Mark Carney flirted with Canadian politics even as he built a career overseas, rejecting offers to join cabinets at least twice.
Then in January, US president Donald Trump, threatening tariffs and annexation against Canada, brewed a crisis that seemed tailor-made for one of the world’s most seasoned managers of economic turmoil.
Within weeks, Carney was prime minister.
Now, he is leading Canada’s Liberal Party into a federal election, vying for a full term in the top political job in his country of birth after decades of high-profile work in the public and private sectors around the world.
Carney (60) cuts a slender, athletic figure and is impeccably turned out in tailored suits. His tone can be professorial with occasional flashes of bone-dry humour.
He lacks the obvious charisma of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who during his heyday made crowds swoon.
And he also lacks the polished, retail-politician presentation of his chief election opponent, Pierre Poilievre (45), the Conservative Party leader.
And after years in high-level positions overseas, detractors say he is out of touch with Canada and Canadians.
But while Carney is a novice in elected office, his pitch to Canadians is that he is experienced in what he says Canada needs right now: a leader as different as can be from Trump, and a steady hand to direct Canada through a generational challenge.
“If it’s not a crisis, you wouldn’t be seeing me,” Carney told a local news outlet in early March, days before he was elected to replace Trudeau as leader of the Liberals and becoming prime minister.
“I’m most useful in a crisis,” he added. “I’m not that good in peacetime.”
Trump, since his election in November, has pushed menacing rhetoric about Canada, threatening to make the country the 51st state. He has also made Canada, the US’s top ally and trading partner, the target of waves of tariffs, hurting Canadian exports and industries.
Some economists predict the levies will push the country into a recession, and an economic slowdown appears inevitable.
Canada, a middle power permanently connected to the United States by sheer geography, depends on its southern neighbour for its security.
Trump’s upending of the world order – his embrace of Russia, all-out trade war with China and attack on other Western allies – leaves Canada unmoored in a changing world.
Carney says he is the man to deal with all this.
He has built his campaign around Trump’s threat to Canada, promising to negotiate a holistic new deal with the US to tackle trade and other areas. And he has leaned into Trump’s annexation threats, presenting himself as Canada’s defender.
“Donald Trump wants to break us so America can own us. It is our strength that the Americans want,” he told supporters at a recent rally. “They want our resources, they want our water, they want our land, they want our country. They can’t have it.”
Carney has brandished his international connections to convince Canadians that he can line up allies.
Since becoming prime minister in March, he has visited London and Paris, and started negotiating a military industry agreement between Canada and the European Union.
Born in the Northwest Territories and raised mostly in Edmonton, Alberta, Carney was one of four children. Their parents were teachers. He left Canada to study at Harvard and then the University of Oxford, where he met his wife, Diana Fox Carney, also an economist. They have four children.
He has Irish roots and held both Irish and British passports, but said in March he had written to the British and Irish governments to begin the process of renouncing his citizenship of both countries.
Carney spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs in offices around the world before returning to Canada and working at the finance ministry.
In 2008, he became governor of the Bank of Canada, helping Canada survive the global financial crisis as the US banking system went into meltdown.
In 2013, because of his perceived success in that role, he was hired as governor of the Bank of England and tasked with guiding the pound and Britain’s vital banking sector through the disruption of Brexit.
Carney has been using his Brexit experience to highlight that he understands the hinge moment Canada faces with Trump in the White House. “I have seen this movie before. I know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said on the campaign trail.
His international experience, critics say, is running in rarefied circles like the World Economic Forum in Davos, painting him as an out-of-touch global elitist who has not spent any time dealing with ordinary people.
And his post-central banking career has left him open to attacks. Since 2020 and until January, when he resigned to run for Liberal leader, Carney was the chairman of the board of directors at Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian investment giant.
He has been blamed for the company’s offshore tax tactics, its China expansion and its investment choices, all of which may have been reflective of shrewd management of a private enterprise, but are not necessarily appealing to voters. Tax avoidance by corporations is seen as legal cheating by many voters, while Canadians have soured on China because of a crisis in the relationship between the two countries.
And Carney has been defensive of both his past lives and his private wealth, at times snapping at reporters for pressing him to disclose his investments, and stressing that he has followed Canada’s ethics rules.
Carney is promoting himself as a centrist and pragmatist, in contrast to his predecessor, Trudeau, who skewed left and was criticised for pursuing ideologically driven policies at the expense of real-world outcomes.
When he became prime minister, Carney swiftly ditched a tax on household carbon emissions that was deeply unpopular, despite having once been a vocal proponent of this type of policy as one of the world’s most prominent advocates for sustainable, green finance.
Carney seems to be trying to respond to many Canadians’ desire for change after 10 years of Liberal rule under Trudeau, even as the Conservative Party tries to make the case that there’s hardly any difference between the two men.
Carney’s party is polling about three percentage points ahead of the Conservatives as the country heads to the polls.
He has also tried to strike an even, mild tone in his campaign, in contrast to Poilievre’s combative rhetoric.
But people who know Carney point out that, behind closed doors, the economist has a tough side and, at times, a temper.
In his previous roles, Carney had a reputation for being the smartest guy in the room. And former co-workers say he provided clear and decisive leadership – something that people who liked his direction appreciated, but sometimes made others feel bulldozed.
The New York Times spoke to five people who worked for Carney and did not want to be named because their current roles require them to be politically neutral.
Several said Carney would swiftly shut down ideas or debates he felt were wrong – a practice that became known as “getting tasered” among Bank of England staff, because it felt like a sharp, unpleasant jolt.
But most former co-workers spoke admiringly of him and several said he professionalised the Bank of England in a way that was inclusive and changed some long-held cliquey traditions.
“He’s very competent, he’s very confident – the guy masters his briefs like nobody,” said Anil Kashyap an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, who has known Carney for years and worked with him at the Bank of England.
If Carney needed to learn about a topic, Kashyap said, “he’s going to have looked at it from three different directions”.
Carney’s professional credentials, and his adherence to the Liberal Party’s socially progressive beliefs, are appealing to a broad cross-section of voters, public opinion polls suggest. Most surveys show the Liberals are poised to secure a majority in parliament, after two consecutive minority governments led by Trudeau.
At a rally in Surrey, British Columbia, last week, Barb and Hannah Gelfant, a mother and daughter who had driven 90 minutes to be there, said Carney was both reassuring in standing up to Trump and in preserving progressive values.
“For me it matters that he says everyone is free to love who they want to love,” said Hannah (25). “It is archaic to me that there can be politicians in Canada who do not acknowledge the LGBTQ+ community.”
“From a financial perspective, he knows what he’s doing,” said her mother, Barb (65).
Bryan Pezzi (53), a library worker, chimed in: “Mark Carney is uniquely qualified,” he said. “He is the adult in the room.” − This article originally appeared in The New York Times
