(Bloomberg) -- On an overcast afternoon on Canada’s east coast, Mark Carney emerged from a pickup truck and stepped carefully in his dress shoes through the muddy lot outside a lumber mill. His hard hat didn’t fit right, pitched forward at an awkward angle; an aide hustled over to fix it before he went inside.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Nearby, a man operating a giant mechanical claw snatched logs off a flatbed truck and piled them beside a conveyor belt.
It was day three of Canada’s election, and the prime minister was touring parts of Nova Scotia, while his staff was still working on his wardrobe. “They’re always telling me to dress down, they’re always taking my tie off,” he joked during one visit.
Carney, who jumped into politics as a candidate just three months ago, has never looked fully at ease on the campaign trail. When giving speeches, his eyes rarely stray from the teleprompter. His French is shaky. His rallies are less boisterous than those of Pierre Poilievre, his main opponent.
Yet it’s working for him. Polls suggest Carney’s Liberal Party has a lead of about 5 to 7 percentage points over Poilievre’s Conservatives heading into a crucial few days. The leaders will participate in televised debates on Wednesday and Thursday — their only head-to-head encounters, and their last chance to make an impression before advance voting begins over the Easter weekend.
Even more than his policies, Carney’s demeanor has helped his image as the anti-Donald Trump candidate. At campaign events, he speaks slowly and calmly — scarcely different from how a central banker might present the latest monetary policy report. In normal times, that low-energy presence might be a liability. In this moment, he’s a clear foil to Trump’s bombast.
On the question of who Canadians see as the best person to deal with Trump, surveys show a clear edge for Carney. “It’s an advantage on an issue that, for a large swath of voters, they’re currently using to assess who they’re going to support,” said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president at Leger Marketing, a polling firm.
Trump’s trade war — and his threat to use “economic force” to compel Canada to join the US — have dominated the news cycle in Canada for months. The White House has placed large import taxes on Canadian products such as steel and aluminum, with potentially more on the way for lumber and pharmaceuticals. Once a week during the election, Carney has halted campaign activities to meet with his cabinet in Ottawa on the issue.
Politically, the tariffs have helped the Liberals, who have framed their entire campaign around Carney as a former central banker and an experienced leader — even if he’s an inexperienced politician — with the best strategy for handling Trump.
If Carney has a housing announcement, it will emphasize using Canadian lumber. If he has a crime announcement, he’ll also talk about beefing up security at the US border. If he’s speaking about a tax cut, it will be to ease the pain on families from tariffs. And sometimes he says things that the world notices — such as this one: “The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”
“President Trump, he’s clear about his strategy,” Carney, 60, told a rally in Hamilton, Ontario, the heart of Canada’s steel industry. “His strategy is to break us so America can own us.” It’s a line he has used throughout the election to underline his promise to reduce Canada’s dependence on the US, and to accelerate the construction of new infrastructure that would help the country export more to Europe and Asia.
‘Time for a Change’
Poilievre is running a different sort of campaign. He knows how to throw a political rally. The crowds he draws are energetic and passionate, filling convention halls and airport buildings with thousands of people, families with children in tow. While Carney speaks for a tight 20 minutes, Poilievre often holds court for nearly an hour.
Last week, the Conservatives held a large rally in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto that’s home to a Stellantis NV auto assembly plant, one of a number of factories caught in the turmoil that’s gripping Canada’s auto sector. The fast-growing city is in a region that’s one of Canada’s most important election battlegrounds, filled with immigrant communities whose support is crucial for any party trying to form government.
Poilievre was there to outline what he billed as “the biggest crackdown on crime in Canadian history,” including a pledge for a three-strikes rule that would mandate a 10-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of three serious offenses. It’s a message that plays well in Brampton, where auto thefts have skyrocketed.
But the rally came on the same day Trump chaotically announced a reversal of some of his so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries, while still keeping the import taxes on Canadian goods.
In his roughly 45-minute speech, Poilievre dedicated just a few minutes to Trump’s tariffs — a stark difference from Carney, who weaves Trump references throughout his remarks at every major event. Poilievre criticized Carney for not getting Canada’s tariffs removed despite a recent phone call with the US president.
“The choice in this election is not, as Mr. Carney would ask you, to overlook an entire decade of rising costs and crime and a falling economy that is under the thumb of the Americans, simply because he promises that somehow he’s a master negotiator,” Poilievre, 45, told the crowd.
“What we are deciding in this election is: can we afford a fourth Liberal term of rising costs and crime, and a weakened economy? Or is it time for a change with a new Conservative government, to unlock our resources, cut our taxes, build our homes and strengthen our country so that we can face the Americans from a position of strength?”
Poilievre, who was first elected to parliament in 2004, has struggled at times with how to address the Trump factor in the election. He began the campaign by focusing almost entirely on an economic message of tax cuts and cutting red tape. By week two, with polls showing a healthy Liberal lead, he adjusted and began attacking Trump more directly in his speeches.
But he also has his party’s right flank to worry about. A Leger poll found that Conservative supporters are far more likely than Liberals to have a positive impression of Trump.
The Liberals have piled on, pointing out some of Poilievre’s rhetorical similarities to Trump. One Liberal television ad shows clips of the Conservative chief using phrases like “fake news” and “radical leftist” in a manner similar to the president.
The conundrum for Poilievre is that his focus on the economy is proving effective with many voters, yet he’s still trailing. Polls now find the Conservatives in the range of 37% to 40%, which would be the party’s best result since 2011 if it reaches that level on election day.
Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, said her firm has found a narrowing race, in part due to Poilievre’s message on cost-of-living issues. “Those attacks are starting to land,” she said, particularly with male voters. “We’re starting to see men shift back towards the Conservatives, and I would say: watch that space.”
Even so, the latest Angus Reid survey released Monday found a six-point lead for the Liberals — with a double-digit lead in both Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces that have nearly 60% of the seats in Canada’s House of Commons.
Leger’s most recent survey found a similar lead for the Liberals, and Enns said Poilievre’s best hope is to keep hammering away at the question of whether the Liberals really deserve a fourth term in government.
“For Poilievre, that question needs to somehow penetrate into more voters than it’s currently sitting at now,” he said. “Carney doesn’t need to win over any more voters. He’s got more than enough to win.”
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
