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“In every moment where there’s a crack, where there’s a rupture, there is possibility,� Carney said at a news conference in New York on Tuesday evening.

If Carney went to the United Nations to show the world that Canada and the U.S. have become sharply different countries, he can probably declare it mission accomplished. Carney and Trump, both under a lengthy spotlight at the UN on Tuesday, presented their audiences with plenty of vivid examples of two countries on diverging paths.

On style alone, the two leaders couldn’t have been more different. Where Trump was loud and often belligerent in the nearly one hour he occupied the podium, Carney used his UN appearances to cast Canada as the calm, cool-tempered neighbour.

For those who may have missed Trump’s grand turn on the world stage in New York on Tuesday, I can’t stress enough how off-the-wall it got. The president complained about a broken teleprompter and escalator and, veering off into third person, he lamented how Donald Trump the real-estate magnate lost a long-ago bid to renovate UN headquarters.

“I’m going to give you marble floors, they’re going to give you terrazzo,â€� he quoted himself as saying.

Granted, this sets a low bar for any other leader to emerge in a more statesman-like light, but Carney’s struggle, as it is with domestic audiences, is to appear somewhat more populist and accessible. Where Trump veered off in all directions on Tuesday, Carney delivered  a lot of bullet points.

On those matters of substance, once again, the prime minister put Canada on a clear path away from Trump’s America. Take several of them, in Carney-like bullet points.

• Canada is recognizing Palestine as a state. The United States, most assuredly, is not.

• The Canadian government believes in climate change. Trump told the UN on Tuesday it was a hoax. “The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions and they’re heading down a path of total destruction,â€� Trump said.

Here, on the other hand, was Carney when asked later about those remarks. “Yes, there is climate change, and there’s an aspect of competitiveness involved in exporting our goods around the world, and that is about reducing carbon.â€�

• Canada believes in a multilateral trading system, Carney said repeatedly throughout the day, and is embarking optimistically on building new relationships beyond the U.S. Canada is looking a lot to Europe for collaboration, on everything from trade to the Palestine-state declaration.

Here was what Trump had to say about Europe when he came to the part in his speech about the need to close borders: “I’m not mentioning names. I see it and I can call every single one of them out. You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble,â€� he said. “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.â€�

Carney did say later on Tuesday that he took careful notes on possible convergence with Trump, notably when the president appeared to indicate he could work with the UN. That was new, and a departure from even earlier in the day when Trump appeared keen to dismiss the UN as a dismal failure in another area where he was claiming expertise — peacekeeping.

Trump also edged close to Canada’s position — and much of the rest of the world — on Ukraine, issuing a stunning Truth Social post later on Tuesday in which he appeared to hold out hope that Ukraine would win the war against Russia, which he called a “paper tiger.�

That is a 180-degree turn from what the world witnessed earlier this year, when Trump and Vice-President JD Vance lectured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

Carney had a better reception when he went to the Oval Office a few months later and the two leaders now apparently talk frequently, off official channels. Those calls may feature other areas of convergence between Canada and the United States, though we aren’t seeing much of them right now.

Carney, for all his reputation as a technocrat, isn’t afraid to show a little humour, joking during his talk at the Council of Foreign Relations that he was in New York to keep his country in their thoughts. “Think about Canada,â€� he said, smiling. “Actually that’s my request.â€�

Here was another divergent path from Trump, who seemed to have wanted people to walk away from the UN thinking about him.