GANDER, N.L. — Liberal Leader Mark Carney said he’s ready to take a call from Donald Trump but suggested Monday the U.S. president may be taking a wait-and-see approach while Canada’s federal election plays out.
The two leaders have not yet spoken, although Carney has met with other world leaders in person since he became prime minister a little more than a week ago.
“The president is waiting for the outcome of the election to see who has a strong mandate from Canadians,” Carney told a mid-day news conference in Gander, N.L. “Is it someone who is, to quote (Alberta Premier) Danielle Smith, who is ‘in sync’ with him, or is it someone who is going to stand up for Canadians?”
Carney’s comment came after Premier Smith told the right-wing media outlet Breitbart that Carney’s main rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, would be “very much in sync with” the “new direction in America.”
Speaking in Brampton, Ont. Monday, Poilievre said Trump wants the Liberals in power. “Donald Trump knows that a weak, out-of-touch Liberal government, given a fourth mandate, will only make Canada a bigger target for him,” he told reporters.
G7 leaders typically make courtesy calls to offer congratulations to a new prime minister — but Canada-U.S. relations have been going through an unusually rocky patch since Trump was sworn into office in January.
On April 2, the U.S. is expected to deploy sweeping new reciprocal tariffs, in addition to previously-delayed tariffs on some Canadian and Mexican goods. While Trump also had floated the idea of separate, sector-specific tariffs, media reports over the weekend suggested the target for his reciprocal tariffs could be smaller than initially suggested and that sector-specific tariffs are off the table for now.
Carney is arguing on the campaign trail that Trump, who is antagonizing Canada with tariffs and threats of annexation, wants to break the country so that the United States can absorb it.
“We will not let that happen,” he said.
He delivered that message Monday in Gander, a town he said symbolizes Canadian pride for having famously fed and housed thousands of airline passengers after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“In this crisis caused by the U.S. president and those who are enabling him, we lament a friendship lost, or at least a friendship strained. But we celebrate the Canadian strength we have reclaimed,” Carney said.
“And while in Gander Canadians did extraordinary things for Americans when they needed it, now we need to do extraordinary things for ourselves.”
He said the town embodied the Canadian value of looking out for each other. Carney told the news conference that “what Gander did, when the world was shaken, is the country we know and love.”
Carney met with Beulah Cooper and Diane Davis earlier in the day for a chat about their roles in aiding stranded travellers whose flights were diverted by the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. They were the inspiration for characters in the hit Broadway musical Come From Away.
Davis said they “represent thousands in this district who stood up that day, and then hundreds of thousands of proud Canadians who realized that this is the right thing to do.”
Carney is on his second day of touring the East Coast after calling an election on Sunday.
The Liberal party has seen a remarkable turnaround in its polling since Trump triggered his trade war and started speaking openly about annexing Canada.
At the start of the year, the polling aggregator website 338Canada had the Conservatives ahead by 20 points in the Atlantic provinces.
Now, it projects the Liberals could sweep the region again and take some 27 seats out of 32 — if their lead holds throughout the 36-day campaign.
Expectations are high for at least one Liberal partisan in the province. At a Monday night rally in St. John’s, the local Liberal candidate for St. John’s East, Joanne Thompson, introduced Carney as “our majority government prime minister to come.”
Carney also said Monday that he won’t change transfers to individuals and provinces in his bid to find new efficiencies in government spending.
He pledged to release a costed platform and claimed that the Conservatives will not do the same. Poilievre said Monday the Conservatives' “costed platform” would be coming.
He also said he will arrest the growth of the public service through technology and by focusing on results and priorities.
Article by Kyle Duggan.
With files from Dylan Robertson and Anja Karadeglija in Ottawa and Rosa Saba
