Oh Canada!

Carney and the Trump Shock

A special bonus guest post this week. We are delighted to welcome the Rt Hon Kim Campbell, former Canadian Minister of Defence and Prime Minister, with her assessment of this moment in Canadian politics and how the country is dealing with Donald Trump’s aggression. Since leaving office in 1993 Kim has held numerous international roles including chairing the Council of Women World Leaders and chairing the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy.

---

Mark Carney accepts the leadership of the Liberal Party on Sunday, which will lead to him becoming Prime Minister in the coming weeks.

In the first week of January, I was invited by the editors of this substack to write an essay about Canada. It seemed like a good idea at the time since, in a departure from our normal unexciting existence, Canada had become more interesting due to the political changes that were in the offing. In recent months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had become increasingly unpopular and was facing pressure from even some members of his own caucus to step down as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. In December 2024, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned from the Cabinet (but not from Parliament) in a letter that was scathingly critical of the direction of the government.

It turned out that the Prime Minister had advised her that he wanted to move her out of the Finance portfolio to a more general responsibility dealing with the upcoming changes in the United States, but without an actual Ministry to run. As Minister of Trade in the first Trudeau government, Freeland had led the Canadian team in negotiating the replacement for NAFTA – (USMCA)- and in the course of this had earned the enmity of Donald Trump.

In moving to replace Freeland, Trudeau had announced that Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and of the Bank of England, would become Minister of Finance, even though he did not have a seat in Parliament. This surprise announcement was probably key to Freeland’s resignation but it seemed particularly unfortunate since Carney himself publicly disavowed the plan.

So, in January, Justin Trudeau formally announced he would be resigning as Leader of the Liberal Party and that a convention to choose a new Leader would be held on March 9. Both Carney and Freeland both subsequently declared that they would be candidates for Leader.

1993 and 2025

This scenario resonated with my own experience in 1993 when in January, three months into the fifth year of our parliamentary mandate, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced his own resignation as Leader of the governing Progressive Conservative Party of Canada with a Leadership Convention to be held in early June.

In both cases, a very unpopular leader was stepping down mere months before an election needed to be called, thus limiting the ability of a new leader to put a new face on an unpopular party and government. In the case of today’s Liberals, they have been governing as a minority with the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP has withdrawn that support leaving the government vulnerable to defeat by a vote of non-confidence in the House of Commons, a plan that the opposition Conservative Party have committed to following as soon as Parliament reconvenes.