Montreal, Canada – Canada has its next prime minister.
Mark Carney has been elected as the new head of the governing Liberal Party, replacing Justin Trudeau in the midst of historic tensions and fears of a trade war with the United States.
An economist and former central banker, Carney will be sworn-in as prime minister in the coming days.
He is making his first foray into Canadian politics at the country’s highest level – and with a federal election looming.
He is also taking the helm of a party that, after years of declining support and criticism over its handling of social and economic issues, is riding a newfound wave of political momentum.
“I will work day and night with one purpose, which is to build a stronger Canada for everyone”, Carney said in his victory speech on Sunday evening after securing 85.9 percent of the vote , on the first ballot.
But just who is Mark Carney? What policies does he plan to pursue, and will he be able to boost the Liberals ‘ fortunes in the upcoming federal election against a strong Conservative Party?
Oxford grad, central banker
Born in Canada’s Northwest Territories and raised in the western province of Alberta, Carney has presented himself as a political outsider who can steer Canada through a period of economic turmoil and uncertainty.
The country has been roiled by US President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on Canadian products, which came into effect on March 4. Fears of a recession have fuelled a sense of Canadian nationalism and a desire for steady leadership in Ottawa.
Carney holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford universities and spent over a decade at the investment firm Goldman Sachs.
More recently, he served as the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, where he also led the company’s “transition investing” – an effort to promote investments that align with global climate goals.
But it is his banking experience in times of crisis that Carney and his supporters say best demonstrates his ability to help Canada weather the Trump storm.
The 59-year-old began his tenure as the governor of the Bank of Canada amid the global financial crisis of 2008, and he was credited with taking quick and decisive actions that helped spare Canada from a more serious downturn.
In 2013, Carney left to take the helm of the Bank of England, where he remained until 2020 – the year the United Kingdom formally left the European Union.
There, too, he was recognised as having minimised the effects of Brexit – though his assessment that a break with the EU posed a risk to the British economy drew the ire of conservatives who were in favour of leaving the bloc.
“He was an innovative and inventive central banker”, said Will Hutton, an author, columnist and president of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences.
“He understood that actually, central banks have a job to make capitalism as legitimate as possible by ironing out its worst proclivities. And he was appalled by Brexit, which he thought was self-defeating”, Hutton told Al Jazeera.
“But he managed to organise the Bank of England’s behaviours so the fallout from it was less disastrous than it could have been”.
Lack of political experience
While few dispute Carney’s economic credentials, his lack of experience in electoral politics has raised questions.
He previously served as an economic adviser to Trudeau, who resigned amid widespread anger over his government’s handling of a housing crisis and rising costs of living.
But Carney has never run for political office before, and he spent much of the Liberal leadership campaign introducing himself to Canadians.
“He’s someone who’s been behind the scenes, an adviser”, said Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University who described Carney as a “technocrat on steroids”.
Carney has laid out broad promises since he launched his campaign, including reining in government spending, investing more in housing, diversifying Canada’s trading partners and putting a temporary cap on immigration.
A former United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Carney is also a major proponent of the idea that the private sector must take a leadership role in tackling the climate crisis and getting to net-zero emissions.
“I know how to manage crises. I know how to build strong economies”, he said during a debate against the other Liberal leadership hopefuls last month.
“I have a plan, a plan that puts more money back in your pockets, a plan that makes our companies more competitive, a plan that builds a strong economy that works for you”.
Beland told Al Jazeera that the Liberal leadership contest largely failed to test Carney because his main opponent was longtime friend and former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. The pair did not attack each other much during the race.
“That’s not the best test for someone who has no political experience and will then have to basically go into the lion’s den”, Beland said, referring to this year’s federal election, where Carney will face fiery opposition leaders such as the Conservatives ‘ Pierre Poilievre and Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Quebecois.
‘ Consummate insider ‘
Carney’s attempt to paint himself as an outsider has been challenged as well.
His time as a Liberal Party adviser, coupled with his experience atop the global financial world, make him “a consummate insider and a consummate elite”, said Canadian political analyst and journalist David Moscrop.
“At the same time, he’s an accomplished policy expert, a renowned and respected mainstream economic thinker. And if that’s your sort of thing, then this is pretty much the cream of the crop”, Moscrop told Al Jazeera.
“But if it’s not your sort of thing, then he represents what some on the left and some on the right see as a kind of global economic elite consensus that is oppressing day-to-day people”.
Poilievre and his Conservative Party have tapped into that feeling of public anger and anxiety over rising prices to lambaste the Liberal government over the past few years – and they have continued to use that line of attack against Carney.
Poilievre – a politician known for combative rhetoric during his two decades in Canada’s Parliament – has hammered the economist as “just like Justin” in an effort to tie him to the outgoing prime minister’s most unpopular policies.
That includes a Liberal carbon pricing programme that Carney once supported but recently promised to scrap amid strong public opposition. Poilievre has taken to calling him “Carbon Tax Carney” and admonishing the “Carney-Trudeau Liberals”.
The Conservatives have also accused Carney of lying when he recently said he was not at Brookfield Asset Management – his former firm – when it formally decided to move its headquarters from Toronto to New York.
The move to the US, Conservative lawmaker Michael Barrett said, amounted to “taking jobs away from Canadians”.
A spokesperson for Carney’s campaign rejected the criticism, telling local media outlets that the decision did not affect Canadian jobs.
In addition, Carney has faced calls from opposition parties to comply with conflict-of-interest rules that Canadian lawmakers are subjected to.
Since he has never been elected, Carney is not yet required to comply with those processes, which include the disclosure of private interests to an ethics commissioner and moving his financial holdings into a blind trust.
“If Mark Carney has the privilege of becoming prime minister, he would not merely comply with all applicable ethics rules and guidelines, but surpass them”, his campaign told the Toronto Star on Wednesday amid the criticism.
“The office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has already been contacted ahead of time to help ensure all appropriate steps can be initiated right away, and assets would be immediately placed in a blind trust”.
Trump factor
But according to Beland, Canadians are currently less concerned about domestic issues than by the uncertainty surrounding the Canada-US relationship and Trump’s tariffs.
Indeed, fears of a trade war with Washington have helped bolster support for the Liberals over the past few weeks. Polls show that the party has narrowed what was once a 26-percentage-point deficit behind the Conservatives.
The future of Canada-US ties appears poised to be the central question of the upcoming election, and Canadians are evenly divided on the question of which leader is better suited to handle the US president.
An Angus Reid Institute poll published this week showed Carney with an edge of 9 percentage points. An estimated 43 percent of respondents said they trusted him most to deal with Trump, compared with 34 percent who chose Poilievre.
“They will have to come up with a very clear strategy about how to take]Carney] on. Just empty slogans probably won’t work”, the professor said of the Conservatives.
“You need seriousness in times of crisis, and Carney is the incarnation of seriousness. He’s an elite technocrat, while Poilievre likes slogans and to mock people”, added Beland.
“]Poilievre’s approach] might sound a bit silly in the context of this foreign policy and trade crisis triggered by Trump”.
Meanwhile, Carney has accused Poilievre of echoing Trump’s talking points.
“]Poilievre] worships the man. He uses his language. He’s not the right person for our country at this crucial time”, Carney said during last month’s debate.
The Conservative leader, in turn, has accused Carney and the Liberals of using the threat of tariffs to distract from their record over the past decade.
“If Carney-Trudeau policies did this much economic harm before tariffs, imagine the devastation they would cause after tariffs”, Poilievre said during a recent “Canada First” rally in the capital, Ottawa.
“Who’s the worst person to stand up to Donald Trump? Pierre Poilievre. He worships the man”. @MarkJCarney pic. twitter.com/QfF0tJJ8gv
‘ Meet the moment ‘
With Carney now taking the reins of the party, it remains to be seen if the Liberals can maintain their recent momentum.
Whether they can overcome a sense of “incumbent fatigue” is also unclear. Federal parties typically do not stay in government beyond a decade in Canada, and the Liberals have been in power since 2015.
“In many Western, G7 countries, people are done with the incumbents, and they want a change”, said journalist Catherine Tsalikis, who wrote a biography of Freeland, the former Trudeau deputy who was Carney’s main challenger in the leadership race.
Tsalikis told Al Jazeera she believes most of the Liberal cabinet coalesced around Carney because he represented “the best chance of looking like the party is differentiating itself from the Justin Trudeau brand, or looking like they’re making a change”.
“How different will he be from Trudeau? That’s an open question”, she said.
According to Moscrop, the political analyst, Carney may not be “the person to meet the moment”, in part because a majority of Canadians are responding to a “populist, angry tone that seems to confirm their anger and frustration and anxiety”.
Affordability remains a top concern for Canadian voters, alongside healthcare and housing.
“That doesn’t mean that those who are peddling alternative solutions aren’t themselves completely bogus. Pierre Poilievre is also a consummate insider and elite doing a faux-populist schtick that ultimately, I think, is going to lead him into ruin when he can’t deliver”, Moscrop said.
“But at least its tone matches the tone of a population that is struggling to maintain a positive bank balance while paying the rent and feeding themselves and their family”.
Ultimately, Carney’s own political fortunes may be tied to what his party’s expectations are for the next election.
The vote must take place by October 20, but the Liberals could choose to call it sooner.
If they can hold the Conservatives to a minority government and emerge as the official opposition, that could possibly be enough to be labelled a victory for a party that was once headed for a resounding defeat.
But if the Liberals fall short of that, Carney’s time as party leader could be short-lived.
“If you’re not at least the leader of the opposition, then you probably have to go on day one. You’re done”, said Moscrop.
