Meet Canada’s next probable leader — who once compared Trump to Voldemort

The frontrunner to take over the reins from Justin Trudeau on Sunday when Canada’s Liberal Party chooses its new leader is a tough-talking former Goldman Sachs executive who has compared President Trump to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort. 

Mark Carney, credited with helping Canada dodge the worst of the 2008 financial crisis when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, is viewed by his countryman as the politician most trusted to handle Trump, polls show.

“When you think about what’s at stake in these ridiculous, insulting comments of the president, of what we could be, I view this as the sort of Voldemort of comments,” Carney, 59, referring to Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st US state.

“Like I will not even repeat it, but you know what I’m talking about,” he told a crowd of hundreds of supporters at a Winnipeg pub last month.

Carney, who was a backup goalie for the Crimson’s hockey team during his undergrad years at Harvard before attending Oxford for postgrad, is from a small town in Canada’s Northwest Territory.

If he wins Sunday, Carney will not only become the new leader of the Liberal Party but also replace Trudeau as the country’s Prime Minister. The former banker — who was managing director of investment banking at Goldman in the early 2000s — will then face the tough decision of when to call a federal election.

Canadian elections are usually held every four years – with one currently set for October – but the Prime Minister can choose to dissolve Parliament and call a snap election any time before then.

Some have speculated Carney would do so sooner than later – maybe even the next day – as the new leader seeks to capitalize on momentum, and a clear mandate from Canadians on dealing with tariffs amid an escalating trade war with the US.

With Trudeau at the helm, the Liberals’ chances of winning were dismal, with polls showing the Conservatives far ahead for the better part of the past two years, at times enjoying a double-digit lead.

But the changing of the guard – and the wave of patriotism that’s taken a hold of the country in response to Trump’s tariff and annexation threats – has led to a dramatic shift in the last few weeks, with polls now showing a very close race.

Carney – who spent a couple years in NYC as VP of Corporate Finance during his 13 years at Goldman – has said he wants dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs where they’ll hit Americans the hardest.

“Canada will not bow down to a bully,” he declared Tuesday. “In the trade war – just like in hockey – we will win,” he said referring to the politically charged 4 Nations final between the US and Canada two weeks ago.

Trudeau resigned in January after a tumultuous few weeks in Canadian politics where he was accused by his former finance minister of not taking tariffs seriously.

“We need to take that threat extremely seriously,” Chrystia Freeland – who also threw her hat in the ring for the Liberal Party leadership – wrote in her December resignation letter from Trudeau’s Cabinet.

“That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment,” she said.

The reason that Carney seems to be so popular “is because he is perceived to be competent and capable,” McGill University political scientist Tari Ajadi told The Post.

“Carney appears to be a very calm, steady hand in a very uncertain time,” he added.