Dealing with the economic threat from Trump will be at the top of new PM's in-tray

When Mark Carney becomes Canada's prime minister this week, a list of simmering crises across the country will demand his attention: housing is unaffordable, health care is breaking, living costs keep rising and climate change is ransacking livelihoods.

- Leyland Cecco

But most - if not all - of those concerns will be pushed aside, supplanted by a far greater threat to the country: the US president, Donald Trump.

The potential impact of Trump's economic attack on Canada is so wide-ranging and so damaging that it is likely to dominate Carney's in-tray. US trade tariffs, if held in place for an extended period of time, could push Canada's fragile economy into a recession.

"Without overstating it, the challenges are almost unique in Canadian history," Cameron Anderson, a politics professor at Western University, told Reuters.

"We have big challenges in terms of cost of living and housing and health care, and managing immigration. And then, when we look at Canada as a country in the world, we're probably threatened and have the sense of being threatened in a way we haven't in many generations."