Canada voted to keep Prime Minister Mark Carney in his seat Monday night after a stunning election that saw many voters swing to the Liberal Party amid fears over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and looming threats to make the country the “51st state.”
Carney defeated Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, who had positioned himself as the tough-on-antisemitism candidate, promising — in a move borrowed from Trump’s playbook — to deport immigrants accused of antisemitic crimes.
Poilievre had appealed to Jewish voters by saying he would tamp down on a wave of antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel protests since the launch of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“The Jewish community feels understandably under siege, as these hate marches and antisemitic outbursts have become an unfortunate part of Canadian life, and Liberals have encouraged these divisions,” Poilievre said on the campaign trail, according to Politico.
Carney, meanwhile, has vowed to crack down on antisemitism in Canada while offering greater criticism of the Israeli government and Israel’s war in Gaza.
The election was triggered after Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister in January, amid a loss of confidence within his Liberal Party as well as harsh criticism from Jewish groups that lamented his response to the steep rise in antisemitism and his perceived failures to support Israel. Some Canadian Jews said they planned to vote for the Conservatives for the first time because of those issues.
But the election soon became a referendum on Trump, as the new U.S. president took aim at Canada, imposing steep tariffs and igniting a wave of national pride and resistance. Many voters saw Carney as uniquely poised to handle the country’s economic uncertainty, having led the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis.
“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,” Carney said in a victory speech Monday night. “That will never ever happen.”
Carney has promised to tackle rising antisemitism by increasing policing powers and the annual budget for the Canada Community Security Program, which will help provide security measures to communities and places of worship, according to B’nai Brith Canada.
His proposed policies would create safety zones around places of worship and criminalize intimidation outside of places of worship and other community spaces.
“In Montreal, in Toronto, across this country, [there are people] who fear going to their synagogue, fear going to their community center, fear taking their children [and] leaving their children in school, and this has to stop,” said Carney last week, according to Politico. “It’s totally unacceptable.”
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