TORONTO-Overhauling environmental reviews and accelerating approvals of oil pipelines and mines. Massive increases in military spending. Mending ties with China, India and Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is barreling forward with a rewiring of Canada's economic, national-security and foreign policies that, in some cases, would once have been unthinkable and unpopular. A political novice until he won the premiership last year, Carney has vanquished opposition that might have felled his predecessors thanks to a confrontation with President Trump that has given him highflying popularity.

Polls show that Carney's Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today. A survey released Tuesday from Nanos Research found that Carney was the preferred choice for prime minister of more than 60% of respondents, the highest level it has recorded for him.

Several lawmakers from across the political spectrum have defected to the Liberals in the past year. His opponents are laboring to land a punch. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has spent recent months squaring off against critics within his own party.

Even in Alberta, a traditionally conservative stronghold, people have more favorable views of Carney than Poilievre and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, according to an Ipsos poll last week.

"I cannot remember, in my adult life, a prime minister having this good an 18 months," said Darrell Bricker, chief executive of Ipsos. "There has been very little pushback against any of the things that he's proposed."

Analysts said Carney has succeeded in framing most of his domestic and international agenda around reducing Canada's reliance on the U.S. It has worked with a Canadian public furious about the hits their economy has taken from the Trump administration's tariffs and the threats the president has made about annexing America's northern neighbor.

In normal times, polls show building pipelines and spending more on defense have been divisive issues here, but a majority of Canadians now support both. A Pew Research Survey this year found that Canadians have a more favorable view of China than the U.S. In 2026, 44% of Canadians viewed China favorably, it found, up from just 14% in 2023.

Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University, said Carney likely wanted to pursue many of these policies as prime minister, but the conflict with the U.S. "gives him a logic, gives him a narrative that might make more sense to people."

"The way he's describing it is essentially we're in an emergency situation, we're in a kind of something that's similar to a war," she said. "He's made this about our sovereignty, and so it all kind of fits together."

A sign of bipartisan support for parts of Carney's agenda was on display this month as he hosted Canada's inaugural investment summit, where former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the closing keynote address and backed the current Canadian leader's approach to dealing with Trump.

"It is clear that the current U.S. administration views our level of economic integration as incompatible with our separate sovereignty," said Harper, who called himself one of the most pro-U.S. prime ministers. "Thus, to maintain that sovereignty, we must pursue diminished reliance on the United States."

Carney's public defiance in the face of Trump's attacks has set him apart from other world leaders, who have often cut quick trade deals with Trump, only to get threats of even more tariffs. In private, the prime minister has also played a key role in pushing allies to reduce their dependence on the U.S.

In a January speech at Davos, Carney urged middle powers to stand up to hegemons and called for the formation of "different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests."

"Put simply, we're in a position where we need to pursue calibrated alliances, integrating deeply with those countries who share our values, remaining open-eyed with those who do not," he said last week at a news conference at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Just because Carney is popular now doesn't mean he isn't generating criticism.

An omnibus bill introduced last week to speed up the approval process of major infrastructure projects and to revamp the environmental-review processes for those projects is drawing praise from business groups but opposition from indigenous people, environmental groups and labor unions, who could challenge it in court.

The bill would allow infrastructure, energy and mining projects to undergo a single review lasting no more than a year. In some cases, it would also allow the government to preapprove projects and exempt them from certain environmental assessments.

"The prime minister wants us to believe that rolling out the red carpet for the wealthiest corporations and investors is going to make Canada strong," said Avi Lewis, the leader of the left-of-center New Democratic Party. "But we can't save Canada by selling it off."

His international strategy also isn't without challenges and tricky trade-offs.

Brokering trade deals with other countries and building new infrastructure to get products to non-U.S. markets won't happen overnight, even with expedited approval processes.

It isn't clear how Canada plans to pay for the huge increases to military spending and whether Canadians will be on board if it requires long-term deficits, higher taxes or cuts to social programs. Carney has pledged to meet NATO's new target of spending 5% of gross domestic product on defense by 2035, which he estimates could amount to $150 billion annually. Current military spending is $51 billion.

Efforts to link Canada more closely to the European Union have drawn concerns about the possible erosion of sovereignty. Moves to thaw ties with China and India, which authorities allege have harassed critics and dissidents on Canadian soil and sought to meddle in Canadian elections, have raised concerns about trade taking precedence over human rights.

While Trump's tariffs and import bans aren't expected to plunge Canada's economy into a recession, they will cause job losses and are hitting manufacturing sectors hard. Most Canadians supported Carney's decision to walk away from trade talks with the U.S., even as they expressed concerns about tariffs on their livelihoods.

"Canadians are assuming the worst, hoping for the best," said Bricker. "They know that they're not going to get through this unscathed, but they feel the person who could do the best job of making sure that they're damaged the least is Mark Carney."