Trudeau Resigns; Carney Becomes Canadian PM
Mark Carney became Prime Minister of Canada on 14 March 2025, having never previously held elected office, and won a general election six weeks later. Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January 2025 after nine years, with his party polling around twenty points behind the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre and after his finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigned publicly over his fiscal plans. Carney won the Liberal leadership with 85.9 per cent on the first ballot. His qualification was institutional. He had run the Bank of Canada through the 2008 financial crisis, cutting rates early and pledging to hold them, and then the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020 — the first non-citizen to do so — through the Brexit vote and the pandemic's first months, and had served as a UN special envoy on climate finance. The election of 28 April was decided by an external factor. Donald Trump's second administration imposed tariffs on Canadian goods and repeatedly suggested that Canada should become the fifty-first state, which collapsed the Conservative lead and turned the campaign into a question about who could handle Washington. The Liberals took 169 seats, a minority, on their highest vote share since 1980. Poilievre lost his own seat. Carney's programme has centred on the trade relationship, on defence spending, on removing internal trade barriers between provinces, and on housing. He scrapped the consumer carbon levy on his first day, a policy he had spent years advocating internationally. He is the second Canadian prime minister to take office without a seat in the House of Commons, and won one in a by-election. His premiership is defined almost entirely by the relationship with the United States.
- Year: 2025 CE
- Category: Political
