HALIFAX—Politics is hard work followed by harder work, as Prime Minister Mark Carney will soon learn.

Not to diminish his accomplishments to date. It was no easy task for a political neophyte to win the Liberal Party leadership. 

Liberals like their leaders coming out of caucus, not left field. Carney bucked that preference. He not only captured the top job, he raised the Liberals Lazarus-like from the dead.

Then he had to introduce himself to a country that knew him as an elite banker, if they knew him at all. All of his opponents had years of name-recognition and political experience. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had 20 years of getting himself elected before campaign 2025 began.

Carney pulled off the near-impossible. Just two months before he arrived on the scene, the Conservatives were wiping the floor with the Liberals at the polls, enjoying a 25-point lead.  

But on election day, he scored a strong minority government, just a few seats away from an outright majority. It was an unprecedented, astonishing accomplishment.

But with the Cinderella start over, Carney now faces the transition from campaigning politician to governing leader. It is a whole new ball game, both daunting and merciless. It is one thing to deliver a speech, but delivering on promises is quite another.

It is always difficult to turn promises into reality. But Carney has made the task tougher because he has created such great expectations in Canadians. And there won’t be much time to prepare for the biggest item on his early agenda: negotiating a new trade and security deal with United States President Donald Trump.  

Last week, Trump said that Carney would be coming to the White House within a week to start that process. No one can know if Trump—the biggest source of fake news in the world—is telling the truth. But sooner rather than later, Carney will have to engage with a man who likes to intimidate both friends and foes in order to get his way.  

Canadians will be watching those talks like the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final. And they won’t be the only ones. 

Carney’s political opponents at both the federal and provincial levels will be glued to the talks. Can Carney make a good deal for Canada? Can he get the ruinous Trump tariffs removed or reduced, and if so, what will he be prepared to give up? And can he get it through Trump’s thick skull that the Maple Leaf will be flying over Canada forever, not the Stars and Stripes?

One fact that has been understated in the imminent Carney/Trump sit-down is just how long it will take to hammer out a deal. The pressure will be on Carney to report back details of those talks.  

There are two things wrong with that. It will take up to a year—or even longer—to finalize a deal. Second, when consequential talks get down to the nitty-gritty, negotiators go quiet in order not to upset the apple cart.  

The good news for Carney is that at least one of his federal rivals has realized that. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet has said that while these crucial, time-consuming talks are underway, it can’t be partisan politics as usual in this country.  

The Bloc leader says he will put aside the usual partisan sniping in order to give the new prime minister at least a year without having to worry about squabbling in Parliament. What is needed when dealing with Trump on such vital matters, Blanchet says, is a strong and unified Canada. Hard to disagree.

But not everyone could prove so patient or high-minded as the Bloc leader. The Conservatives are in disarray after blowing an election that was all but in the bag a very short time ago. This is their fourth straight loss since 2015, a lost Conservative decade if ever there was one. Making matters worse, Poilievre lost his own seat, and Parliament will return without the Conservative leader in the House.

Will Poilievre—assuming he is allowed to remain as leader—give Carney a year of co-operation until the talks are completed? If he does, it will run against his track record as an ultra-partisan who always comes out swinging against his opponents.  

The question is a delicate one for the now compromised Conservative leader. If, as a critic and political opponent, he attacks Carney during the talks, it could come with a heavy price. Poilievre could easily come across as playing against Team Canada at a crucial time in the country’s history. Politics before patriotism.  

But if he follows Blanchet’s lead, if he were to give Carney a period of political grace while he’s negotiating with Trump, Poilievre risks angering his party’s base. After all, on election night, he promised his supporters that he looked forward to holding the Liberals to account with his usual ardour.  

And there is another risk for Poilievre in muting his criticism of the government. Should Carney score a diplomatic triumph in these talks, should Canadians approve of how he handles Trump, it would only reinforce the voters’ political opinion that Carney was indeed the right man for the job—not Poilievre. The Conservatives could go away diminished.

But Trump is just Carney’s first hurdle, not his last. Carney also promised Canadians that he will rebuild the economy in a revolutionary way, replacing dependence on the Americans with self-reliance domestically, and finding new trading partners internationally. In the long run, that could mean greater prosperity. But in the short run, it will mean pain, as Carney himself has stated.  

And then there is the former banker’s promise to make Canada both a clean and conventional energy super power. That will mean building new pipelines, including one that runs east/west. Can he get support from provinces like Quebec? Will anything he does satisfy western Canadian leaders like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith? Will his environmentally inclined supporters see new pipelines as a betrayal? Will First Nations buy in or balk?

Carney is about to find out that running a country is not like running a bank.

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.

The Hill Times

 

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