Same song, probably a different dance partner.

We went to bed Monday sending Mark Carney into the lion’s den as an elected Liberal prime minister to stare down and subdue Donald Trump. But Canadians gave him anything but the strongest political hand.

Carney will apparently lead a third straight minority government—only now, one in which, of all things, the separatist Bloc Québécois has leverage for Liberal viability. Mathematically, the NDP can return as the support the Liberals need to rule—they’re four short of a majority, and the NDP has seven seats—but it would be folly to bypass the Bloc Quebecois and not bow to a party with 23 seats in a politically important province. Trump must be chuckling, though, at the prospect of contending with a prime minister beholden to a party that wants to leave Canada.

The result was not quite what the latest polls had predicted—a majority Liberal government, not one falling short by single digits. Quebec delivered it the government, but Ontario didn’t deliver its majority. Still, it amounted to an extraordinary reversal of Liberal fortunes, considering Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives held a two-dozen-point poll lead only a dozen weeks ago, considering also that many thought not so long ago the Liberals might be rendered rubble this election.

What was clear in the result, apart from the remnant........

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