Canada’s Future Prime Minister Forges an Unconventional Path to Leadership

Ottawa:

Mark Carney was born near the Arctic, led the central banks of two major economies, and is poised to become Canada’s next prime minister despite never having served in parliament. His path to the top job in Canadian politics has been unconventional, but as he stated when he launched his campaign to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, these are extraordinary times.

“Our times are anything but ordinary,” Carney told supporters in the western city of Edmonton in January. He has described the threats posed by former U.S. President Donald Trump as “the most serious crisis of our lifetime” and recently claimed that the United States wants “our resources, our water, our land, our country.”

Carney believes his experience steering the Bank of Canada through the 2008-2009 financial crisis and later leading the Bank of England after the Brexit vote has prepared him for this moment. He secured 85.9% of the votes in the Liberal Party leadership election and is set to become prime minister in the coming days.

Unique Background

Carney’s tenure as prime minister may be brief, as a general election is imminent, with polls showing the opposition Conservatives as slight favorites to win. Regardless of the duration of his term, his leadership will be historic.

Carney will be Canada’s first prime minister with no political experience, having never held an elected public office or served in a government cabinet. He was born in Fort Smith, a small town in the Northwest Territories, where his parents were teachers, but he grew up in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta.

Like many Canadians, he played hockey in his youth. He studied at Harvard in the U.S. and Oxford in England, and began his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, amassing a fortune while working in New York, London, Tokyo, and Toronto. Carney later joined the Canadian civil service and was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada by former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008.

In 2013, the British government under then-Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him to lead the Bank of England, making Carney the first non-Briton to hold the position in the bank’s more than 300-year history.

‘Boring’ But ‘Reassuring’

Daniel Beland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, describes Carney as a “technocrat.” “He’s a boring guy who generally lacks charisma,” Beland said. However, he noted that in a Canada unsettled by Trump’s trade policies and attacks on its sovereignty, Carney’s competence and lack of flashiness could be appealing.

Beland added that Carney projects “the image of a reassuring guy who knows what he is talking about.” Lori Turnbull of Dalhousie University, however, warned that Carney’s potential difficulty connecting with the public could be a liability. “He’s not a particularly great communicator when it comes to the public,” she said. While he is “unusually well-equipped to deal with economic crises,” she told AFP, “it’s very hard to see how anybody would be successful in politics if you can’t bring people on board with you.”

The Conservatives have already launched attack ads labeling Carney as “sneaky,” offering an early glimpse of their campaign strategy against him. Carney’s personal wealth, significant career stints outside Canada, his work for U.S.-based Goldman Sachs, and his chairmanship at one of Canada’s largest corporations, Brookfield, make him a target for criticism.

“The Conservatives are trying to cast him as an elite who doesn’t understand what regular people go through. And if he can’t communicate well, he risks being typecast in that way,” Turnbull said.

Climate change and Carney’s plans to address it will undoubtedly play a key role in the campaign. Critics have dubbed him “Carbon Tax Carney,” linking him to a deeply unpopular policy introduced by Trudeau that imposed a marginal tax on some homes to offset emissions. Carney, however, emphasizes investment-led solutions, such as green technology, that create profit and jobs.

“Very much we are emphasizing the commercial aspect of it, the competitiveness aspect,” he said in a recent interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast. “This is where the world is going.”

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