Politics and the trade war

The political reality is that Canadians don’t want to bend the knee to Donald Trump, no matter what the economic costs; hence they fully support Mark Carney’s aggressive response. The other political reality is that this public attitude puts Canada’s opposition parties in a quandary.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre risks looking unpatriotic if he fails to sufficiently support the government’s trade stances. If Poilievre fails to attack Carney with sufficient vigour, then he risks alienating his own political base, which has no appetite for appeasing Liberals, writes Gerry Nicholls. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY GERRY NICHOLLS

September 21, 2026

OAKVILLE, ONT.—Back in 1947, an American senator named Arthur Vandenberg coined the phrase “Politics stops at the water’s edge.”

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