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canadian-politics
Pope Francis greets the crowd during a short appearance at Gemelli hospital, in Rome, on Sunday, March 23, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Pope returns to Vatican, Canadian PM calls snap election, Trump targets legal entry migrants, South Korean PM reinstated, US auto importers hit the gas, Orlando cops recover swallowed earrings
5: Pope Francis is back home at the Vatican. On Sunday, the 88-year-old pontiff was discharged from hospital, where he has been fighting double pneumonia for five weeks. The pope, who looked frail as he made his first public appearance since Valentine’s Day, has been advised by doctors that he will need to continue to convalesce for the next two months.
37: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, leader of the Liberal Party, called a snap federal election on Sunday in Ottawa. The move launched a swift, five-week campaign — it will last just 37 days, the minimum duration required by law — in a bid to keep up the Liberals’ current momentum. The party is ahead of the Conservatives in some polls, having come back from a steep deficit just two months ago, but behind by a few points in others.
530,000: Washington has pulled the welcome mat out from under 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Migrants who came to the US under President Joe Biden’s legal entry parole program over the past two years learned on Friday that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration will soon be retroactive. As of April 24, they will be stripped of legal status, and the administration is encouraging them to self-report – or face possible arrest and deportation.
7-1: South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is no longer impeached. The country’s Constitutional Court overturned his impeachment on Monday, reinstating him in a 7-1 ruling. Observers do not see it as a sign that President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose brief imposition of martial law in December sparked these legal matters, will also see his impeachment overturned.
22: Carmakers have thrown their shipments of vehicles and automotive components into high gear in anticipation of the 25% tariffs to be imposed by the Trump administration on April 2 on imports from Mexico and Canada as well as reciprocal tariffs on other US trading partners. Many fear the tariff regime will upend auto supply chains, so manufacturers are sending more vehicles than normal, leading to a 22% year-on-year increase of such shipments from the EU to the US in February — and 14% and 15% increases from Japan and South Korea respectively.
769,500: We’ve all heard of swallowing one’s pride, but one’s crime? Jaythan Gilder, 32, allegedly swallowed two sets of Tiffany & Co. earrings worth $769,500 around the time of his arrest more than two weeks ago on robbery and grand theft charges. Gilder was monitored by detectives at an Orlando hospital until the jewels were, uh, expelled from his system. The earrings, which match the ones taken from an Orlando Tiffany store last month, have been returned to the retailer (and thoroughly cleaned).
Canadian PM Mark Carney
Canadian PM calls snap election
The countdown is on! On Sunday, Prime Minister Mark Carneydissolved parliament and called a snap federal election that promises to be one of the most consequential — and hotly contested — in recent Canadian history.
Until January, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives had maintained a two-year lead in opinion polls, which ran as high as 25% in December. But the resignation in January of unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, coupled with the return to power of US President Donald Trump, upended the race. It allowed new leader Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, to capitalize on his financial and governance experience in the face of anxiety about Trump’s tariffs and talk of annexation. The Liberals are now neck and neck with the Conservatives and even ahead in some polls.
With the election set for April 28, the Conservatives are scrambling to retool their message, notably on the carbon tax, which Carney has now set to zero for consumers but maintained for industrial emitters. They also question Carney’s ethics, claiming he has conflicts of interest stemming from his work as chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The New Democratic Party of Jagmeet Singh is feeling the squeeze as it attempts to hold onto progressive voters, while the Bloc Québécois of Yves-François Blanchet will fight to represent Quebec’s interests in the new parliament.
For news about outgoing GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon and his decision to run for the Liberals, click here.
Outgoing GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon
Evan Solomon to run for Liberals
GZERO’s Evan Solomon announced on Thursday that he will be returning to Canada and running for Mark Carney’s Liberals. A former Canadian broadcaster, he has been GZERO’s publisher since 2022.
“Given the urgent challenges and threats facing Canadians right now, I’ve decided it’s the right time to come home and do whatever I can to help serve my community and country,” Solomon said in a LinkedIn post. “I will be joining the team led by Prime Minister Mark Carney and will be running as a candidate in the next Federal election. More details on this will be coming very soon!”
Maziar Minovi, CEO of Eurasia Group, praised Solomon for taking the plunge into politics. “You brought to your leadership at GZERO Media sharp insight, strategic vision, and an unwavering commitment to fact-based journalism. Now, you’re bringing that same passion to public service — exactly the kind of step we love to see from our teams.”
Minovi said the Eurasia Group is happy when members of his team choose public service. “As I often say, if you wouldn’t be seriously tempted to take the right job in government to impact the world, then you don’t belong at Eurasia Group.”
Eurasia Group special advisor Justin Kosslyn will be stepping in as GZERO’s interim publisher.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney holds a press conference at Canada House, in London, Britain, on March 17, 2025.
Canadians to head to the polls
New Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to call a snap election on Sunday, sending Canadians to the polls on April 28 or May 5. The campaign, taking place against a backdrop of provocations from Donald Trump, is expected to focus on who is best equipped to handle the US president, former central banker Carney or Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
The Liberals are leading in the polls after an unprecedented 25-point surge since Trump was elected. In the tumultuous period since then, Trudeau was forced out, and Carney took his place, swiftly canceling the consumer carbon tax and thereby removing the two issues Conservatives had built their campaign around. But Poilievre is a veteran, Carney is a political rookie with shaky French, and the electorate is volatile, so the results are unpredictable.
Polling shows Carney — who presided over the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England during economic crises — has an advantage over Poilievre as the candidate best suited to respond to Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty, but Poilievre will challenge that. He seized, for instance, on a Fox News interview in which Trump said he would rather deal with a Liberal government. Poilievre is already delivering campaign-style announcements highlighting his party’s plans to aggressively exploit natural resources, and will argue that Carney will continue with Trudeau-era climate policies that constrained development.
Carney has the momentum, though, after a successful trip to Europe, and the Liberals are announcing high-profile candidates, including former Quebec finance minister Carlos Leitão and outgoing GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon.
Because of Trump’s rhetoric, Canadians are already intensely engaged, so the campaign ahead is likely to have a different dynamic than most, where part of the challenge is getting tuned-out voters to pay attention. The wildcard will be Trump, who is promising to bring in tariffs on April 2 that could send Canada into a recession as voters are trying to figure out who can best handle him.
Canadian Liberal Party leader Mark Carney faces Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in this composite, with Donald Trump hovering in the background.
Canada’s new PM is a technocratic banker who’s never been elected — and that might help him
Mark Carney was sworn in Friday as the prime minister of Canada.
AsCarney takes the helm from Justin Trudeau, the country is witnessing a stunning rebound for the Liberals. In January, the governing Liberal Party trailed the opposition Conservatives by 25 points. Now, the gap has closed to roughly 6 points, and some recent polls even have the Liberals ahead. And Carney’s previous, purported liabilities — being a staid, low-key, globalist technocrat who’s never been elected — may now be seen as strengths as he prepares to call a snap election in the coming days.
What changed between January and today? In short: Donald Trump andTrudeau. Once Trudeau signaled his intention to go, the polls started moving in the Liberals’ favor. Then, Trump threatened Canada with annexation, calling for it to become the “cherished” 51st state and ushered in a trade war with heavy tariffs. Canadians rallied around the flag — and the governing party. Now it seems those same Canadians may be looking for an unflashy, steady hand on the tiller — a leader who can calmly explain matters and strike a stable, reliable posture.
Carney flips the script
Twice serving as a central banker — head of the Bank of Canada and, later, the Bank of England — Carney held earlier positions as deputy minister and an investment banker. His time at the central banks coincided with two major crises: the global financial crisis and Brexit. He’s been criticized by many on the right and left — including me — as a boring technocrat who couldn’t rise to meet today’s populist anger. The Conservatives and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, attacked him as a globalist — a banker with multiple passports, a Davos man through and through. A European, even.
Now, as Canada stares down threats from Trump and begins to look at trade and defense diversification, Carney’s CV and aesthetic may be valuable assets for enough voters to save the Liberals — or, at least, to bring them back from the brink of a previously expected wipeout.
These circumstances give Carney the chance to present himself as the change candidate with enough insiders onside to get the job done. He’s not Trudeau, and he’s never been elected — yet he has the steady hand of continuity as a Liberal surrounded by members of Parliament who’ve been around the block. He’s calm, experienced in negotiation and economic management, and he can explain the crisis at hand and what needs to be done. Even conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Carney “understands finances like no other person.”
Still, Carney faces a big leadership test, and his party continues to trail in most polls. Graeme Thompson, a senior macro-geopolitics analyst at Eurasia Group, says Carney’s skills and temperament make him a kind of anti-Trump. But there may be a limit to how far that will take him in an election campaign, even if they serve him while governing.
What happens, asks Thompson, “when the technocratic economist skills and experience, and the kind of bland, boring, predictable, safe persona runs into the fact of a 40-day electoral sprint in front of the media, live crowds, and on debate stages with Pierre Poilievre?”
Carney versus Trump, Poilievre versus …Trudeau?
When Carney hits the debate stage, he’ll be running against Trump, and he’ll make the case that while he can’t manage the mercurial president — he says Trump can’t be controlled — he can effectively navigate the crises emanating from the White House.
In his victory speech in Ottawa last Sunday, Carney said as much, sending a message to Canadian voters — and Trump — and setting the tone and focus of his campaign for the federal election.
“Canada never, ever will be part of America in any way, shape, or form,” said Carney. “We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.”
On Wednesday, Carney said he’ll only meet Trump if the president respects Canadian sovereignty, though he didn’t specify exactly what that would entail.
Poilievre and the Conservatives, meanwhile, have been left snakebitten by the quick turn of events. They say they’re not panicking at Carney’s rise, but they’re dropping in the polls, and they’ve lost the electoral focus — the carbon tax — they’ve worked on for over a year. Like the Conservatives, Carney says he will also scrap consumer carbon pricing. Poilievre has built his campaign around his character: combative, angry, unapologetically right-wing, and, above all, anti-Trudeau. He’s built his entire campaign around running against Trudeau.
Now, he’ll try to make the case that the new PM is Trudeau 2.0. Poilievre will question his opponent’s trustability, pointing to the fact that Carney has not disclosed his financial assets — even though he has now put those assets in a blind trust — and that Carney’s using Trump as a distraction.
Described as Trump-like or Trump-inspired in the past, Poilievre recently has been tougher on the president, attacking his tariffs, supporting counter-tariffs, and emphasizing that Canada will never become the 51st state. But it’s a fine line; he knows much of his base has been pro-Trump — and some still are. Poilievre can’t afford to alienate them, and the Liberals will be all too happy to try to tie the Canadian right to its US counterpart.
One way or another, the Canadian election will be about Trump, which could help the Liberals.
“If the election is about people wanting the opposite of whatever it is that Donald Trump is offering, then that works to the benefit of the Liberals,” Thompson says.
“In a way, you’re going to get a fight not between two relatively different policy visions, but two notions of what the ballot question is. A lot is going to be determined by the actual campaign, but the Liberals are definitely back in the game.”
Canada's Liberal Party leadership candidates, former House leader Karina Gould, far left, shakes hands with former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, far right, near former Liberal MP Frank Baylis, and former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, before their English language debate ahead of the March 9 vote to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Feb. 25, 2025.
Canadian Liberals to get new leader
Carney is favored to win, with a recent Ipsos poll giving him 68% support among Liberal members, ahead of Freeland at 14% and Gould and Baylis in single digits. While a recent poll showed Carney as the leader most trusted to take on Trump, another shows him dropping back behind Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the popular vote.Poll aggregator 338Canada.com shows both the Liberals and Conservatives in a position to form a government, however, if an election were held today.
After leadership, an election? Canadians must go to the polls by Oct. 25, but the House of Commons is supposed to return on March 24, and opposition parties have threatened to bring down the Liberals’ minority government. Until this week, with the party rebounding in the polls, there was speculation the new leader might simply call a snap election, perhaps as early as the week of March 10.
But the winds may have shifted with the imposition of Trump’s tariffs. The head of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, wrote a letter Tuesday demanding an emergency session of Parliament to pass unemployment insurance relief measures, meaning his party does not immediately intend to bring down the government – giving the Liberals a lifeline to stick around a bit longer if they choose.Canada's Liberal Party leadership candidate and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney speaks to the media after participating in an English-language debate ahead of the March 9 vote to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Montreal, Quebec, on Feb. 25, 2025.
Do the Liberals stand a chance after all?
Over the past year, everyone had counted the Liberals down and out – their chances of holding on to power after the next federal election in Canada had been somewhere south of slim. But now the party is enjoying a twin boost from two recent shifts in the political terrain and has closed the polling gap between them and the Conservative Party.
In January, Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign as party leader and prime minister. Then Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president for the second time and immediately started coming after Canada hard, threatening economy-destroying tariffs, calling Trudeau “governor,” and talking about annexing the country and making it a “cherished” 51st state.
With Trudeau (and his baggage) on the way out and Trump stirring up nationalist fervor, the Liberals have now surpassedthe Conservatives in one recent poll by Ipsos, coming back from 26 points behind in just six weeks to lead 38% to 36%. Another poll, by Léger, finds that with Mark Carney as Liberal leader, the party’s support would hit 40% compared to 38% for Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives.
One or two polls will never tell the whole story, but over at 338 Canada, which aggregates federal polls, the Liberals are showing a sharp uptick and, on average, find themselves within 10 points of their Conservative competitors – and climbing day by day.
Disclaimer: Mark Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney, is an advisor to our parent company, Eurasia Group, but no one other than GZERO’s editorial team – and excluding publisher Evan Solomon, a family friend of the Carneys – is involved in the selection and editing of our coverage.Trump brings Canadian Liberals back from the dead
Mark Carney laid out his case for governing Canada on Saturday during a friendly interview with former Tony Blair spin doctor Alastair Campbell and short-lived Trump spokesman Anthony Scaramucci on "The Rest Is Politics" podcast.
Carney is likely to become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada on March 9 and then take over from Justin Trudeau for two weeks before calling an election in which he must convince Canadians that he, not Pierre Poilievre, is the right person to handle President Donald Trump.
He is taking a harder line than the Conservative leader.
“What had been our closest friend and ally now is just our neighbor,” he said. “The Americans are just our neighbor. It’s geography as opposed to kinship.”
In a flag-festooned rally in Ottawa on the same day, Poilievre struck a different tone. He said Canada “will bear any burden and pay any price to protect our sovereignty and independence” — while also extending an olive branch.
“We’ve always loved you as neighbors and friends. There is no country with whom we would rather share a border — the longest undefended border in the world.”
Not a professional politician
Poilievre is not free to take as hard a line as Carney because about half of his party’s supporters approve of Trump, and his approach to politics is influenced by the MAGA movement.
Carney attacked Poilievre for that in the podcast.
“Do you really believe in these elements of Canada, or have you been mouthing MAGA talking points with a Canadian twist for the past three years, and don’t buy into them and wouldn’t protect them?”
Campbell, a savvy political messenger, gave him some friendly advice.
“I think if you are a full-time experienced politician, you left that hanging, Mark,” he said. “I’d have gone straight for the jugular. You were setting it up and then you pulled your punch.”
“You’re right,” Carney said with a grimace and a smile. “Fair enough.”
Campbell, who wants Carney to win, is right. Carney is not a “full-time experienced politician.” He doesn’t know how to land a punch. Poilievre, in contrast, has an unerring instinct for his opponent’s weaknesses, and never misses an opening.
No longer a slam dunk
The election ahead was supposed to be a slam dunk. Poilievre has been leading in the polls for three years, usually by double digits. The 9-year-old Trudeau government had wandered to the left of the mainstream, leaving Canadians fed up with the cost of living, a housing crisis, mismanaged immigration, and an activist, woke approach to social issues.
All the pieces were lined up for a massive Conservative election victory until Trump started threatening to annex Canada. In the fallout, the unpopular Trudeau was forced to resign, and Carney — who had been biding his time on the sidelines — stepped forward.
The former governor of central banks in Canada and the UK, Carney has unparalleled economic and crisis-management credentials. Canadians have taken notice. He is raising money and filling halls. The one issue where the Liberals have a brand advantage — managing the relationship with the Americans — is now likely to dominate political debate.
New challenge for Poilievre
Poilievre is still ahead in the polls, but the Liberals have surged. A poll last week from Leger, Canada’s best-rated pollster, found that the electorate would be evenly divided when Carney is leader.
The result was not a complete shock to Leger because a poll the week before found Quebec’s leaderless provincial Liberals surging at the expense of nationalist Quebec parties, says Leger Vice President Sébastien Dallaire.
“There clearly is a generalized Donald Trump effect, so the voters are galvanizing, trying to show national unity against what’s happening in the United States, against Donald Trump more specifically, and parties whose brands are more aligned with defending national unity are certainly benefiting from this.”
Poilievre had planned for the election of 2025 to be a referendum against Trudeau and the carbon tax, but Trudeau is headed for the exit and Carney has promised to kill the consumer carbon tax.
The parties are converging on policies as Liberals discard unpopular Trudeau-era positions and wrap themselves in the flag after a decade in which they held more ambiguous feelings. Poilievrecan complain about their death-bed conversion, but voters are focused on the future, so he has to thread the needle, backing his country against American threats while also not sanctioning the Liberals’ response.
“You want to be heard, but you don’t want to be seen to be a bit tone-deaf or out of touch with what’s happening,” says Dallaire. “So that’s the big, big challenge for Pierre Poilievre right now. And it goes a little bit against his style of politics as well, to find that softer tone a little bit.”
Trump, who seems to despise Trudeau, has thrown the Liberal Party a lifeline — and increased the possibility that the United States will face an unfriendly new government on its northern border this spring.