Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Canada's Liberal Party won a fourth consecutive term, electing Mark Carney as Prime Minister. It was a narrow victory. Carney's Liberals don't have an outright majority.
It's a stunning comeback for the Liberal Party because they until recently looked like they were going to get totally wiped out in this election.
That's Brian Platt, who covers the Canadian government for Bloomberg, and notably Pierre Pouliev, the leader of the Conservative Party who ran against Carney, whose style of politics has drawn comparisons to US President Donald Trump's lost his seat.
There's no doubt what shape this election, primarily, which is Donald Trump.
Carney's campaign, by necessity, focused on how he would respond to Trump's tariffs. Now all eyes are on him to see how he'll negotiate our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration is over. I'm David Gera and this is the big take from Bloomberg
News Today. On the show, I sit down with Brian Platt in Ottawa to unravel the results of Canada's election what they mean for the future of the Liberal Party for Canada's approach to housing in the economy and the country's relationship with Trump.
How decisive was this victory.
How much of a mandate does Mark Carney have as Prime Minister now?
So the key number is one hundred and seventy two. If you get one hundred and seventy two seats in Parliament, you have a majority government and you don't need anybody else's help to pass votes. The Liberals can just get anything done with their own caucus voting. Carney felt just short of that, but their main ally in parliament. The NDP got seven seats as we record. That gives you enough votes to pass votes in parliament and that should allow Carney to govern for a while.
You were criss crossing the country. The insight into what may have affected turnout or results at the margin, I.
Think it'll be the strongest turnout at least since twenty fifteen, which was the election that put Justin Trudeau first into power. There's no doubt what shaped this election primarily, which is Donald Trump and the reaction to Donald Trump. Not only the trade war that Trump has launched many countries but including Canada, but also there's kind of a unique Canadian factor, which is Donald Trump keeps threatening to make Canada the fifty first state.
Canadians are angry.
They're not traveling to the US nearly the numbers that they normally would in terms of vacations or any other reason. They're boycotting US products California wine, Kentucky, bourban all that stuff you will not find on many liquor store shelves
right now. And it totally changed the landscape of this election, and Carneia has changed course from how Trudeau ran the Liberal Party, but also Canadians ultimately, in response to Donald Trump, came back to the Liberal Party, having over the last two years largely abandoned it.
One last question about the results, how in line were they with the public opinion polling that we saw over the course of this campaign.
The answer is complicated. The top line figure Carnee wins, Liberals win. This is a very easy story to tell, which is Mark Carney changed enough from Justin Trudeau, and also Canadians put their trust in him as the best leader to deal with Donald Trump and so pulled off a remarkable comeback for the Liberal Party at a national level.
That's the story.
The more you dig into it, the more complicated it gets. The single most surprising thing that happened last night is that what stopped Carney's Liberals from getting a majority government is Southern Ontario, which is Canada's manufacturing region. That's where the auto manufacturing industry is based, It's where the steel industry is based. This is one of the parts of the country that is most affected by Donald Trump and
his tariffs. Southern Ontario went conservative last night, and so the Liberals, for whatever reason, were not able to win in the manufactor in region, despite the larger narrative of Mark Carney being the choice of Canadians to deal.
With Donald Trump.
There's some contradiction here, and I think this is going to be one of the biggest things to unpack in the coming days and weeks and months, is what happened in Southern Ontario that voters turned to Poliev and not to Carney.
Let's look back and remind us how we got to this point. Justin Trudeau had been Prime minister for about ten years. He announces his decision to step down. That kickstarts this whole process. What brought it about? And what have these last few months been like?
It's amazing it's hard to even put my mind back six months ago because it feels like years ago now. But up until December twenty twenty four, I would have told you Trudeau is going to stay on as Prime minister.
He is determined to stay on.
He's quite unpopular, his Liberal Party is far down in the polls. Pierre Poliev and the Conservative Party will almost certainly win the next election, probably by a large amount. Trudeau, he'd gone through an inflation shock. There was lots of problems plaguing, specifically affordability issues, cost of living issues, the cost of housing. He kind of lost control of parts of the immigration system, and too many people came in too quickly after the pandemic, and it caused all kinds
of problems, especially in the housing market. Trudeau had become quite unpopular and yet was refusing to leave because he believed he could turn the ship around and defeat Pierre Poliev when an election was called. That's how everything looked, first when Donald Trump won the US election in November, and then heading into December, I mean, Trudeau was behind Polyev in the polls by like by more than twenty points.
Simples had the gap at almost thirty points. I mean, this was looking like disaster for the Liberal Party.
Right after Donald Trump took office, he started talking about making Canada a US state. Suddenly Conservative candidate Pierre Poliev, who'd adopted a Trump like Canada First slogan and campaigned on eliminating woke ideology from the public service, wasn't who many Canadians wanted to lead them. In one of the most surprising results of the night, Polyev lost his seat in Parliament, though he could hold onto his position as leader of the Conservative Party.
It is stunning that Poliev lost his own riding. He's represented this riding, which is a it's on the edge of Ottawa. Parts of it are suburban and parts of it are rural. I mean there's like small there's farmers, there's small towns.
As part of this riding.
But Poliev has represented this district since two thousand and four, for more than twenty years, and he often wins it by gigantic margins. This is one of the most confounding things about what happened last night, which is the Conservatives did very well in Ontario, much better than I think than anybody thought they would, and yet Pierre Poliev got crushed in his riding.
Introduce us to Mark Karney, who is a proud technocrat. Ran the central bank here in Canada, ran the Bank of England as well, I should say. Before he got into politics, he was the chair of Bloomberg Ink. Stepped down from that when he got into politics. How did he present himself to the Canadian electorate.
So I spent a lot of time with Carnea on the campaign trailer. This is not a natural fit for him campaigning. He comes off still as a central banker.
In many ways.
He speaks in a low key manner. He answers questions, usually kind of in bullet point form. You ask him something and he goes, well, okay, three points I'd like to make here, you know. And sometimes he's like it out, I refer you back to point one, you know. Like that's how he talks. It's kind of a technocratic, managerial style of talking.
He usually didn't change.
The pitch of his voice too much, didn't deliver big roaring applause lines, a lot of hockey metaphors. You know, Canadians didn't start this fight, but when someone else drops their gloves were always ready and just like in hockey, we will win this trade war. You know, it was a lot of stuff like that, but delivered in sort of this calm, low key manner, and it.
Worked for him.
I think it's a really big question with Carney Weather in a normal election where he didn't have a Donald Trump factor, if this style of campaigning would work in this election. He was in many ways just a perfect fur to Donald Trump.
So if he leads a minority led government, he's going to have to work with other parties to bring them into the fold to get his legislative agenda passed. How able, how capable is he going to be of doing.
That, It's a big challenge.
He on the campaign trail didn't promise that he was just going to be tough with Trump or stand up for Canada. He said that stuff, but then he would also say I'm going to win Canada will win this trade war. So now he's got to deliver, and at least in the short term, I don't think Parliament's going to be too much of a challenge for him, because there's enough votes with the NDP that the Liberals should be able to pass their budget past.
Whatever else they need to in parliament.
You know, that will get harder as time goes along, but he's got you know, he's got to work now with a cabinet. You know, he's got to form a cabinet out of his out of the Liberal caucus, and he's got to now show Canadians I can deliver on these promises I made to you on the campaign trail. One of the biggest questions coming up is how quickly will he meet face to face with Donald Trump, because he has said we've agreed to do that after the election ended. He also has the G seven coming up,
the G seven Leader Summit. Canada is hosting that in June, and will the American president who has threatened to annex the country and make it the fifty first state and has launched a trade war in many respects on Canada, will Canada welcome him with open arms to this G seven summit.
We'll dig into the issues that Mark Carney will have to take up, including the most pressing renegotiating trade with the US.
That's after the break.
With the election behind him, Mark Carney will now be able to focus all his attention on governing. So I wanted to ask Bloomberg's Brian Platt about the Prime Minister's policy proposals is legislative agenda starting with his most pressing priority trade.
Instead of going on this sector by sector, issue by issue. As soon as possible, Mark Karney and the Canadian government will try to make this a larger trade discus. There is a free trade deal, at least in name, there's a free trade deal the USMCA, and it's up for a review joint review anyway in twenty twenty six. And so I think what the Canadian government's goal here will be is, as soon as possible, get into a broader discussion about Okay, President Trump, what do you want to
change in this deal? How can we find common ground here? And if you can get to like a larger agreement on that trade deal, you can get these tariffs lifted. That will be the goal of the Canadian government. How quickly Donald Trump is willing to take the discussion in that direction, we'll see, but that is will absolutely be in terms of the US. That will be Mark Carney's goal. He will have two other things he's trying to get
done here. One of is to boost the Canadian economy, and he's talked about ways he wants to do this, especially by reducing trade barriers between the provinces, and I think the third thing he will try to do is diversify trade, to boost trade with Europe and Asia as much as possible.
Noticed in his speech.
Last night, yes there was excitement and congratulation, there's also this warning to Canadians about economic pain and that this is going to be difficult. How is he going to guide the country through economic pain that existed and is now being compounded by what's happening with the trade war.
I think there's two ways to think about what's coming for Canada. Like one is the tariffs, and you know Trump is trying to get factories to move back to the US.
So just the pure aspect of our factories.
In Canada going to close and move to the US or is nobody going to open a new factory in Canada, that is a big threat, and especially in southern Ontario where you have the auto plants.
And the steel industry and all that.
But there's another aspect of this, which is when the US has a recession, Canada's economy tends to follow. Historically, it's very closely tied with the US. And Carney was the Governor of the Bank of Canada in two thousand and eight when the global financial crisis hits, and I think, you know, it's Carne's warning Canadians for a reason, which is he can see trouble on the horizon.
I heard him on the campaign trail talking a lot about housing and affordable housing, and he's kind of presented it as this generational challenge for Canada to figure this out, to build more homes.
There's a very simple way to look at this, which is there's no reason Canada should have a housing crisis. We have a huge, geographically huge country that is underpopulated.
There's no reason.
We have plenty of land to build on. But the issue is just the nature of government in Canada. The federal government only has so much control over housing construction. It's provincial governments and municipal governments that have the most control over building housing. I should say there's two things that the federal government can do. One is money, the
other is the immigration system. Justin Trudeau already pulled back on immigration, especially temporary immigration, so foreign students and temporary foreign workers, pulled back on how many of those people were coming into the country through those immigration streams in order to give time for the housing market to catch up.
Carne will do the same thing.
It doesn't sound like he's planning to scale back even more, but he's going to keep that in place what Trudeau did, scale back immigration, give more time for housing construction to catch up. But this is an issue that needs to be solved by multiple levels of government, not just the federal government, and so that makes it very difficult for Carney.
Again, we will see how this goes in practice.
We have seen the rise of populist politicians around the world. As you look at the outcome of this race, what does it tell you about the longevity or breadth of that trend.
I think it's a big question how much this election is a one time thing or you know, or have things changed permanently.
Carney is the opposite of a populist right. I mean, he.
Basically talks about himself as Yes, I'm a global elite.
Yes, that's what I am.
I was a central banker in two different G seven countries. I chaired Brookfield Asset Management, I was the chair of Bloomberg. You know, I'm a corporate elite. I'm a global elite. That's what you're getting A few elect me. He has not tried to run away from that right. Pierre Pauliev was much more of a populist, and yet Mark Carney won. The populist in this election did not win, But I don't know if Mark Carney's voter coalition is how permanent or not it is. This was a very strange election
by Canadian standards. Normally in Canada's a multi party system. This was a much more American style election. You had the Liberals and the Conservatives, a two party race. Will that last or will the NDP, Will some of the other parties have more strength in the next election, and
will that change everything again? I think it is maybe the single biggest question hanging over this election right now is is this the new political landscape or is this a very unusual election shaped in particular by Donald Trump.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited by Tracy Sandelson and Melissa Shin. It was fact checked by Adrian A. Tapia and Rachel Lewis Chrisky. It was mixed and sound designed by Alex Sagura. Special thanks to Stephen Craig, Nicholas Bach and Bridget Bright. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our
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