Carney has his elbows way down for Trump

The pundits, voters and strategists who enabled the Liberals' dishonest campaign must be held to account

The last federal election was not an honest conversation about Canada’s place in the world. It was a performance — slick, poll-tested, and ultimately hollow. Mark Carney presented himself as a principled adversary to Donald Trump, a steward of Canadian sovereignty who would stand up to a dangerous and unpredictable United States. And now, just months into his premiership, he insists “the G7 is nothing without U.S. leadership,” his government has resisted retaliating against American tariffs, and has even expressed desire to join Trump’s Golden Dome missile defence program.

Let’s dispense with the polite fiction: Carney never meant what he said. The campaign rhetoric wasn’t just exaggerated, it was fabricated. There was no principled foreign policy vision, no doctrine of Canadian independence. It was anti-American cosplay, staged for a segment of the electorate that wanted to feel morally superior to our southern neighbours without having to actually think seriously about Canada’s strategic position in the world.

And here’s the truly galling part: voters didn’t mind. Not really. Carney’s flip-flop hasn’t cost him much because many of the people who cheered his fiery condemnations of Trump didn’t actually care if he followed through. For a certain kind of upper-middle-class Canadian Liberal, politics isn’t about outcomes, it’s about vibes. It’s about feeling right, looking progressive, and imagining yourself on the right side of history while outsourcing all your material security to American economic and military power.

These are the same voters who nodded along when Carney spoke about “de-risking” our relationship with the United States, who applauded when he warned of creeping authoritarianism from Washington. And now they nod along just as enthusiastically when he floats ideas for joint continental defence initiatives, shared strategic supply chains, and deeper financial integration. They are not engaged citizens. They are consumers of political affect — buying whatever narrative makes them feel smart and virtuous in the moment.

But the consequences of this self-indulgent politics are real. By campaigning on a lie, Carney squandered the opportunity for a serious, grown-up conversation about our geopolitical future. Should Canada pursue closer integration with the United States? Perhaps. Should we coordinate more closely on military defence in the Arctic? Maybe. But those decisions should be debated openly and honestly, not buried under layers of electoral theatre and bait-and-switch messaging.

Instead, we got a campaign that pretended Canada could forge a proud, independent foreign policy by sneering at a country we rely on for our trade, our defence, and much of our cultural gravity. And now we’re being quietly ushered into a new phase of integration, not with clarity or consent, but with a shrug and a press release.

Carney is at fault for misrepresenting himself. But we should also hold accountable the class of voters, pundits, and strategists who enabled it — who preferred the aesthetics of defiance to the responsibilities of leadership, and who now applaud the very subservience they claimed to abhor.

If there is a lesson in all this, it is not that politicians lie. That much is eternal. The lesson is that in modern Canadian politics, the truth isn’t just optional, it’s often irrelevant. Carney’s entire foreign policy posture during the campaign was a mirage, and the people who bought it seem perfectly content with the bait-and-switch, so long as it flatters their self-image.

The next election will come. And it, too, will be full of noble-sounding promises and performative outrage. But voters would do well to ask themselves: do I want to be told the truth? Or am I just here to be comforted by the sound of my own values echoing back at me? Because when the consequences finally come knocking, it won’t be enough to blame the man who sold the lie. We’ll have to reckon with the country that wanted to believe it.

Anthony Koch is the managing principal at AK Strategies, a bilingual public affairs firm specializing in political communications, public affairs and campaign strategy. He previously served as national campaign spokesperson and director of communications to Pierre Poilievre.

From the National Post/June 16, 2025

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)