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      Canada’s Liberal party was left for dead, but Trump might have just given it a second chance

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      Until just a few weeks ago, it was an exhilarating time to be a Conservative in CanadaAfter nearly 10 years of Liberal rule, a deepening cost of living crisis had soured public support for Justin Trudeau and his shop-worn government. The Tory leader, Pierre Poilievre, had seized on a controversial carbon levy, and pledged to make the next federal vote an “axe the tax” election. Pollsters predicted his party would seize a convincing majority of seats. The country was on the cusp of a new Conservative era.And then Donald Trump suggested the US might take over Canada.The US president’s threats – ranging from “economic coercion” to outright annexation – have upended Canadian politics in a way few could have predicted. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday as he travelled to the Super Bowl game, Trump further escalated his rhetoric, claiming that Canada is “not viable as a country” without US trade, and warning that it can no longer depend on the US for military protection.For the last two years, any consideration of the future of Canada’s Liberal party had focused on the scale of its impending electoral loss. But in recent weeks, a series of polls have suggested that the Liberals have reversed their freefall.And a key factor in the party’s apparent resurrection has been Trump.Since Trump’s comments, Canada has seen a groundswell of visceral patriotism. Maga-style hats emblazoned “Canada Is Not for Sale” went viral. Canadians jeered visiting American sports teams, even during a children’s ice hockey tournament in Quebec City.And amid a shift in the public mood, the Canadian prime minister has positioned his government as leading a “Team Canada” approach to the emerging threat from the south.“In this moment, we must pull together because we love this country,” Trudeau said in a recent speech in response to Trump’s threats. “We don’t pretend to be perfect, but Canada is the best country on earth. There’s nowhere else that I and our 41-million strong family would rather be, and we will get through this challenge just as we’ve done countless times before: together.”But for Poilievre, who had harnessed a populist current in the country and drawn comparisons with Trump, the avenues forward are less clear.The Conservative leader’s combative politics have served him well against Trudeau, but now appear to be faltering as nationalism supplants partisanship.One poll, from Ipsos, found the Conservatives had shed roughly 12 points of support within two weeks. Another survey in Quebec, from the firm Leger, found that if the Liberals put former central banker Mark Carney atop their ticket, the party vaulted far ahead of both the Conservatives and the separatist Bloc Québécois.A third, from the outfit Mainstreet, found the Liberals were tied – or even leading – among likely voters in the battle ground of Ontario.“This is very much a race that still favours the Conservatives. But if the Liberals gain even a couple more points, we’re in a place where they would suddenly become much more competitive, and the potential for minority government is possible,” said Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the Writ.One of the main drivers in shifting sentiment has been the resignation of Trudeau as Liberal leader, after the Conservatives had gleefully prepared to wage an entire federal election campaign against him.“Now the election isn’t going to be about Trudeau. And with both Liberal candidates saying they won’t move forward with the carbon tax, it also won’t be about that. It will most likely be about the next four years and who is best able to dealing with Trump,” said Grenier.Last week, another poll from the Globe and Mail and Nanos found that 40% of Canadians felt Carney – the former governor of the Bank of England – was best suited to face off against Trump. Only 26% of respondents felt that person was Poilievre.For a campaign to go from a very specific issue – a referendum on Trudeau’s last nine years as leader – to a completely different issue – Donald Trump – is “rare”, said Grenier.The Conservatives plan to present a new, patriotic election message in the coming days. Attenders have been instructed to wear red and white – the colours of Canada, but also the colours of the Liberal party.“Adopting a Canada-first approach to the election is needed, but it’s an awkward one for them, because they’ve been saying for the last couple years that the country is broken,” said Grenier. “And now they have to say: ‘Well, it is but we still really love it.’ And it also feels a bit forced because a segment of their voting base – and probably a segment of their caucus – prefers to have Donald Trump as a president.”For the Liberals, the reversal confirms their decision to force Trudeau out. But Grenier cautions against reading too much into the polling.“The danger for someone like Carney, who is polling surprisingly well in a place like Quebec, is that some of the numbers are quite high. Can he live up to that? Or is the idea of him more attractive to voters than the reality of him as an actual leader?”Still, in an election fought over national identity and the protection of sovereignty, Liberals have unexpectedly found themselves dealt a few lucky cards.None of the Liberal candidates vying for the party’s top job are cabinet ministers, depriving opposition parties the chance to accuse them of dereliction.“It may still be a ‘change’ election, but it looks like it is not going to be a carbon tax election. Rhyming couplets like ‘axe the tax’ feel a little stale and disconnected from contemporary political and economic challenges,” said Scott Reid, a political adviser and former director of communications to the former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin. “And if the next election is going to be about how we rewire our relationship to the United States in the face of Trump’s capriciousness, someone with the credentials of Mark Carney starts to look interesting to some voters, and it at least gives the Liberal party the possibility of resurrecting itself.”Still, the polls at this point are “more akin to a spark than a bonfire’’, Reid said, adding that if an election were held today, Poilievre’s Conservatives would probably win a majority of seats.But the largely unprecedented nature of Trump’s unpredictable incursions into the national discourse means that honing a careful message, for either party, is largely a useless task.“What will Donald Trump do in the coming months when there’s a new prime minister on the scene [after the Liberals select their new leader]? How might he blunder into the minefield of Canadian politics? We just don’t know,” said Reid. “But we almost do know that it will happen. Either he determines the ballot question or, on any given day, he has the capacity to dictate the ballot question of the next election. That’s just the reality of it.” More

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      Woman Who Stowed Away on Paris Flight Tries to Flee by Bus to Canada

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      The woman, Svetlana Dali, had been ordered to wear an ankle monitor after her arrest, but she cut it off and boarded a bus, a law enforcement official said.The woman who stowed away on a plane from New York City to Paris late last month was arrested on Monday after trying to leave the country again, this time on a bus bound for Canada, two law enforcement officials said.The woman, Svetlana Dali, had been released and ordered to wear an ankle monitor after a Dec. 5 federal court hearing in Brooklyn on a charge of stowing away aboard a Delta Air Lines plane to Paris from Kennedy International Airport.Ms. Dali, 57, a U.S. permanent resident who emigrated from Russia, was supposed to stay at a friend’s apartment in Philadelphia, one of the officials said. But she cut off her monitor and made her way to upstate New York, where she rode a bus toward the Canadian border, the official said.Ms. Dali had a ticket for that ride, the official said, unlike the flight to Paris. She was charged with sneaking aboard that flight without a boarding pass or a passport.On Monday night, Ms. Dali was in custody in Buffalo, Barbara Burns, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of New York, said. Ms. Dali is scheduled to appear in court there on Tuesday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer and then to be returned to custody in Brooklyn, Ms. Burns said.Phone and email messages left for the lawyer who represented Ms. Dali in court in Brooklyn, Michael Schneider, were not returned.Ms. Dali’s arrest on Monday was previously reported by CNN.To get to Paris last month, Ms. Dali exploited weaknesses in the security system at Kennedy during the busiest period of the year for air travel by blending in with crowds of boarding travelers, prosecutors in Brooklyn said.She slipped past a checkpoint by mixing in with the flight crew of a Spanish airline and then walked, undetected by Delta employees, onto a fully booked plane, they said. During the seven-hour flight, Ms. Dali tried to avoid notice by ducking into the aircraft’s bathrooms.Delta returned Ms. Dali to Kennedy after she had spent about a week in the custody of French authorities. She was arrested there by F.B.I. agents.At Ms. Dali’s first appearance in court in Brooklyn this month, Brooke Theodora, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said, “We’re concerned for a risk of flight here rather than the nature of the offense.”Olivia Bensimon More

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      Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Resigns From Cabinet

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      The departure of Ms. Freeland, who had been helping lead Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, threatens Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ability to lead his party.Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister who led Canada’s response to the first Trump administration, resigned on Monday from her cabinet role as finance minister, according to her resignation letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.The letter is a stinging rebuke of Mr. Trudeau’s policies, marking the first open dissent from any member of his cabinet and throwing into question his ability to remain as leader of his party.The revelation came hours before she was scheduled to outline the government’s commitments to improve border security with the United States. President-elect Trump has warned that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico unless those two countries did more to curb the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs across their borders with the United States. In her resignation letter, Ms. Freeland indicated that Mr. Trudeau attempted to force her out of the position on Friday. Ms. Freeland had been playing a prominent role in formulating Canada’s response to the incoming Trump administration, leading a team of government officials preparing for the transition to a new president. She had successfully renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with the first Trump White House.“For the last number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada,” Ms. Freeland wrote to the prime minister.She also described Mr. Trump’s threatened tariffs “a grave challenge.”“How we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer,’’ Ms. Freeland sad. Recent spending decisions by Mr. Trudeau apparently made to boost the Liberal Party’s popularity, including a sales tax holiday and send checks to taxpayers, Ms. Freeland said, would undermine Canada’s economic ability to deal with the Trump threat.This is a developing story. More

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      Ontario leader threatens to halt energy exports to US if Trump imposes tariffs

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      The leader of Canada’s largest province says he’s prepared to halt energy exports to the United States, warning that other premiers “need to be ready to fight” as threats escalate ahead of possible American tariffs.The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, says he’s weighing options to fight back against a 25% levy on all Canadian goods that the US president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to implement when he assumes office.Following a meeting with the nation’s premiers and the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Ford said other leaders were also drawing up lists of exports that could be halted.“But we will go to the full extent, depending how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York state and over to Wisconsin,” said Ford. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.”Canada’s most populous province is also among the most vulnerable to American tariffs because roughly 85% of its exports – including billions in automotive parts – are sent to a handful of US states. As a result, Ford has emerged as the Canadian politician most vocal about the devastating effects the tariffs would have on hundreds of billions of shared trade.“We need to be ready. We need to be ready to fight,” said Ford. “This fight is coming 100% on January 20 or January 21.”Ford’s threat aims to highlight both the integrated nature of North American economies and also to put pressure on state governors. But is unclear how much Ford could follow through on his pledge to cut electricity exports, given that premiers do not make international energy policy.Canada supplies roughly 60% of all American oil imports and even more of its electricity imports. In 2022, Canada’s revenue from electricity exports to the United States hit a record high of C$5.8bn. Quebec is the largest exporter, with Ontario following second at 13.9m megawatt-hours of power sent south.“We will use every tool in our tool box to fight back,” said Ford. “We can’t sit back and roll over. We just won’t as a country. And isn’t this a shame, our closest friends and allies.”Trump threatened last month to apply the devastating levies of 25% on all goods and services from both Mexico and Canada, vowing to keep them in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”Last week, Trump seemed to take joy in the panicked response from Canadian officials, calling Trudeau Canada’s “governor” of a potential “51st” state. More

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      Canada’s Plan To Avoid Trump’s Tariffs Takes Shape

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      Two weeks after a Mar-a-Lago dinner with Donald J. Trump, details of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to stave off a showdown with the United States are emerging.Canada is working on a broad plan, including drones and police dogs, to address concerns raised by President-elect Donald J. Trump about the shared border between the two nations, underscoring the urgency of avoiding threatened tariffs that would send its economy into meltdown. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he expects America’s neighbors to keep undocumented migrants and drugs from entering the United States. In a closely watched meeting between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and the leaders of the country’s provinces on Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau and senior members of his government said that they would come up with measures to fortify the border. The Canadian government will flesh out details, figure out a price tag, establish a timeline and then present the plan to the incoming Trump administration before Mr. Trump’s inauguration next month, according to two officials with knowledge of the discussions, who asked not to be identified describing internal deliberations. Details of the costs of these measures will be shared on Monday, when the country’s finance minister announces an interim budget, the officials said. The measures under consideration include better controlling border crossings by deploying drones and canine units and reducing unnecessary foot traffic between the two countries, according to the two officials, who listened in on the virtual government meeting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Torlonia Marbles Are Coming to Museums in Chicago, Texas and Montreal

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      For the first time, the ancient marbles are traveling out of Europe to the United States and Canada, for a prolonged stint.Stashed away in a cavernous Roman deposit, hidden from the world for the better part of the last century, the Torlonia Collection — the largest collection of classical sculpture still in private hands — now appears to be continuing its jet-set itinerary that started in 2020.After a glittering debut in Rome, and star turns in Milan and the Louvre Museum in Paris, 58 of the sculptures belonging to the Torlonia family, based in Rome, will be showcased at the Art Institute of Chicago in March, and will then travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Dating from approximately the fifth century B.C. to the early fourth century, the works on view will include highlights of the Torlonia Collection, but also 24 sculptures that were specifically selected for the North American run by the co-curators Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A. Raff of the Art Institute of Chicago, after “multiple trips” to the Torlonia laboratory in Rome where the collection is being restored. (“A magical, once in a lifetime experience,” Cakmak said during a video interview.)Titled “Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture From the Torlonia Collection,” the exhibition will “feel very different from the European presentations,” Cakmak said. For the curators, it has been important to make it clear “that this is a completely new project,” not just in how it “was presented in our interpretation and storytelling but also the checklist” of works, she added.The Torlonia Nile, formerly Barberini-Albani. Sculptures from the collection had been visible, off and on, until World War II. Then they fell out of sight.Lorenzo De Masi; via Torlonia FoundationIt is “intended to be for non-specialists,” people who “might not know much about the ancient world,” but would be interested in seeing what Marcus Aurelius, known to modern audiences through the first “Gladiator” film, actually looked like, said Cakmak. She added that a scholars day limited to experts was “in the planning stages.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Canada Moves to Protect Arctic From Threats by Russia and China

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      Ottawa says its focus on the Arctic comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has shaken the foundations” of international cooperation in the northern region.Citing growing interest by China and Russia in the Arctic as global warming makes the region more accessible, Canada on Friday said it would focus on building stronger alliances with other nations in the region, particularly the United States.“For many years, Canada has aimed to manage the Arctic and northern regions cooperatively with other states as a zone of low tension,” according to a statement by the Canadian government.But more recent developments, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had “shaken the foundations of international cooperation in the Arctic,” the statement said.Canada has long debated how best to assert control over its vast but very sparsely populated Arctic.The policy statement calls climate change “the overarching threat” to that control. Warmer temperatures and thinning ice make it increasingly likely that it will soon be possible in the summers for ships to regularly travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean by way of an Arctic route known as the Northwest Passage.Canada’s government said the country was committed to increasing military spending in the Arctic, including a 5 billion Canadian dollar, or $3.6 billion, upgrade of defense systems used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command — a joint operation of the two countries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More