Former central banker Mark Carney secured a landslide victory on Sunday to lead Canada’s Liberal Party and become the country’s next prime minister. However, his leadership will face immediate challenges, including navigating a trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump, addressing punishing tariffs, and leading the party through a bruising general election that is likely imminent.
Carney won with 86% of the votes cast by party members. In the coming days, Canada’s Governor-General, the representative of Britain’s King Charles, will invite him to form a government, positioning Carney to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister.
However, this reconstituted Liberal government may be short-lived. Two Liberal Party sources indicated that Carney will call an election in the coming weeks, banking on renewed momentum for the party in polls. If he does not call an election, political opponents have vowed to defeat the government when Parliament reconvenes.
For months, the opposition Conservatives led in the polls, often by double digits ahead of the governing Liberals. However, the political landscape shifted with the emergence of Trump, the prospect of tariffs, and the threat of annexation. This coincided with a surge of support for the Liberals, who have ridden a wave of renewed national unity to come neck-and-neck with the opposition, according to the latest polls.
Carney’s challenge will be to maintain this momentum and convince Canadians to give the Liberals another chance after a decade in power under Trudeau—all while navigating a trade war that seems to shift by the hour.
“Without overstating it, the challenges are almost unique in Canadian history, if not unique in the post-war period,” said Cameron Anderson, a politics professor at Western University. “We have big challenges domestically in terms of cost of living, housing, healthcare, and managing immigration. … And then, when we look at Canada as a country in the world, we’re probably threatened and have the sense of being threatened in a way we haven’t in many generations.”
Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, will be the first person to become Canada’s prime minister with no prior experience in electoral politics. He shot to the front of the Liberal leadership race, ahead of two women who held seats in Trudeau’s Cabinet.
On Sunday, Carney promised to scrap the consumer price on carbon and halt a planned increase in the capital gains tax. He also pledged dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s tariffs. Additionally, Carney vowed to remove barriers to trade within Canada, double the pace of new housing construction over 10 years, and cap immigration—a shift in policy Trudeau had already begun.
Liberals have sought to compare Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to Trump in recent advertisements. Poilievre, in turn, ramped up attacks on Carney on Sunday.
Carney “will emphasize the policy departures that were kind of necessary conditions for countering Poilievre,” said University of British Columbia politics professor Richard Johnston. “Whether these reversals are good policy is a whole other matter.”
A major emphasis, Johnston added, will be “keeping his cool in the face of Donald Trump.”
