Mark Carney, Canada’s newly elected prime minister and head of the country’s Liberal Party, faces a war on two fronts.
To the south, the former governor of the UK’s Bank of England has to contend with the Trump administration, which has threatened then postponed crippling 25 percent tariffs on Canada, as well as taunted the country with the outlandish possibility of making it the 51st U.S. state.
Internally, Carney faces likely imminent federal elections, where he will need to convince Canadians he is different enough from his Liberal predecessor Justin Trudeau, but remains the best person, affiliated with the best party, to helm the country.
As Trudeau put it during a goodbye speech, Canada now faces a “nation-defining moment.”
“Democracy is not a given,” Trudeau told a crowd in Ottawa. “Freedom, it’s not a given. Canada is not a given. None of those happen by accident. None of them will continue without effort.”
Here’s what you need to know about Mark Carney, a man who’s already managed to influence the world stage for years despite never holding elective office.
From Canada to the world
Carney was born in Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, in 1965, and raised in the Alberta city of Edmonton, the child of two educators.
Carney won a scholarship to study in the United States and pursued an intensive education in economics and finance, with degrees from Harvard and Oxford universities.
From there, Carney served across the world as an executive at Goldman Sachs, with postings in London, Tokyo and New York.
He is married to Diana Fox, a British economist, and they have four daughters.
Carney eventually returned to Canada and ran the country’s central bank from 2008 to 2013 during the depths of the financial crisis, where his leadership and decision to quickly slash then continue to hold down interest rates is credited with sparing the country from the worst impacts felt by other G7 nations.
Britain, Brexit and the Bank of England
Carney continued his rise on the world stage, in 2014 becoming the first non-Briton to lead the Bank of England in the institution’s over three-century history. He is credited with having modernised the Bank by doing more frequent media appearances than his predecessors, slashing the number of interest rate meetings from 12 to eight each year and publishing minutes alongside interest rate decisions.
While previous governors generally kept a low profile, Carney made a number of controversial interventions, including warning that an independent Scotland might have to surrender powers to the UK if it wanted to continue using the pound ahead of the 2014 referendum.
And ahead of the Brexit referendum, he warned that voting to exit the EU could trigger a recession in the UK. In the wake of the vote to leave the EU, following David Cameron’s resignation as prime minister, he addressed the nation as part of an attempt to reassure the public as the pound plunged.
Interest rates were later slashed from 0.5 to 0.25 per cent, and the Bank restarted its quantitative easing programme to support the economy.
His final week in the job fell at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, when the Bank cut interest rates to 0.5 per cent and Carney told the country that the economic shock "should be temporary".
He departed the role to serve as the United Nations envoy for climate action and finance.
A showdown with Trump (and Poilievre)
Trudeau announced in January he would step down after nearly a decade in office, and Carney announced his intentions to run that same month, pitching himself as a skilled technician with the economic knowledge to address Canada’s low growth and high cost of living.
“I’m not the only Liberal in Canada who believes that the prime minister and his team let their attention wander from the economy too often. I will not lose focus,” Carney told a hometown crowd in Edmonton. “Our growth has been too slow. People’s wages are too low. The federal government spends too much, but it invests too little. Middle-class taxes are too high.”
That message has grown considerably sharper since Trump took office, a period that’s flipped Canada’s long-term economic and political alliance with the United States on its head.
After his landslide victory, Carney promised to match any U.S. tariffs on Canada “until the Americans show us respect” and vowed to be a tough negotiator against Donald Trump.
“We did not ask for this fight,” Carney said. “But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves. Make no mistake, Canada will win.”
His other fight will be with Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party, who Carney has blasted as someone who “worships at the altar of Donald Trump.”
What comes next?
The pair will face off in federal elections by October, though a contest could be called even sooner.
Poilievre has also run on an economic message, promising tax cuts, including on a levy on carbon emissions, and reducing government spending.
Attack ads against Carney have hit on his wealth and ties to the finance world.
Until Carney joined the race, the incumbent Liberals were polling poorly against the Conservatives.
However, recent research suggests a close race to fill the leadership vacuum that began when Trudeau announced he was stepping back amid an intra-party fight.
A February poll, prior to Carney’s win, found Conservatives topping Liberals by nine percent, though a then-hypothetical Carney-Poilievre matchup yielded a tie.
An Ipsos poll later that month had respondents listing Poilievre as the most likely candidate to roll over and accept Trump’s demands, though voters also considered Poilievre the candidate most likely to be a tough negotiator and get the best deal in a U.S.-Canada trade war, as well as the person most likely to unite Canadians in making the country less dependent on the United States.
