a majority. CNN affiliate CTV is projecting a minority government while fellow affiliate CBC says it is too early to tell whether they can clinch a majority.
Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre conceded defeat early Tuesday, saying Carney had won enough seats to form a “razor thin minority government.”
Former central banker Carney, 60, has led a wave of anti-Trump sentiment since winning his party’s leadership contest in a landslide after former prime minister Justin Trudeau stepped down last month. He has rallied the public against the US president’s threats to annex the country as “the 51st state” and made the defense of Canada a central part of his platform.
Poilievre had been the favorite to win when Trudeau announced his resignation in January in the wake of dire polls, a serious cost of living crisis and an internal revolt in his cabinet.
But Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and threats to its sovereignty dramatically transformed the race into something of a referendum against the US president. (CNN)
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Carney said he intends to make it clear Canada has other countries to turn to for partnerships.
“When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations, and it will be with our full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States to build prosperity for all Canadians,” he said.
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