Canada Gets a New Leader Today

Canada will get a new prime minister Friday—and the country could have its third one of the year by the end of next month. Mark Carney will be sworn in at a ceremony in Ottawa at 11am Eastern after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes his resignation official, the CBC reports. Carney, who turns 60 on Sunday, won a landslide victory in the Liberal Party's leadership election. After he becomes the country's 24th prime minister, he is expected to name a Cabinet much smaller than Trudeau's, though ministers leading the response to President Trump's tariffs, including Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, are expected to keep their jobs, reports CTV News.

• Relations with the US. Carney won the leadership election after arguing that his experience made him the best person to take on Trump, reports Reuters. He said Wednesday that he will meet the president, who talks almost daily about annexing Canada, when "there is respect for Canadian sovereignty."

• The next election. Carney is expected to call an election before March 24. The minimum campaign time under Canadian law is 36 days, meaning Canadians could vote in late April or early May, the CBC reports. If the Liberal Party loses, Carney would become the shortest-serving prime minister in Canadian history. The opposition Conservative Party had a huge lead in the polls at the start of the year but the gap narrowed—and, in some polls, vanished—after Trudeau announced his intention to step down and Trump launched his trade war against Canada.
• "Deja vu all over again." The Ottawa Citizen describes the election as "deja vu all over again"—in 1984, Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father, resigned as prime minister. His successor as Liberal leader, John Turner, was prime minister for just 79 days before the Conservatives swept the election.
• Next steps for Trudeau. Trudeau said in January that he does not plan to run for his seat in Parliament in this year's election. He hasn't publicly discussed what he plans to do next but longtime associates, including Immigration Minister Marc Miller, expect him to focus on his family. "He probably wants to get some time to air his brain out," Miller, who has known Trudeau since he was 11, tells the New York Times. "That's probably unsatisfying for anyone that is really eager to hear what his next steps are but that is where the current state of his thinking is."

(Carney is the first person to have run central banks in two G7 countries.)