Matina Stevis-Gridneff

He had been under tremendous pressure from within his party to step down, and the public had made it abundantly clear that they were no longer supporting him. His popularity was at historic lows, and eventually the growing calls from within his party for him to step down showed him the exit.

Well, practically speaking, the Liberal Party will take the next few weeks to elect a new leader, and that person will automatically become the prime minister. But I think that will be very short-lived. I think as we go into the spring, the country will hold general elections.

And even though a new liberal leader could rapidly transform the fortunes of the party, polling does suggest that the Conservative Party of Canada and its leader, Pierre Polievre, a 45-year-old career politician, are going to be winning or likely winning the next federal election.

So Pierre Poilier presents as a pretty mainstream populist 21st century right-wing leader.

And his message tends to be short, pithy. He loves slogans like, axe the tax, stop the crime. He endorses traditional family values. He believes in the nuclear family and so on. And I think a lot of his messaging is pithy. fairly textbook conservative.

He believes, for example, in the deregulation of the economy, getting the government out of the way of people's lives, of businesses cutting red tape. Same things that we're hearing from conservatives in other parts of the world. But Mr. Poliev is also someone who has been very smart about harvesting this moment of anti-progressive politics that are really rising right now.

Some people might call it anti-woke. And he has been able to make that part of his brand.

And his promise to Canadians is to frankly be the opposite of Justin Trudeau.

I sort of think of Paulieva and Trump as ideological cousins. I think there's a lot of overlap in some of the core traditional conservative ideas that both leaders espouse. And those are, again, quite textbook. They're not particularly fresh or new. I think, too, that Mr. Paulieva is very smart about using social media in his favor.

Of course, this is a moment with Elon Musk and X that is playing in Mr. Paulieva's favor, and he really knows how to use that. He has been a strong communicator. Experts say the strongest communicator Justin Trudeau had ever had to face, and Justin Trudeau was considered a very strong communicator. And so, yes, there are several similarities with Trump.

I mean, broadly speaking, the arc of Justin Trudeau's narrative is one of rapid and spectacular rise and slow and steady decline. And really, that rise kind of almost started from his birth. He was born while his father was in his first term of being prime minister of Canada, his late father, Pierre Trudeau.

Nonetheless, Mr. Poliev is also very Canadian. You will hear him talk about really curbing the immigration program that Mr. Trudeau ushered in, which backfired. But you will never really hear him say things that are profoundly anti-immigrant. And so there are still many elements of Mr. Polyar that are, you know, unique to this country and unique to Canadian conservatism, I think.

I agree. I mean, it will definitely be different. We don't have enough information right now to know what Poli ever plans to do when it comes to actually sitting down with Donald Trump. And I would add here that just from observation that. Political affiliation does not necessarily mean that you get a good deal from Donald Trump.

So much of what transpires when leaders meet with Donald Trump, trying to advance their country's agenda, comes down to tactics and personal chemistry. And this is a personal chemistry that's completely untested, as opposed, for example, to the Trudeau-Trump chemistry, which we watched play out for several years. And it's not just about getting along, right?

Canada and the United States are each other's closest allies and biggest trading partners. And Mr. Trump has beef with Canada. He has Canada in his crosshairs. He has talked about wanting to close the trade surplus that Canada has over the United States. He wants Canada to do a better job protecting the joint border between the two countries.

And he has very importantly threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods imported into the United States, a tariff that would crush the Canadian economy and send it into a recession. So. These are very serious issues that the new leader of Canada will need to negotiate over with Mr. Trump.

And yes, potentially being ideological cousins could be an advantage for Mr. Polievre if he is that leader. But it's not a foregone conclusion that the two men would see eye to eye. It would be a new relationship that would have to be built up and tested.

I mean, Natalie, I think, first of all, the end of the Trudeau era here in Canada certainly fits that trend that you've described, the rise of voters against incumbents, particularly liberal governments that were in power during the pandemic period.

People around the world, we've seen it in the United States and in Europe, have become deeply disenchanted with the way progressive politicians manage the economic fallout, as well as other elements and facets of their lives in the course of the last few years, and are just voting them out one by one. And Justin Trudeau certainly fits that pattern.

And I think there is a sort of, you know, poetry to it, not to be all romantic in a tragic way. But, you know, this is an era of the growing popularity of progressive politics, the vision and the hope and the dream around it that Trudeau was an icon for. And that era is very clearly coming to an end, a crushing end.

And Justin Trudeau is born in the spotlight and raised in the trappings of Canadian political power. But when he decides himself as a young man to enter politics, running for a member of parliament in the late 2000s with the Liberal Party, his father's party, he's sort of seen as this wimp or kind of weak from a character perspective.

And it almost feels inevitable that with it, Trudeau's career would also end and mark a sort of bookend to that period of progressive politics. And what will come next for centrist or center-left political parties in the developed world is up for debate. But whatever Justin Trudeau stood for as a symbol in the past, I think we can safely say that that's over.

So despite his background, he's definitely not automatically commanding the respect of the political establishment in Canada.

And one of the first things I think he did to dispel that notion was that he literally participated in a charity boxing match against a very serious conservative politician who had a black belt in karate.

And of course, people anticipated Trudeau to get destroyed, but he wasn't. He actually hang in there.

And he won the match.

And I know it sounds really basic, but people started calling him a fighter after that.

Oh, absolutely. And within a year, Trudeau becomes the leader of the Liberal Party. Now... To be clear, the Liberal Party was a disaster when Trudeau became its leader in 2013.

And Justin Trudeau quickly resuscitated it, brought it back from the dead, and by 2015 had done such a good job putting the party back together and bringing it back to strength that he sweeps into government and becomes prime minister.

He's obviously popular in Canada. He's just won this very important election. But boy, is he popular globally. He just explodes on the global political scene like a rock star.

The global press is fawning over him, from the broadsheets, serious papers to the glossy women's magazines. Vogue declares him one of the unconventional hotties of the year. It's really a phenomenon. And I think he was seen by a lot of people as a sort of successor to the Obama progressive dream. Remember, this is the tail end of the second Obama presidency.

And here's this younger guy in Canada who seems to stand for sort of the same principles, the same values, and have that same sort of sunny, hopeful outlook.

Absolutely. He declares himself a feminist. He also pursues policies that we identify with progressive politics, such as climate change-related policies, reconciliation with Indigenous communities in Canada. and a very pro-refugee stance in the middle of the Syrian civil war.

Absolutely. The world projects on him expectations of being the antithesis of Trump. And Trudeau really leans into the idea that he's the opposite of Trump. In fact, he takes the opportunity to showcase that straight off the bat. Soon after Donald Trump is inaugurated, he announces a major policy known as the Muslim ban.

And in response to that, Trudeau goes to what was then still known as Twitter. and says, to those fleeing persecution, terror, and war, Canadians will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. Hashtag welcome to Canada. Is there a more anti-Trump message than that in that moment? I don't think so.

Yeah, totally. It was a whole thing. And, you know, he really relished that reputation. And it had staying power on the global stage. But at home, his star started to dim around that time.

What happened? Well, there were a series of what we would call scandals.

He accepted this luxurious holiday on a private island as a gift, and many people saw it as deeply inappropriate and a conflict of interest.

Photos of him from his student days wearing blackface emerged. This is something that I deeply, deeply regret. And this really shocked people because remember, Trudeau's whole thing was that he was a very progressive politician.

Look, he definitely scores a few wins, but he very quickly gets into trouble and starts struggling in that department as well. I think a good example of that is this policy known as the carbon tax that he launches, and it just becomes deeply unpopular. It's convoluted, it's complicated. The opposition paints it as this huge burden on Canadians, and he continues to struggle to sell it as a success.

But where his problems and his troubles with the Canadian public really start to compound is when the pandemic hits. And as vaccine mandates and protracted restrictions on movement and social interactions and the economy really take their toll on Canadian society, a lot of people start more directly turning against him.

And there is a small but very vocal minority in Canada that really erupts in protest against these restrictions. also known as the Freedom Convoy.

And it sort of grew into a broader protest movement against Justin Trudeau and the things he stood for. And of course, coming out of the pandemic, Canada's economy, like so many other economies around the world, is really crippled. It's facing rapid inflation and labor shortages. So you have all these economic problems starting to stack up. And I think this brings us to...

one of the biggest policy failures for Trudeau, which has been his immigration policy. In response to those post-pandemic labor shortages and in order to get Canada's economy going again, the Trudeau government decides to bring in millions of temporary foreign workers to fill in jobs that they're saying Canadians won't do.

And the result for that is that within two and a half, three years, the country adds more than 3 million people in its population. It goes from 38 million total population to more than 41 million. And while that actually does increase, do some good things for the economy.

I mean, I know what you mean, Natalie, but honestly, he resigned, but I really don't think it was much of a choice. Yes, he had been around for a really long time. It's almost kind of hard to remember a time when he wasn't Canadian prime minister, but If you've been following Canadian politics, you would know this was a really long time coming and for many Canadians, well overdue.

The addition of millions of new people in Canada stretches resources that were already quite thin, and it compounds the housing crisis and an access to healthcare crisis that were already brewing since before the pandemic. Ultimately, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged that this policy had created serious problems and announced that it needed to be rapidly curtailed.

But the damage had been done to his reputation and to the trust that the electorate showed him. And Trudeau sees his popularity plummet to historic lows. He becomes frankly loathed among Canadians who, poll after poll for several months, say they want him out, giving his opponents, the Conservative Party, a double-digit lead, coming to the end of 2024, a 25-point lead over the Liberals.

The Liberal Party doesn't have a formal mechanism to get rid of Trudeau. And it's also Trudeau's party. Remember, the party was crushed and he brought it back from the dead. So it becomes really hard to separate the party and the man.

Starting from members of parliament and growing voices within the party start to ask him to leave and let someone else lead the party and the country.

But Mr. Trudeau appears completely attached to his position, he says, I am not going anywhere until in December, one of his most important allies, the country's deputy prime minister, a woman named Chrystia Freeland, resigns in acrimony and indicates that she can no longer support him.

She says Trudeau has been governing the country with a narrow political gain in mind rather than having the best interest of Canadians at heart. And this is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Justin Trudeau takes the holiday season to reflect on his future. And then on Monday, he finally addresses the nation. I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister. And announces that he intends to step down as prime minister and as liberal party leader.

And in doing so, he puts the country on course for a lengthy, messy, chaotic transition, at the end of which a new leadership could put Canada on a completely different course to the one it's been on for the last 10 years.

Justin Trudeau also has a phone call with President Trump in the morning of Monday, but it goes very, very differently to the call he had with Scheinbaum. As we understand it, President Trump brings up other issues that are unrelated to the border, such as access for U.S. banks in the Canadian market, and they hang up without a deal. Then they make a date to speak again at 3 p.m. Eastern.

While we're waiting for this call to take place... I think we're going to have another good conversation today. We're actually speaking at 3 o'clock again. Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, and he takes the opportunity to weigh in on what's going to happen on his phone call with Justin Trudeau, and he says... Look, what I'd like to see, Canada become our 51st state.

Well, basically, I want Canada to be the 51st state of the United States.

This is something that started off as a joke, and Canadian officials actually pointed out to me that he made this joke during his first presidency. But he has been really repeating it over and over again in the standoff with Canada.

I think deeply unusual is one way to put it. Also aggravating tariffs. terrifying, upsetting to many Canadians who are seeing, you know, the country they thought was their best friend, closest ally. You know, as Trudeau said on Saturday night, we've spilled blood next to you in multiple wars over the decades. That's really, really hard.

And it also just highlighted something Canadians were already suspecting, that perhaps it wasn't really about the border. Perhaps President Trump had other things on his sights.

The call goes on for at least 45 minutes. And at the end of it, Justin Trudeau puts out a statement that says, we have a deal. We should say this was just moments ago. It was literally four minutes ago to the moment that we're recording. And he says, we also are getting a 30-day reprieve from these tariffs, like Mexico had announced earlier in the day.

And he lays out what the deal is, and it is a border deal. The Canadian prime minister says that we are going to push ahead with a plan to spend 1.3 billion Canadian dollars. That's just shy of a billion U.S. dollars. deploy more technology, more staff and personnel along that border.

Now, it is worth mentioning that this plan had already been put in place weeks ago in response to the original Trump concerns. So I think it'll be interesting to see whether it's sold as a victory when it was a plan already announced. However, on the fentanyl front... Trudeau does announce several new measures. He says Canada will appoint a fentanyl czar.

He says Canada will list fentanyl-linked and other organized crime entities related to the drug trade as terrorist organizations, an important thing that we know Trump wants to do in the U.S. as well. And he also says that Canada will throw $200 million Canadian dollars into renewed intelligence efforts pertaining to the drug trade and cartels.

I feel like given the fact that Canada had already started addressing President Trump's border concerns, the border piece of that concession doesn't feel huge to me. This is something that's already even budgeted for in Canada's economic planning. I think what is more meaningful is this renewed focus on fentanyl. Like I said earlier, Trudeau has admitted Canada has its own opioid crisis.

And so I believe that that must have been a little easier for him to see eye to eye with President Trump on, even though the facts show that Canada is not an exporter of fentanyl to the United States, at least not at a worrying scale.

I mean, I can talk about Canada and I feel that in the last 24, 48 hours, so much trust has been shattered between the two countries that it will be really hard to build it back. Also, let's remember a 30-day reprieve is not a permanent reprieve.

This situation puts Canada, Canadians, the Canadian government on a footing of continued insecurity, which is exactly where President Trump seems to want them to be. But the loss of trust and the instability here in Canada, I feel, have made a big impact and will leave lasting scars beyond this immediate, you know, short-term reprieve.

Well, Michael, we should start by saying that the three economies have just been so deeply integrated because of existing free trade agreements that have been put in place and then renegotiated over the past several decades. And so for Canada specifically, the impact would be catastrophic. Economists predict that such tariffs would tip the Canadian economy into a recession.

Thanks. Thanks, Michael.

And we could see hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. For example, in the province of Ontario, which is the heart of the Canadian automotive industry, the predictions are that up to half a million people could lose their jobs. So it would be truly meaningful and devastating for the Canadian economy and for Canadians.

Well, the facts show that as far as the fentanyl is concerned, Canada has its own opioid crisis at home. But the fentanyl crossing from Canada into the United States is a tiny amount of the total, about 1%. 1% of all fentanyl entering the United States. Correct. For example, data shows that last year, 19.5 kilograms or 43 pounds of fentanyl were found crossing from Canada into the United States.

And what about migrants? When it comes to irregular crossings at the Canada-United States border, that is also a really tiny fraction of the total of irregular migrants crossing into the United States, a fraction of what happens at the southern border, for example. But that number had gone up in the last three years. There had been a marked increase of those crossings. However...

Since June, those crossings are down 89%, according to Canadian statistics. And that's because of a number of changes that Canada implemented at the northern border and its visa processes that have severely curbed those crossings.

And I think that's what the tone he was aiming for was.

He came out in a Saturday evening address flanked by all his top ministers, and then he laid out what was an already anticipated retaliatory plan.

He said, we don't want to be here, but this is where we are, and we have to stand up with pride for our country.

And he said that that plan would escalate if the United States didn't back down.

Bourbon, chickens, tomatoes, dishwashers. It's a long list of goods.

Absolutely. And in briefings and interviews I've done with Canadian officials through the run-up to the tariff imposition, they had made it clear that those tariffs were surgically selected in order to hit particularly red and purple states to make sure representatives there would pick up the phone and call Mr. Trump and say, please make this stop. It's hurting us.

Absolutely. It is a little complicated, but Canada has a sort of parliamentary system where the leader of the party in power is the prime minister. And so Mr. O'Connor Carney has been elected as leader of the Liberal Party, and so he will be sworn in as prime minister. But by Canadian political rules, the country needs to hold an election by October.

And so our expectation, and Mr. Carney's campaign has indicated this, is that he will call for a federal election really early on after he's sworn in and seek to capitalize on his momentum and to get a mandate at a national level from Canadians.

I agree. I think it's a really difficult balancing act.

Bonsoir tout le monde. Wow. In his acceptance speech of the leadership, Mark Carney was barely celebratory, frankly.

He made like a wartime speech, and he was clear that he was going to be very aggressive against the United States.

That was like a really striking moment.

But at the same time, he's going to have to deal with President Trump. And that kind of rhetoric doesn't play very well with President Trump.

That's right. I think that Pierre Poliev is not Trump, but his detractors here in Canada call him Maple MAGA. That's kind of the slur they use against him. And even though many of his policies are pretty sort of mainstream, vanilla, moderate, conservative policies, he does borrow from the MAGA playbook.

And so that is not a great situation to be in when your country suddenly turns against President Trump and everything he stands for in such a huge and visceral way.

Well, the conservatives are really trying to stage a pivot. They still have a solid chance at winning the federal election when it happens. According to polls, they're sort of neck and neck with Carney and the liberals. But their leader has to just do a whole new thing now. So what they're doing is they are really distancing themselves from President Trump.

saying that the rhetoric and the threats coming out of the White House are not what they believe in. They're going to stand up to President Trump. And recently, President Trump gave an interview to a British magazine and he said, oh, I'm not so sure what I think about this Poliev guy in Canada. He's not a MAGA guy. And boy, did Pierre Poliev grab that opportunity.

He says, you're right, Mr. President. I'm not a MAGA guy. I'm a Canada first guy.

So the opposition party, the conservatives, need to sort of reinvent themselves, frankly, more close to the center to have a fighting chance in the elections. So it's a kind of odd moment of political consensus in a country that was five minutes ago going through this incredibly polarizing political situation.

Absolutely, Kim. And I think that's just been something really interesting to observe. There's clearly an existential crisis happening with the Canadian economy, and this huge breakdown in the relationship with the United States is driving it home.

So both candidates and both parties are talking a lot about what a future of a successful Canada would look like, diversifying away from the United States' dependence. And part of the reason they want to be doing this urgently is that the situation with the tariffs from the United States is like shifting sands. The one day it's going to be 25 percent on everything.

The next day that's canceled, but it's going to be 50 percent on steel. And so this is a very destabilizing situation for the Canadian economy. And Canada doesn't have a lot of other customers. They sell most of their stuff to Americans. And that's why they're looking much more toward Europe. I mean, half of Canadians, according to a recent poll, want to even join the European Union.

That's amazing. I know that's how far this is going. But they're also looking to improve other relationships. Right now, they're in a really tough spot with China, which is another top trading partner. The Chinese have imposed tariffs on Canada, sort of trying to squeeze them not to cut a deal with the United States on tariffs and trade.

And so they're finding themselves in a really difficult position when they need to strategically rethink their global economic and trade links. And both the liberals and the conservatives are casting a wider net around the world for new best friends.

I mean, I think obviously the breach of trust and the uncertainty has already caused a lot of damage, even economically. You know, there's been market volatility, investment has been frozen, and so folks are already hurting financially here in Canada. And of course, it goes deeper than that. There's a break in trust that feels really meaningful. Right now, it does feel kind of permanent, but

It is conceivable that in the future there could be perhaps different leaders on both sides and those fences could be mended, but it will be on new terms. What I'm seeing here in Canada is a really energized willingness to redefine what it is to be Canadian, both at home and on the world stage, through new economic relationships and more defined cultural references, too.

I think even if this episode were to just sort of end tomorrow... it would still have a lasting legacy of seeing a more clear, a more assertive, and a prouder, a more Canadian Canada.

Oh, totally. I mean, I took up my posting as Canada Bureau Chief in August, and I thought this was going to be a good posting for my work-life balance. Little did I know. I mean, it's been a really extraordinary stretch since the election, for sure.

Sure. I mean, I think the first signs that something was going to go wrong emerged in early December when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to sit down for dinner with President-elect at the time, Trump. And the dinner, you know, was feeded as a success for Trudeau to be able to get FaceTime with Trump. And it seemed cordial enough.

There were like photos of everyone smiling and jokes.

But it does sound like that's when Trump sort of started raising complaints about the U.S. relationship with Canada.

And made the supposed joke of Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States.

The Canadian delegation brushed that off at the time, but it would come back to haunt them.

And I think that at first that was generally seen as like a troll. A lot of people thought it was quite personal to Trudeau because we knew Trump doesn't like Trudeau much from his first presidency. But I think that we started realizing it is probably something more ominous when Trump gave a press conference on January 7th.

And our own colleague David Sanger of the New York Times asked him about his claims on Greenland, which is an autonomous area of Denmark, and the Panama Canal, and Canada.

And he specifically asked, are you going to use force to annex these places? And Trump said... Economic force. Economic force.

So by late January, it becomes clear President Trump is being serious about imposing tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods being imported into the United States. I mean, you have to remember Canada and the United States are each other's closest trading partners.

The United States is the destination for about 80 percent of goods that Canada exports, including, for example, its oil and gas exports. And so this is a core existential economic relationship. And those tariffs that President Trump is threatening to slap on Canadian goods, they have the potential to derail the Canadian economy.

And I think where we really came to see this, and it took some time for the reporting to come together, is over the course of two phone calls that President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau held on February 3rd.

So what happens on those calls is that President Trump lays down for Prime Minister Trudeau a number of grievances that he has with the economic and trade relationship between the two countries. These were generally well-known problems or concerns on the American side. The U.S. wanted better access to the Canadian dairy market and the banking sector.

But then President Trump raised something much more fundamental. He tells Trudeau, and apparently he's reading off a memo, according to our sources, he tells Trudeau, And I don't like the border treaty between our two countries. This is a 1908 treaty that demarcates the boundary between the two nations.

And President Trump just tells Prime Minister Trudeau he thinks it's not valid and should be revisited. He also tells him he doesn't like the way the two countries share water. We know President Trump is really interested in Canada's water. He thinks Canada has too much of it. And he also raises to Trudeau that he wants to revisit water agreements between the two countries.

And so suddenly we go from, I don't like the way we trade and how our economies are integrated to, nice country you got there, shame if something happened to it.

It was shock and anger and panic stations after that phone call. And Trudeau makes it quite clear that we're going to hit back on U.S. products with our own tariffs if this threat materializes and becomes reality. And I think this is a good point to remind people. Trudeau is going through his last weeks in office.

He has said he's going to resign, and we're expecting him to be out of government by the end of March. And so he takes this quite aggressive stance, even though he's almost out of government.

Sort of quite emotionally, he says, we didn't ask for this fight, but we will stand up for our country.

And it works. These speeches do galvanize Canadians.

They say elbows up, borrowing a term from hockey and showing that they want to defend their country.

The public is really reacting very organically.

We're seeing buy Canadian signs. Grocers are putting up flags to tell consumers which products are made in Canada so that they can prefer them over American products.

I mean, it was remarkable to watch this anger become a visible thing, seeing anti-Americanist feelings foment. And we start hearing something, I mean, truly remarkable. Canadians booing the American national anthem in hockey games. And while we're on the topic of hockey, folks are even angry with Gretzky, who's like a national hero here. He's like a symbol.

Wayne Gretzky, the big Canadian hockey hero, right? Absolutely. Well, also a close friend of Donald Trump. And so he suddenly has this fall from grace and Canadians are treating him like a traitor. So these feelings are just really brewing, are very powerful. They're finding expression in various ways across Canadian society. This is not like a minority situation.

I mean, I think it's all of the above. It's anger, it's betrayal. Betrayal by a friend hurts so much more. And from the political elite of the country all the way down to the street and ordinary Canadians, the nation is going through a range of emotions. Anger, fear, insecurity. And I think it goes beyond being just a moment. It has the potential to alter the course of Canadian history.

And we're already seeing the first sign of that.

Well, Kim, back in January, when this problem was gathering pace, Justin Trudeau was resigning. His party, the Liberal Party, who have been in power for nearly 10 years, were facing dismal polls. They were 20-plus percentage points behind the opposition, the Conservatives, led by Pierre Polievre. And

In the federal elections looming, it was sort of a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives were going to win. Poliev was going to be the new prime minister. He had these ideological and stylistic affiliations to the MAGA movement and the sort of more right-wing populist movement. And that was kind of what was going to happen in Canadian politics.

But things started to rapidly change just as Trump escalated his menacing rhetoric about Canadian sovereignty and went ahead with his tariff threats. Something, I mean, truly remarkable happens. And I spoke to pollsters. One of them, a really seasoned pollster, told me that he's never seen this in his entire career before.

We go from, you know, the liberal party's dead and they're going to be going into political exile for a long, long time to this liberal revival. The anti-U.S., anti-Trump sentiment is basically doing huge favors to the liberal party, even rehabilitating the image of Justin Trudeau to a certain extent, who was loathed to the extent that he had to resign in early January, right? And so...

It sets the scene for a stunning and pretty rapid reversal of fortunes for the Liberal Party as it goes into a leadership race to elect its new leader, the person who's going to replace Justin Trudeau as party chief and as prime minister. So what happens? Well, the party rallies in a dramatic way around one candidate. His name is Mark Carney. Mark Carney is not a politician.

He's a political novice who hasn't held elected office but has been in the public eye for many, many years, really his entire career. He was the governor of the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis of 2008. And then he went on to become the governor of the Bank of England during Brexit.

But people point out that Carney is not a natural-born politician. He's not oozing charisma. I think when he started his campaign in January, polling showed one in three Canadians only could recognize his photo, could name who he was. And nonetheless, the moment he's in and the anti-Trump sentiment, the fear and concern Canadians are feeling and the anger just turbocharges his campaign.

So people are looking to Carney as someone who can, you know, potentially make a deal with Trump, but also Trump. steer the country through what will be a challenging economic period. You know, people think he knows what he's doing. But Carney has a huge challenge in his hands, and that's that he has to be campaigning for his job as prime minister while being prime minister.

He's expected to get sworn in any day now.