Carney rides Trump confrontation into sweeping Canadian policy overhaul

Nanos poll finds Carney at highest approval ever recorded

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is moving forward with a sweeping overhaul of Canada’s economic, national-security and foreign policies, capitalizing on a confrontation with President Trump that has fueled his public standing to claim a mandate for changes that, in some cases, would once have been unthinkable and unpopular inside Canada. A political novice until he won the premiership last year, Carney has vanquished opposition that might have felled his predecessors thanks to that confrontation, which has given him highflying popularity. The agenda includes overhauling environmental reviews, accelerating approvals of oil pipelines and mines, sharply raising military spending and repairing ties with China, India and Saudi Arabia.

A Nanos Research survey released Tuesday found that more than 60% of respondents preferred Carney for prime minister, the highest level the pollster has recorded for him. Polls show that Carney’s Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today. Several lawmakers from across the political spectrum have defected to the Liberals in the past year. His opponents are laboring to land a punch. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has spent recent months squaring off against critics within his own party. An Ipsos poll last week found Carney more popular than Poilievre and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Alberta, a long-standing conservative stronghold.

“I cannot remember, in my adult life, a prime minister having this good an 18 months,” Darrell Bricker, chief executive of Ipsos, said. “There has been very little pushback against any of the things that he’s proposed.”

Analysts say Carney has succeeded in framing most of his domestic and international agenda around reducing Canada’s reliance on the United States, a framing that has landed with a Canadian public furious about the hits the economy has taken from the Trump administration’s tariffs and about threats Trump has made to annex America’s northern neighbor.

In normal times, polls show building pipelines and spending more on defense have been divisive issues here, but a majority of Canadians now support both. A Pew Research Survey this year found that Canadians have a more favorable view of China than the U.S. In 2026, 44% of Canadians viewed China favorably, it found, up from just 14% in 2023.

Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University, said Carney likely wanted to pursue many of these policies as prime minister, but the conflict with the U.S. “gives him a logic, gives him a narrative that might make more sense to people.”

“The way he’s describing it is essentially we’re in an emergency situation, we’re in a kind of something that’s similar to a war,” Turnbull said. “He’s made this about our sovereignty, and so it all kind of fits together.”

A sign of bipartisan support for parts of Carney’s agenda was on display earlier this month at Canada’s inaugural investment summit, where former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the closing keynote address and backed Carney’s approach to dealing with Trump.

“It is clear that the current U.S. administration views our level of economic integration as incompatible with our separate sovereignty,” Harper said, calling himself one of the most pro-U.S. prime ministers. “Thus, to maintain that sovereignty, we must pursue diminished reliance on the United States.”

Carney’s public defiance in the face of Trump’s attacks has set him apart from other world leaders, who have often cut quick trade deals with Trump only to face threats of even more tariffs. In private, the prime minister has also played a key role in pushing allies to reduce their dependence on the U.S. In a January speech at Davos, Carney urged middle powers to stand up to hegemons and called for the formation of “different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.” At a news conference last week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said: “Put simply, we’re in a position where we need to pursue calibrated alliances, integrating deeply with those countries who share our values, remaining open-eyed with those who do not.”

Just because Carney is popular now doesn’t mean he isn’t generating criticism.

An omnibus bill introduced last week would speed up the approval process for major infrastructure projects and revamp environmental reviews, allowing projects to undergo a single review lasting no more than a year. In some cases, it would also allow the government to preapprove projects and exempt them from certain environmental assessments.

The bill is drawing praise from business groups but opposition from indigenous people, environmental organizations and labor unions, who could challenge it in court.

“The prime minister wants us to believe that rolling out the red carpet for the wealthiest corporations and investors is going to make Canada strong,” Avi Lewis, the leader of the left-of-center New Democratic Party, said. “But we can’t save Canada by selling it off.”

His international strategy also isn’t without challenges and tricky trade-offs.

Brokering trade deals with other countries and building new infrastructure to get products to non-U.S. markets won’t happen overnight, even with expedited approval processes.

Carney has pledged to meet NATO’s new target of spending 5% of gross domestic product on defense by 2035, which he estimates could amount to $150 billion annually. Current military spending is $51 billion. It is not yet clear how Canada plans to pay for the increase or whether Canadians will support long-term deficits, higher taxes or cuts to social programs to fund it.

Efforts to link Canada more closely to the European Union have drawn concerns about the possible erosion of sovereignty. Moves to thaw ties with China and India — which authorities allege have harassed critics and dissidents on Canadian soil and sought to meddle in Canadian elections — have raised concerns about trade taking precedence over human rights.

While Trump’s tariffs and import bans are not expected to plunge Canada’s economy into a recession, they are causing job losses and hitting manufacturing sectors hard. Most Canadians supported Carney’s decision to walk away from trade talks with the U.S., even as they expressed concerns about the tariffs’ effect on their livelihoods.

“Canadians are assuming the worst, hoping for the best,” Bricker said. “They know that they’re not going to get through this unscathed, but they feel the person who could do the best job of making sure that they’re damaged the least is Mark Carney.”