COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2025. For Canada in some grand existential sense — as for much else in the contemporary global village — the great shadow event of 2025 has without doubt been the arrival of the even wilder and crazier Donald J. Trump II regime in the (alas) no longer great American republic next door.

(And much Canadian thinking on the current state of this disorder has been nicely summarized by Andrew Coyne, in his December 5, 2025 Globe and Mail column. Which nas now on December 16, 2025 been reposted by the irrepressible Robert Reich in Berkeley, CA as “The True Catastrophe of Trump, as seen from north of the border … A view from our neighbor.”)

In Canadian federal politics there was just one great story in the first four months of 2025 — down to the 45th General Election on Monday, April 28. This was the surprise salvation of the Liberal government in Ottawa, wrought by new leader and former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, who grew up in the aptly named Laurier Heights suburb of Edmonton, Alberta.

(And on April 28 the new Carney Liberals won 169 seats in a House where 172 seats constitutes a bare majority. As the year is about to end right now they have 171 seats, as a result of two floor crossings from the Poilievre Conservatives. For possible further prospects of this sort see “Energy minister says he’s getting ‘lots of inquiries’ about MPs crossing the floor … Sources say Tim Hodgson was involved in bringing Michael Ma over to Liberals.”)

Meanwhile, looking back, we’d note a half dozen counterweights pieces from the first quarter of 2025, that best reflect our own struggles to wade through the choppy waters of January, February, and March, here on the north shore of the Great Lake Ontario — across the water from Northern and Western New York State :

(1) Jan 4th, 2025. By Ashok Charles, “More than 9 in 10 Canadians want MP s to swear an oath of office to Canada not to a monarch across the sea … but many MP s still don’t want to listen”.

(2) Jan 18th, 2025. By Randall White, “‘History has many cunning passages’ — and in one of them Trump may have just boosted Canada’s national identity”.

(3) Jan 28th, 2025. We moved away from the UK and US in Canada with less than wonderful provincial politics in Canada’s most populous province : “The premier may need a snap election in 4 weeks … the people and parliamentary democracy of Ontario do not!”

(4) Feb 18th, 2025. Only one post from February looms in our mid-December minds : “Trump’s view of Canada has a lot in common with Putin’s view of Ukraine (or Putin’s view of Ukraine has a lot in common with Trump’s view of Canada!)”.

(5) Mar 6th, 2025. By Counterweights Editors. In March 2025 we ourselves definitively shifted our main attention to the surprising scene in Ottawa : “Conservative lead in Canada has dropped from 26 to 3 points in six weeks .. what’s behind it? .. Justin Trudeau? .. Donald Trump? .. but also Mark Carney?”.

(6) Mar 16th, 2025. By Randall White : “It all made me think that not everything in Canada is hopeless right now” (even if the British monarchy is no defense against Donald Trump’s Putinesque rhetoric!).” Which begins with : “So in Ottawa this past Friday, March 14 Mark Carney was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Canada, along with the other 23 members of his new leaner federal cabinet, at the head of his ‘new Canadian government’.”

The second quarter of 2025 for us just spelled out the vast differences between the new Trump regime in the USA and the new Carney regime in Canada. But that’s for our next year-end post of 2025, a few days hence. Meanwhile again, whatever else you may or may not want to say about Mark Carney and his updated Liberal Party of Canada, at the very least he is a much better overarching federal political leader than the current occupant of the parallel office next door.