In the Canadian federal elections held on April 28, the Liberals won with 169 seats to 144 for the Conservatives. The Liberals won 43% of the vote under Mark Carney. The Conservatives got 41% of the votes.
In an election district near Ottawa, Pierre Poilievre, a Franco-Albertan lost the personal seat that he had held for 20 years. Third parties — the Bloc Québécois, the New Democrats, the Greens — got the rest. The Liberals will need three additional votes in parliament to pass laws.
In the United States, President Donald Trump’s “make Canada the 51st state” was considered a joke and not taken seriously among all the other proposals for increasing control of nearby real estate like Greenland and the Panamá Canal Zone. But in Canada it was taken very seriously.
Detroit workers demonstrate in solidarity with Canadian workers, who are demonstrating across the Detroit River against Trump’s policies that hurt Canadian and U.S. workers, April 26, 2025.
Given the tight integration between the U.S. and Canadian economies, the tariffs that Trump imposed on Canadian goods had an immediate negative impact and intensified the woes — high housing costs, inflation, low wages — afflicting the Canadian economy. These issues turned the election into a referendum on the U.S. president.
The Liberals, who began running the country in 2015 under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had become so deeply unpopular that public opinion polls had them down by 20 points or more in December 2024. Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader in January and was replaced by Mark Carney, a banker who had run both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada.
The more the Conservatives accepted and supported Trump, the less support they got from Canadian voters.
In his speech accepting the results, Carney said: “As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us.”