Worthwhile Canadian leadership election

Only Donald Trump could make Canadian politics interesting. By repeatedly coveting Canada’s sovereignty, Trump has drained the fun from that old joke about it becoming America’s 51st state. There’s still room for that other saying about the New York Times’ most boring ever headline; “Worthwhile Canadian initiative” — though even that is losing its shine; Canada’s softwood lumber and dairy exports are pretty interesting nowadays.

But I am gripped by Canada’s leadership contest, which is an intraparty decision. The winner on March 9 will replace Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party and thus automatically become prime minister. Canada’s parliament is in recess until March 24, but when it returns, the opposition will probably call and win a vote of no confidence triggering a general election.

As quirk of fate would have it, the two Canadians I personally know best — Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland — are the same two competing for that job. In any situation, that would make the contest riveting to me. But Trump has ensured a global audience.

In so doing, he has made life trickier for Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative party, which is strongly favoured to win the country’s next election (probably in April). Suddenly Poilievre’s Trump-lite politics, including his boast that he would get along better with the US president, require tightrope skills. Being friendly with Trump — let alone admiring him — is less of a selling point in a country where sports fans are now booing the US national anthem. Even Poilievre’s “Canada First” mantra is more complex. All Canadian parties can agree on that nowadays. Trump has united a polarised Canada against him. I’m still adjusting to the novelty of angry Canadians.

But the nature of Canada’s general election won’t be clear until we know which of Freeland or Carney is Poilievre’s prime ministerial opponent. I confess to bias in favour of either of them over Poilievre. Yet much of what I see as their strengths — each having a strong international background and serious government experience — are also vulnerabilities.

I met Carney in 1992 when we were both students in the UK, via an old friend, Diana Fox, to whom Carney has long since been married. Freeland was an FT colleague for almost 20 years. For three of those she was my boss. As governor of two G7 central banks, Canada’s and then the Bank of England during the rocky post-Brexit years, Carney knows the global economy and its leading public players as well as anyone in the world. Over the past decade, Freeland has variously been trade minister, foreign minister, finance minister and deputy prime minister in Trudeau’s government.

If this election were about credentials, each would have a strong case. But their weak points are non-trivial. Having resigned just a few days before Christmas, Freeland cannot hope to dissociate herself from Trudeau’s unpopular government. Though Carney headed a nebulous advisory committee to Trudeau, he never served in his government. Nor, however, has he ever stood in an election. Carney can as easily be caricatured as a globalist banker as Freeland can a Trudeau loyalist. But either would be a big improvement on Trudeau.

Some have compared Carney to Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian academic, who flunked Canadian politics after spending years abroad. But that is misleading. Carney has held high-profile jobs in Canada and got strong reviews. Freeland, meanwhile, is a much tougher negotiator than Trudeau. Trump recently described her as “totally toxic.” To Freeland, this was a “backhanded compliment,” as she told my colleague Gideon Rachman. “I think this shows even more that the leader Canadians need is someone who the president doesn’t want to see doing that job,” she said.

Those who want to dip a little more into their respective styles can read my Lunches with the FT with Freeland here and Carney here. The winner, which looks likelier to be Carney, would be wise to close ranks quickly with the loser. But watch the contest for yourself and note how deep Trump is burrowed into Canadian politics.

For an example of far better humour than the jokes I cited at the top, read this open letter to Trump from John Manley, a former Canadian deputy prime minister. Canada has 10 provinces, Manley points out, which means it would have to account US states 51-60, a bigger expansion than Trump might have supposed. That in turn would give former Canada 20 seats in the US Senate. The Canadian caucus would happily vote to deliver gun control and socialised healthcare to their fellow citizens of “the United States of Canada”.

I am turning with anticipatory nostalgia to my departing colleague Peter Spiegel, our US managing editor in New York since 2019, and a good friend. Sadly for us, Peter is moving to the Washington Post. Peter also knows both Freeland and Carney and is indeed leaving the FT job that Freeland once held. Peter, are you paying attention to Canada’s worthwhile election? I think it is fair to say that what Canada most needs in the near future is a leader who can stand up to Trump. Which of them do you think would do it better? Given his skill at handling the treacherous economic waters of Brexit and greater distance from Trudeau, I confess to a marginal preference for Carney. Meanwhile Peter, what do you think of Jeff Bezos? (OK, OK, you can ignore that last one).  

 Recommended reading

• My column this week, “While Democrats sleep”, argues that they are playing by rules of a vanished age. “A confident Democratic Party would ask, ‘Who elected Elon Musk?’,” I write. “It seems an act of will not to make that a rallying cry. When life gives you a Bond villain, make Bond-villain lemonade.”

• While we are on Musk, do read Nicholas Kristof’s latest New York Times column on how the world’s richest man is taking food and medicine from the world’s poorest children. USAID has bureaucratic problems but Musk’s depiction of it as a “criminal organisation” would make Orwell weep.

• Finally my colleague George Parker has a spicy interview with Britain’s controversial new ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, The Prince of Darkness. It’s fair to say that Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, is taking a bit of a gamble. 

Peter Spiegel responds

Ed, like many Americans, my interest in things Canadian over the years has been less focused on party politics and more on Gary Carter and Tim Raines (my favourite players on the late, occasionally-great Montreal Expos baseball team). But like you, I’ve suddenly found myself poring over polling data and campaign coverage north of the border — both because of the economic consequences of Trump’s tariff threats and the international stature of the two Liberal candidates.

That said, I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on Canadian politics. Instead, what is most intriguing to me in the Canadian campaign is Trump’s ability to shape the political narrative across the democratic world. Canada is hardly alone in this respect. Trump and his “first buddy” Elon Musk have scrambled the German Bundestag race, shaped the political agenda in your native Britain, and weakened an anti-Likud coalition’s hopes of ousting Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.

Canada represents the clearest case of the international Trump backlash. Until he announced (and then postponed) his tariffs on Canadian imports, the Freeland-Carney race seemed to be a campaign for a poisoned chalice. Why would either want to be a Liberal leader going into an election where they’d be pulverised by a revitalised Conservative party? But recent polling shows a sharp rise in support for the Liberals as Canadians rally around the Trump-ridiculed flag.

For me, the most important question is whether the Canadian reaction is a one-off or will be repeated elsewhere. Thus far, Trump’s embrace of international populism has been something of a boon for a lot of similarly-minded leaders — witness the fact that Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei attended Trump’s inauguration unabashedly.

But historically, American political dictates are not often greeted with warmth overseas. Will Britons swing towards Nigel Farage over the course of the next parliament because of Trump’s embrace — or adopt a Yankee-go-home attitude, and rally around the Labour government? Germans already seemed to be punishing the centre-right frontrunner for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for his cosying up to the AfD — the far-right party endorsed by Musk.

I’m not going to make any predictions about the Canadian race. But I will reveal a slight personal bias: Freeland was the FT’s US managing editor before moving on to other challenges. As the FT’s soon-to-depart US managing editor myself, I’d like to see a fellow member of the alumni society do well.

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And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “What we have learned from Donald Trump’s first constitutional crisis”:
“Examine how USAID is being dismantled for a more organised example of what the administration plans in many areas of the federal government: Freeze funding, decapitate the leadership, lock out mid-level official s and impose a communication blackout . . . I was a foreign service officer working for the United States Information Agency when it was merged with the State Department in 1999. This is different. This is a hostile takeover, not reform.” — Philip Breeden

“It is dangerous to shrug off the opening salvo of Trump executive actions because they appear inept. The malevolent actors at OMB, likely under Russell Vought, are only there because of Trump. Whatever the miscommunication or overreach, it nonetheless reflects a shared set of underlying values and goals.” — Niels Erich