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He has little time to do much before he goes to the people for an election in which he will seek a mandate to govern during perilous times.

The signal he sends with his cabinet picks is centrist and technocratic, which is what the moment calls for.

Carney wisely left Melanie Joly in Foreign Affairs and Bill Blair in National Defence, because there is no time for rookies to learn those vital files. He also put Dominic LeBlanc in international trade, so he can continue to play the lead managing the lunatics in Washington.

Carney, who is under huge pressure to chart a new course on fossil fuels and the environment, moved the polarizing Steven Guilbeault out of Environment and replaced him with Terry Duguid, from Winnipeg, who previously worked on a rail line to Churchill, on Hudson Bay, which may take on new importance now that Canada is seeking new export markets.

Carney put his friend and former rival Chrystia Freeland in the low key role of Transport, made business-oriented Quebecer François-Philippe Champagne the finance minister and disappointed progressives by leaving out their standard bearer, the talented Karina Gould.

Progressives should brace themselves for more disappointment, because the election ahead may be won by whoever can get closest to the middle of Canadian political sentiment, setting aside the activism and polarization of the Trudeau years for a government that moves to consensus positions on contentious files and focuses on threats to Canadian sovereignty.

Our new prime minister has world-class economic credentials but zero political experience, and the leader of the opposition is a master of political rhetoric but has very little experience running anything. Canadians, who are watching events more closely than at any time in our history, will have to pick one of them as our champion within little more than a month.

In normal circumstances, Pierre Poilievre would be a shoo-in. Ever since Justin Trudeau was re-elected using vaccine mandates as a wedge in 2021, his government acted without the confidence of most Canadians. Poilievre, building on his base of anti-mandate activists and Westerners enraged by Trudeau’s climate policies, won broad support for his plan to gore Ottawa’s sacred cows, defund the CBC and tear apart the regulatory state.

With Trudeau gone and an existential threat from Trump, Poilievre’s promised libertarian revolution suddenly looks less appealing. Poilievre appears to be profoundly ideological, an acolyte of Preston Manning, committed from youth to the principles of strident anti-government American economist Milton Friedman. 

Until Trump started to threaten our sovereignty and Trudeau was replaced by Carney, even middle-of-the-road Canadians had tentatively signed on to Poilievre’s agenda. The federal government was steadily growing faster than the stagnant economy. The oil patch was furious with barriers to development.

Trudeau was narrow-casting to the shrinking number of Canadians still in his constituency, expanding the social welfare state while neglecting economic growth. By carelessly opening the doors to hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers and students without planning for adequate levels of housing and other services, he shook Canada’s carefully nurtured public support for immigration. Canadians were right to think that it was time to bring in someone to clean house, and Poilievre looked like the man for the job.

But the arrival of Trump and Carney has changed everything. Carney is a world-calibre expert at crisis management, while Poilievre’s most impressive political accomplishment has been assembling an opposition coalition that fell apart as soon as his hated opponent headed for the exit.

The horse race polls still favour Poilievre to win the election ahead, but the numbers underneath tell a different, and for him, a more worrying story. Canadians think Carney is the better choice to manage Trump, by far the most important issue.

Poilievre had no choice but to repeatedly speak up against Trump’s tariffs — but has not otherwise shaken up his approach, perhaps because he is so ideological that he can’t. He is still promising, for instance, to defund the CBC, which seems like a terrible idea in an era of rising foreign influence and disinformation. Trump’s pal, Elon Musk, has previously given Poilievre important boosts on Twitter, and interfered in the German election on behalf of the far right. Poilievre has Musk’s support, and can hope for Twitter amplification, so he may seek to benefit by killing the public broadcaster, but that does not seem to be in the national interest. CBC’s journalism has been vital during this sovereignty crisis.

With his cabinet shuffle, Carney signalled that he is moving to the centre, which is sensible and necessary during a crisis. Canadians should be ready to set aside their partisan inclinations and put the national interest first until Trump stops threatening our existence.

Ideally, both parties will put forward fairly similar programs in the election, so that there is broad consensus on the way forward no matter who wins, and what political scientists call the “median voter” will be comfortable with the result.

Carney looks like he may be ready to do that. It is up to Poilievre to show greater maturity than he has to date if he wants to convince Canadians he can govern in the difficult days ahead.