Two special elections in Canada on Monday gave Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney a majority government for the first time.
Though his new control is slim, at two seats in the 343-seat House of Commons, it will enable the 61-year-old former central banker to take bolder policy actions that no longer need to account for coalition partners' concerns.
The twin wins in Toronto ridings, or districts, will give Liberals powerful control now of all Commons committees.
A major professed goal is to reduce Canada's overwhelming economic reliance on its deep connections with the United States, a traditional grievance in the northern neighbor, especially at election times.
The Liberal victories for Trump critic Carney in Canada came just two days after a resounding election defeat in Hungary for Trump ally Viktor Orban, the prime minister.
READ MORE: Hungary's Orban Suffers Blowout Electoral Defeat Despite Support From Trump and Putin
In response to President Trump's blunt reference to Canada becoming the 51st state and Carney's future title of "governor," both taken as condescending, Carney has uttered more bold criticism than is usual in the two nations' bilateral relations.
At a pre-election rally in Montreal last weekend, Carney said:
The world is changing. Not gradually. But suddenly. Yes, some are still in denial. Rather than starting on this journey, they're waiting for the past to return. No.
But hope is not a plan. And nostalgia is not a strategy. If we stand still during this rupture, we will surrender our future to others.
Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister last year, and Carney, a rookie politician like Trump in 2016, took over. In a national election in April, the Liberals came up short of a 172-seat majority.
Since then, Liberal ranks in the Commons were bolstered by the crossover of one member of the New Democratic Party and four Conservatives, apparently dissatisfied with the populist leadership of Pierre Poilievre.
At the same time, separatists in the oil-rich western province of Alberta are organizing for a fall vote on separating from Canada, a regular issue in the world's second-largest country, where politics and the economy are so tightly controlled by the geographic power center in Ontario.
Trump, as he does with pretty much everyone he believes crosses him, has bluntly criticized both Trudeau and Carney.In January, without mentioning Trump, Carney drew a standing ovation at the Davos World Economic Forum when he said this:
Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.
The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.
The North American reality, however, is that Canada and the United States are tied so closely through power grids, natural resource extraction, professional sports leagues, families, intelligence, police, and military links, and corporate cross-ownerships that the occasional two-way squabbles end up in the scheme of history being momentary and largely rhetorical.
READ MORE: There's More to the Canada Squabble Than Meets the Eye
Which makes strategic sense, given that both countries are NATO members and both live with territory directly adjacent to Russia.
Canada's 10 provinces and two territories are physically 10 percent larger than the United States. But with eight times Canada's population of 41 million, most Americans hardly think of Canada until perhaps their hockey teams compete in the Olympics.
While the American influence looms so large in the north that it is a fact of everyday Canadian life and consciousness.
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