Trump's trade war and annexation threats have upended Canada's election

TORONTO (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and annexation threats have upended Canada’s election and improved the fortunes of the Liberal Party, which could win a fourth consecutive term in power next week.

The Liberals and the country's new prime minister, Mark Carney, looked headed for a crushing defeat in Monday's election until the American president started attacking Canada’s economy and even threatening its sovereignty, including suggesting it should become the 51st state.

Trump’s dumping on Canada has infuriated its people and stoked a surge in Canadian nationalism that has helped the Liberals flip the election narrative.

“Trump has immersed himself into our lives and has defined the ballot question,” former Quebec Premier Jean Charest said.

“What Trump has done is shed light on who we are,” he said.

Even separatists in French-speaking Quebec “are very much aligned with other Canadians in defending the country and responding very firmly to the fact that we’re not going to be the 51st state,” Charest said.

The opposition Conservative Party’s leader, Pierre Poilievre, hoped to make the election a referendum on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose and immigration surged.

But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became the Liberal Party’s leader and prime minister.

”We were looking at a scenario where the Conservatives were going to rake in a huge majority,” said Charest, a Conservative. “Here we are months later in another world.”

Trump's trade war and attacks have led Canadians to cancel trips to the U.S. and refuse to buy American goods. And it might have contributed to record early voting, with 7.3 million Canadians casting ballots before election day.

Carney said the 80-year period when the U.S. embraced the mantle of global economic leadership and forged alliances rooted in trust and respect is over.

“The key question in this election is who is the best to respond that. Who will stand up to President Trump?” he said.

Poilievre, a career politician and firebrand populist, has campaigned with Trump-like bravado, even taking a page from the “America First” president by adopting the slogan “Canada First.” But his similarities in style to Trump might cost him.

In a mid-January poll by Nanos, Liberals trailed the Conservative Party by 47% to 20%. In the latest Nanos poll that ended April 23, the Liberals led by 4 percentage points. The January poll had a margin of error of 3.1 points while the latest poll had a 2.7-point margin.

Until a few months ago, Poilievre was seen as a shoo-in to become the next prime minister and shepherd the Conservatives back into power for the first time in a decade.

Ian Brodie, a former chief of staff to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said it's frustrating that this year's Conservative campaign plan had to change so drastically.

“At least 40% of the electorate is just petrified about the continued existence of the country,” Brodie said. "... In a sense, it is a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of forces that works against everything Pierre been doing since he got himself into politics.”

Brodie said a Conservative win will be tough and that the party's situation might not improve anytime soon, noting support for a small progressive party, the New Democrats, has been shrinking for years, making it a two-party struggle.

“If you are into two-party competition for the foreseeable future, then you have to be much closer to the center of the political spectrum than the Conservatives have been,” Brodie said.

“That means there is going to be a deeper rethinking of Conservative campaign strategy, including choice of leader.”

Whoever the next prime minister is will face challenges.

Both Carney and Poilievre said that if elected, they would accelerate renegotiations of the countries’ free trade deal in an effort to end the uncertainty hurting both of their economies.

Carney, in particular, has notable experience navigating economic crises, having done so when he ran Canada’s central bank and when he later became the first non-U.K. citizen to run the Bank of England since its founding in 1694.

“The problems are really inconceivable, worse than any Canadian prime minister has had to face, I think ever," said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations.

“Not only is Carney the luckiest guy alive and came in at absolutely the right moment, but once he actually starts having to administer the country, the Trump problem, the American problem, is just inconceivable," he said. "It’s like being handed a sack full of rabid beavers.”

FILE - Mark Carney, Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, embraces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after being announced the winner at the Liberal Leadership Event in Ottawa, Ontario, March 9, 2025. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre speaks during a news conference in Ottawa, March 14, 2025. (Chris Tanouye/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Liberal Party of Canada Leader Mark Carney delivers his speech after being announced as the winner of the party leadership in Ottawa, Ontario, March 9, 2025. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City nurses returned to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.

Union officials say roughly 15,000 nurses walked off the job Monday morning at multiple campuses of three hospital systems: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai.

The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.

New York City, like the U.S. as a whole, has had an active flu season. The city logged over 32,000 cases during the week ending Dec. 20 — the highest one-week tally in at least 20 years — though numbers have since declined, the Health Department said last Thursday.

Roy Permaul, an intensive care unit nurse who was among those picketing in front of Mount Sinai's flagship campus in Manhattan, said he and his colleagues are prepared to walk off the job as long as needed to secure a better contract.

But Dania Munoz, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai, stressed that the union’s fight wasn’t just about better wages.

“We deserve fair pay, but this is about safety for our patients, for ourselves and for our profession,” the 31-year-old Bronx resident said. “The things that we’re fighting for, we need. We need health care. We need safety. We need more staffing.”

The New York State Nurses Association said Tuesday that none of the hospitals have agreed to additional bargaining sessions with the union since their last meetings on Sunday.

It also complained that Mount Sinai, which operates seven hospitals, unlawfully fired three nurses hours after the strike started and improperly disciplined 14 others who had spoken out about workplace violence or discussed the union and contract negotiations with their colleagues.

Mount Sinai spokespersons said Tuesday the claims were “not accurate” and that they would provide more information later. Mt. Sinai has said approximately 20% of its nurses reported for work on the first day of the strike rather than picketing.

Meanwhile, Montefiore Medical Center said it has “not canceled even one patient’s access to care” during the work stoppage. The city Emergency Management Department said it hasn’t seen major impacts to patient care so far.

The hospital system also criticized unionized nurses for seeking “troubling proposals” such as demanding that nurses not be terminated, even if found to be compromised by drugs or alcohol while on the job.

The union said Montefiore was “blatantly mischaracterizing” one of its basic workplace proposals, which would have added protections for nurses dealing with substance use disorders and which has already been adopted in other hospitals around the state.

The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.

As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for safe, manageable workloads.

The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive.

On Monday, the city's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.”

Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Nurses strike outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)