USA

Some of the United States’ Vietnam War opponents found refuge in Canada. Fifty years after the end of the war, they’re still worried about the future.

The presidential pardon signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977 was a sweeping invitation to thousands of Americans to come home and help heal a nation torn apart by the Vietnam War. Those who had left for Canada to avoid the draft had wanted no part of the conflict, which killed about 60,000 Americans.

Canada had offered a refuge. It did not support the war and was willing to welcome, with few questions asked, those crossing the border.

Many war resisters, or draft dodgers as they were often called by others, were not interested in returning when Mr. Carter made his amnesty offer. Their decisions had come with high costs: ruptured family ties, broken friendships and, often, shame. While some hailed those who went to Canada as principled, others considered them cowardly.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals successfully held onto power in Monday’s federal election. Yet Carney’s victory had virtually nothing to do with him. It was caused by the mistaken belief of some Canadians that he was the best choice to defend Canada against U.S. President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected after running a campaign heavily focused on saying U.S. President Donald Trump poses an existential threat to Canada, but it remains to be seen whether this messaging will continue now that the election has passed.

The Liberals tapped heavily into rising nationalist sentiment in Canada, caused by Trump’s talk of making the country the 51st U.S. state and by the imposition of three different sets of tariffs on its largest trading partner.

The victory-party din for Mark Carney and his Liberal Party had only just faded when Donald Trump chimed in with a less than ringing endorsement of the winners.

“It was the one that hated Trump, I think, the least that won,” the US president said on Wednesday of Carney, whose party had just retained power by winning a near outright majority of the seats in Canada’s general election.

The Canadian prime minister may accept being the lesser of two evils in Trump’s mind, however. The US president also said that he thinks the former Bank of England governor “couldn’t have been nicer” in the first post-election phone conversation.

He confirmed he will meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

Carney won Canada. Saving the country from Trump won’t be so easy

Mark Carney has engineered one of the most unlikely victories in political history, saving Canada’s Liberal Party from near oblivion and going from the outskirts of politics to prime minister in a matter of months.

But the former Bank of England governor’s biggest challenge still lies ahead: protecting Canada’s economy from Donald Trump.

Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed Canada will become the “cherished 51st state” and levied heavy tariffs on the US’s northern neighbour. In his victory speech Carney said Trump “is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never happen.”

It‘s been an election defined by the trade war and washed in nationalism. At every turn, Liberal Leader Mark Carney played up the threat of U.S. President Donald Trump and his own strength and firmness in the face of that.

Mr. Carney arguably won the election as a result. One survey, on which leader can better take on Mr. Trump, showed Mr. Carney with a nearly 40-percentage-point lead over the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre. Mr. Trump has called Mr. Carney a “very nice gentleman” and brushed off his campaign rhetoric. But fresh with a new mandate, Prime Minister Carney seems tempted to deliver on his words and escalate the fight.