Mark Carney, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, speaks after being announced the winner at the Liberal Leadership Event in Ottawa, Ontario, March 9, 2025. /CFP

Editor's note: Radhika Desai, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Mark Carney has been elected the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada with an overwhelming 86 percent of the under 152,000 votes cast by party members. This will make him, in the next week or two, the new prime minister of Canada. A general election is expected in short order by May 5 at the latest, so that the Liberals may make the most of their rising popularity.

Few will have become prime minister of Canada on so large a vote of their party's members. However, fewer still will have been elected leader by a party membership that represented such a tiny section of the country's electorate. It was tiny by design. The party election was tainted, not only by great restrictions on the grounds that "foreign powers" might interfere in the elections, but the sole candidate to challenge the Liberal Party establishment's commitment to neoliberal policy, shared by current Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and all the other contestants to the Liberal Party leadership, was disqualified on flimsy grounds.

Certainly, this was an irony, given that Canada regards itself as a democracy which also refuses that status to China and many other countries. However, it is also a major contradiction.

On the one hand, the election for the leadership of the Liberal Party was prompted for entirely domestic reasons. Trudeau's government, elected as it had been in 2015 by raising great popular expectations, had, after a decade in power, not only disappointed them but left the country in a greater mess than before. It was no wonder, therefore, that he lost his majority in 2019 and failed to win it back in the 2021 mid-term election, notwithstanding the pandemic-related government largesse towards ordinary Canadians he hoped to capitalize on electorally.

This failure forced Trudeau's minority government to resort to a "confidence and supply" agreement with the nominally (but not really) left-of-center New Democratic Party to prop it up in power beginning in early 2022. This permitted the government to increase defense expenditure in relation to the Ukraine conflict while making a big show of increasing social spending on certain items while public services deteriorated overall.

That was why, before the Trump administration's threats kicked in, the entire discourse of Canadian politics revolved around the unpopularity of the Liberals and the popularity of the Conservatives, particularly under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre. His leadership was a symptom of the rise of a new far right in Canadian politics, going back to the "Freedom Convoy" that blocked Ottawa and other major Canadian cities, paralyzing Trudeau's government, and even before that.

Trudeau's unpopularity finally prompted the New Democratic Party to end its agreement in September and former Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to jump ship in mid December 2024 while also declaring her intentions to seek the leadership of the party and, therefore, the prime ministership. However, even then, it was not clear whether she could shake her close decade-long association with her former leader Trudeau and her last-ditch attempt to distance herself from her former leader was simply not credible.

Moreover, her resignation had been prompted in part because Trudeau had been discussing replacing her with Mark Carney and once Trudeau resigned in early January, Carney had already become his heir apparent. This was clear from the marked difference in their respective abilities to raise funds: while Carney raised 4.5 million Canadian dollars ($3.13 million), Freeland raised a mere over 750,000 Canadian dollars ($521,618).

On the other hand, as Trump administration's threats, not only of tariffs but also of making Canada the 51st state of the United States, left the realm of speculation and bluster and entered the realm of possibility more or less as the Liberal leadership race took off, the political discourse in Canada took on nationalist hues never before envisaged. Not only were Canadian flags and insignia flying off store shelves and onto Canadian homes and persons, but Canadians were also buying Canadian and refusing U.S. products as never before. In doing so, Canadians were expressing a popular desire for autonomy from the U.S. that is deeply and widely rooted.

Sadly, however, those who would be the leaders of Canada have neither the will nor the ability to deliver on this wish. While Pierre Poilievre, who is seeking to cast off his former proud allegiance to Trump by putting "Canada first," is putting out a message likely to continue to resonate among Canadians burdened by inflation, a sluggish economy, a housing crisis and high unemployment, the Carney Liberals are unlikely to offer then anything much better even as the Poilievre Conservatives question his business ties among the joint Canadian and U.S. corporate elite.

So, as the general election campaign takes off, Canadians can be assured that the only options they will be offered are those of more or less negotiated subordination to the U.S.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on X, formerly Twitter, to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)