It seems that Canada is in for a longer lesson in liberal governance. Thanks to Justin Trudeau’s resignation and the delay of the required parliamentary election, the new head of the Liberal party, Mark Carney, is still the prime minister.

This is annoying and depressing for our neighbors in Canada for multiple reasons. Carney is essentially Temu Trudeau – none of the priorities that the Liberal government has championed up to this point will change. All those things that the Trudeau government did – remember the truck driver protest, and the reaction by Ottawa? – will continue under Carney.

The Conservative party was on the rise with the end of Trudeau’s government. Pierre Poilievre would have been an excellent prime minister. So, what happened? Many things happened. First, the Trudeau resignation was back in January – a lifetime ago in politics. Second, the trade war between the United States and Canada definitely has Canadian voters stirred up and spooked. Third, Carney used the Trump jab of making Canada “the 51st state” as a talking point in his campaign, making the campaign more of a him versus Trump situation (nevermind that Poilievre spoke out against it as well). And finally, Trump himself didn’t help the situation, as he stated back in March that he would rather Carney win the election.

When it comes to who the U.S. president would prefer to run America’s “51st state,” he’s made it clear Prime Minister Mark Carney would get his vote as Canadians wonder when they will get a chance to cast theirs.

As for Trump’s endorsement of Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said it’s perfectly fine with him.

“I’d rather deal with a Liberal than a conservative,” the U.S. President told Laura Ingraham on Fox News Tuesday.

“I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care,” said Trump. “It doesn’t matter to me at all.”

In fact, Trump went a step further and made the point that Poilievre has not been subservient enough toward him.

“The Conservative that’s running is, stupidly, no friend of mine,” said Trump. “I don’t know him, but he said negative things. When he says negative things, I couldn’t care less.”

If this was reverse psychology, it backfired. Poilievre has tried to separate himself from Trump – after all, he was running to be prime minister of CANADA, not the 51st state – and it’s clear the Canadian electorate is not a fan of President Trump. And now Poilievre has lost his own seat in Parliament as well, though he may stay on as Conservative leader, given the electoral trends.

Some interesting data out of Canada:

Boomers in Canada turned the election into an anti-Trump protest vote.

Younger voters showed strong support for Pierre Poilievre and broadly didn't care about U.S. trolling. pic.twitter.com/L8shopI773

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) April 29, 2025

Now, on the flip side, the Liberal party did not win an outright majority in Parliament, so Carney and company will have to deal with the Conservative minority. And thanks to the nature of parliamentary elections, should Carney end up falling flat on his face, there could be a snap election long before the required time. And Carney apparently thinks Canada should position itself as America’s adversary, rather than neighbor.

“President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never — that will never, ever happen,” Carney declared Monday night in Ottawa, the same day Trump made a further jibe at the country joining the U.S.

“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country: never,” he said. “But these are not idle threats: President Trump is trying to break us, so America can own us. That will never, ever happen.”

He continued, condemning the Trump administration for what he called an “American betrayal” and warning Canadians that “the system of open global trade anchored by the United States is over.”

“We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” he said, continuing to say that any “future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations” will be overshadowed by the “full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States to build prosperity for all Canadians.”

Future talks with Trump, he said, would reflect Canada’s full sovereignty and a willingness to “build, baby, build” with other global partners.

Carney added that said Canadians will “need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

“It’s time to build hundreds of thousands of not just good jobs, but good careers in the skilled trades… It’s time to build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy, and it’s time to build an industrial strategy that makes Canada more competitive while fighting climate change,” he said.

He continued: “The point is that we can give ourselves far more than the Americans can ever take away the but even given that, I want to be clear, the coming days and months will be challenging, and they will call for some sacrifices, but we will share those sacrifices by supporting our workers and our businesses.”

This would be a VERY GOOD TIME for the Trump administration to start pulling together these trade deals we keep hearing about. The economy, and the looming possibility of a tariff war, has unsettled the markets and is sinking Trump in the polls. Did Trump want Carney as prime minister because it would be easier to justify a trade war against a more adversarial Canada? Who knows – and that’s precisely the problem. The economic quicksand that was brought about by all the tariff talk has begun to drag on the Trump administration. There need to be some trade deals formalized and announced in order to bring some stability back into the system. I seriously hope that the president is listening to Secretary Bessent. A trade war with China is one thing, but despite all the happy talk, there is no way tariffs will replace income taxes (thanks, 16th Amendment!), not with the way Washington likes to spend.

Meanwhile, the American left is gloating over the election of Mark Carney – even Joe Biden. Well, whoever is running Joe’s X account, anyway.

I congratulate Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal Party on their success in Canada’s election.  I’m confident Mark will be a strong leader for the fundamental values and interests Canadians and Americans share.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 29, 2025

There’s no way that Joe was up that late tweeting, not after his trip to Rome for the Pope’s funeral – where his running battle against stairs ended in a draw, thanks to an assist from Jill and a death grip on the arm of a priest.

Biden has to be helped down the steps as he attends the funeral of Pope Francis.

pic.twitter.com/UmFxkeeP01

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 26, 2025

Despite “Joe’s” congratulations, Mark Carney is inheriting a financial morass of a fiscal deficit that the Liberal party under Trudeau helped create, and they have not yet been able to solve. It was the financial situation that took Trudeau down, and now it’s Carney’s problem. Ranting against Donald Trump isn’t going to fix Canada’s budget deficit, or find a way out of a trade war. Carney wanted the top job. Now he has to lead.

Featured image: Mark Carney in 2020 via CarletonU, Faculty of Public and Global Affairs on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported