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On Tuesday, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, took to the stage to celebrate an election win that a few months ago seemed politically impossible.
As 2025 dawned, Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau and their Liberal Party were catastrophically behind in the polls, and Donald Trump had just been re-elected.
At the time, it seemed like Trump’s brand of brash politics parading as populism was in vogue. Leaders around the world read those tea leaves and assumed it would be exported.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney addresses supporters after his Liberal Party won the Canadian election, in Ottowa, Ontario, on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Instead, on Tuesday, a centre-left prime minister of America’s largest trading partner and friendliest neighbour gave a victory speech where he invoked Canadians’ national spirit to stand up for their country against what he spent the campaign framing as a critical threat to their self-determination.
The past few weeks in Canadian politics have felt like a scene ripped from Love Actually – a charming prime minister calling the American president a bully to his face. It was a reminder that sometimes the only way to deal with a bully is to call them for what they are, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Carney’s message since replacing Trudeau as prime minister on March 14 has been almost entirely about protecting Canada from Trump. At home, little has changed – a cost-of-living crisis still rages, and Carney’s Liberals offer little new — but the former governor of Canada’s central bank understood the global political moment and made the election about something bigger, offering himself as a warrior to protect the people of his country.
Carney’s rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, made a critical miscalculation in believing the winds were headed to the right and choosing to move himself and his party toward Trumpism. He underestimated the chaos Trump would cause.
In his first 100 days back in office, Trump has unleashed a policy agenda by tweet and fiat, panicking the global economy and driving America’s staunchest allies to scramble for new directions. His approval rating has plunged to 40 per cent, the lowest for any president at this point in the term in 80 years of polling.
Trump’s threats aimed across America’s northern border redefined Canadian politics and were seized upon by Carney, a smart and agile campaigner who decided to get angry when his neighbour set fire to their house and threatened to burn his down too.
If last year’s political trend was about kicking out incumbent governments over the cost-of-living crisis, the earliest data from 2025 suggests a shift, at least in the West, to voting for the candidate least aligned to Trump’s politics.
Trump has loomed in the Australian election as well. Not to the same extent, given a few thousand kilometres of ocean. But he has come up again and again in leaders’ debates, and the news cycle seems as focused on Trump as on the election happening here.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton made the same mistake as Poilievre: mistaking Trump’s wrecking ball for a parade float, and getting flattened under it. He placed his bet at the peak of Trump’s popularity, only to discover that Australians, like Canadians, have a robust national pride and are afraid of the chaos emanating from Washington.
All the while, Albanese has appeared as a steady hand. He isn’t playing Hugh Grant because he hasn’t had to. His style and a well-run campaign have provided enough contrast.
That is the moment we are in. The United States’ closest allies are among the countries pushing back and working quickly to redefine their place in the world. Canada now has a leader with a mandate to stand up to the US. While Australia will not go so far – the threat is not at its doorstep – this election has sparked a conversation about the nation’s geopolitical future.
We are grappling with a new reality where the US is no longer the defender of democracy and human rights, but dismantling both within and outside its borders.
From Ottawa to Canberra, leaders are realising that they cannot simply ride out the storm or look away. They are learning that survival in the Trump era demands something new: the courage to draw a line – even against a former ally – and to defend their own democracies first.
The world is no longer standing in America’s shadow. It is learning, quickly and with no small amount of fear, how to stand on its own.
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.
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