Last July, the polling firm Abacus Data showed 1,989 Canadians the image of a blond man, looking somewhat serious, dressed in a dark blue suit with a matching tie. The portrait appeared alongside five politicians whose names were being considered for a possible Cabinet reshuffle by Justin Trudeau: Chrystia Freeland, Mélanie Joly, Anita Anand, Sean Fraser, and Dominic LeBlanc. Only 7% were able to identify him. Today, just eight months later, that unknown face has emerged victorious in the Liberal Party primaries and is preparing to become the prime minister of Canada. A political outsider who will have to weather the tariff storm of Donald Trump on the eve of federal elections where everything is at stake. His name is Mark Carney.
A pragmatic technocrat, the former central banker emerged as a frontrunner almost from the start to succeed Pierre Elliott Trudeau's prodigal son at the helm of the government, following his resignation on January 6, forced to leave Ottawa due to the growing revolt within his caucus and the unexpected resignation of his number two and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, whom Carney would ultimately defeat this Sunday. As the list of candidates dwindled from six to five and then to four - with a special mention for Ruby Dhalla, disqualified for committing ten campaign rule violations - Carney solidified his lead, garnering the most support and the highest fundraising among the contenders, including Freeland herself, Karina Gould, and Frank Baylis. He was the only one to reach a seven-digit figure, raising 4.5 million Canadian dollars during the nearly two-month campaign. Now, he becomes the first Canadian to take the reins of the country without ever having served as a Member of Parliament.
His lack of political experience seems to have mattered little to the Liberals. Perhaps, precisely, it has been his best asset. The economist steered the Bank of Canada through the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and led the Bank of England during another cataclysm: Brexit. With that background, he now arrives in Ottawa to lead the response to the biggest crisis Canada has faced in decades: a trade war with its powerful neighbor, the United States, which threatens punitive tariffs on Canadian products to force the country to become the 51st state of the union.
"I know how to manage crises... In a situation like this, experience in crisis management is needed, negotiation skills are needed," he stated during one of the two campaign debates held in late February. He argues that he is the only one with the necessary credentials to stand up to Trump, and he may be right. His advantage lies in two factors: between 2011 and 2018, he was the chair of the Financial Stability Board, giving him a key role in the global response to the policies of the U.S. president during his first term; and, perhaps most crucially, he is not Justin Trudeau.
Born in 1965 in Fort Smith, in the remote Northwest Territories, Carney was raised in Alberta, the heart of Canada's oil industry. The son of a school principal, he earned a scholarship to Harvard University, where he balanced his studies with the most Canadian of sports: ice hockey. In 1995, he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Oxford. His career began at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 13 years working in the firm's offices in London, New York, Tokyo, and Toronto. There, he served as co-head of the sovereign risk department and executive director in investment banking, and worked on South Africa's entry into the international bond market after apartheid. In 2003, he left the private sector to join the Bank of Canada as Deputy Governor. A year later, he was recruited to join the Department of Finance, where he remained until being appointed governor of his country's central bank in November 2007, shortly before global markets collapsed, plunging the country into a deep recession.
Although central bankers are notoriously cautious, Carney was transparent about his intentions to keep interest rates low for at least a year after drastically cutting them. This measure would later be widely praised for helping businesses continue to invest even as markets plummeted. He would later adopt a similar approach when, in July 2013, he returned to London, this time as Governor of the Bank of England, making him the first non-Briton to hold the position in its three-century history and the first person to lead two G-7 central banks. The then British Finance Minister, George Osborne, described him as the "most outstanding governor of his generation."
A staunch advocate for environmental sustainability, in 2019 he was appointed as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Change, and in 2021 he launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a coalition of banks and financial institutions working to combat climate change. But there have always been rumors that Carney wanted to make the leap into politics, leading him to respond with irritation that, at times, still seems evident. "Why don't I become a circus clown?", he retorted to a journalist in 2012 when asked if he was considering a career change. Nevertheless, he declared himself a liberal at the party convention in 2021 and, six months ago, he agreed to lead a task force advising the Trudeau government on economic growth.
But it was in December when everything changed. Carney accepted an invitation to lead Canada's economic portfolio, prompting Freeland to noisily exit the cabinet, although she would later decline the offer. This turmoil directly led to Trudeau's resignation and opened the door for Carney, who has shown cunning by positioning himself to inherit the liberal mantle, while skillfully shedding the less popular parts of his predecessor's legacy. Goodbye to the carbon tax, one of Trudeau's government's flagship policies, if it means he can avoid attacks from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the upcoming election campaign, which, paradoxically, is now a close race between the Liberals and the Conservatives, according to polls, thanks to Trudeau's departure and Trump's threats.
Carney is expected to call federal elections - which must be held before October 20 - in the coming weeks, amid fears that his government may fall after a vote of confidence when Parliament resumes on March 24. And winning won't be easy: he has inherited a minority government, abandoned by his parliamentary ally, the New Democratic Party; his French leaves much to be desired, according to Quebec standards; and he lacks the oratory skills needed to explain complex political and economic concepts to ordinary citizens, something in which Poilievre, a career politician whose rhetoric is not far from Trump's, excels. But now, Canada's sovereignty and economy are at stake. Fortunately for Carney, populism seems less a refreshing change from Trudeau's wokeism and more an American disorder.