If nothing much changes in Canada’s trajectory, Canadian conservatives can thank Donald Trump for saving the Trudeau model.

Canada’s ruling Liberal Party, now under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney after Justin Trudeau stepped down on March 14 a few months shy of a decade in power, thinks that Donald Trump has saved its Canadian bacon. That’s the obvious takeaway from Carney calling snap elections on April 28. Under Canadian law, new elections were not required until October. The Liberals, who clung to power despite losing the popular vote in 2019 and 2021, were lagging so badly in the polls as 2025 dawned that it seemed that their only remaining move after Trudeau stepped down would be to cling to power as long as possible by scheduling the election as late as they could. But the tariff fight with Trump and the resurgence of Canadian anti-Americanism (Canada’s substitute for nationalism) that followed Trump’s talk of the “51st state” has dramatically reversed the Liberals’ fortunes. Carney may have miscalculated, but it is clear that he thinks things will never be better for his party than while Trump is stirring the tariff pot.

This has been a harsh blow to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, a talented 45-year-old American-style populist, who until Trump stepped in appeared poised not only to beat the Liberals but to deliver them the sort of generational defeat that would give Poilievre the majority and mandate to make real changes to the Canadian system in a conservative direction. Poilievre is not what Americans might recognize as a conservative — his actual positions mark him more as a moderate New England Republican of the Chris Sununu stripe — but he’s quite far to the right within the Canadian political spectrum. Stylistically, he’s also not what passes for a populist in the American system, with his distinctive Canadian accent and his trademark eerily calm demeanor. But he talks about issues of public safety and national identity that Trudeau’s soft-authoritarian regime have made off-limits to even speak of in Canadian politics for a decade. He should be an electoral mismatch against Carney, a colorless 60-year-old banker with no real electoral experience, although Carney at least has had the good sense to abandon some of Trudeau’s most insane environmental policies. Even if Poilievre squeaks out a victory, his promise of dramatic change is probably already gone. Trump is now offering backhanded support to Poilievre by suggesting that he’d rather negotiate with a Liberal government than with a genuine Canadian nationalist, but forcing Poilievre to campaign on Canadian contrasts with its southern neighbor blunts the message he needs in order to sell reforms at home: that Canada can learn from the American model.

If nothing much changes in Canada’s trajectory, Canadian conservatives can thank Donald Trump for saving the Trudeau model.