Mark Carney: The ‘boring guy’ replacing Justin Trudeau as Canada's next PM

After a long wait and following Justin Trudeau’s teary exit, now comes Mark Carney. Canada’s Liberal Party overwhelmingly elected the former Bank of England boss to be the new leader of the party and also be the 24th prime minister.

Carney won the Liberal Party leadership race handily, with 85.9 per cent of the vote, followed by eight per cent for Chrystia Freeland , 3.2 per cent for Karina Gould and three per cent for Frank Baylis. With this, the 59-year-old will be the first person to become Canadian prime minister without being a legislator or any Cabinet experience.

However, Carney may not have the job for long. The North American nation must hold elections by October but could well see a snap poll within weeks.

But who exactly is Carney? What are his policies? What does his leadership mean for Canada and its allies?

From Oxford graduate to central banker

Born on March 16, 1965, in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Carney grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. The son of a high school principal and an elementary school teacher, he credits his parents with instilling in him a strong work ethic and a commitment to public service.

He attended Harvard where he played college-level ice hockey, starring as a goalkeeper, and later pursued further studies at Oxford. In 1995, he earned his PhD in economics from Oxford University.

Following his education, he found himself at Goldman Sachs where he worked for 13 years across cities such as London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto amassing a fortune. In 2003, he was named deputy governor of the Bank of Canada. However, he left in November 2004 for a top finance ministry job but returned to become governor of the central bank in 2008 at the age of just 42.

He won praise for his handling of that year’s financial crisis when he created new emergency loan facilities and gave unusually explicit guidance on keeping rates at record low levels for a specific period of time.

Impressed by his performance as governor of Canada’s central bank, the Bank of England hired him in 2013, making him the first non-British governor in the central bank’s three-century history, and the first person to ever head two G7 central banks. Britain’s chancellor at the time, George Osborne, called Carney the “outstanding central bank governor of his generation”.

It was his efforts that helped with minimising the impact of Brexit — however, he made lifelong enemies among the Brexiteers. As Will Hutton, an author, columnist and president of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences told Al Jazeera, “He was an innovative and inventive central banker. 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.”

Following his exit from the Bank of England in 2020, he served as a United Nations envoy on finance and climate change.

On the personal front, Carney is married to fellow economist Diana Fox, whom he met while studying at Oxford. Together, they have four daughters.

Carney’s political run

There have been rumours about Carney’s political ambitions for years. However, he kept brushing off any suggestions of entering politics — in 2012, he even told a journalist, “Why don’t I become a circus clown?”

However, things changed for Carney in early January when Justin Trudeau announced his decision to step down after his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland quit his Cabinet.

However, Carney is unlike Trudeau. He lacks charm, is not an electric speaker, speaks French like a bureaucrat, and has little experience debating. In fact, Daniel Beland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University describes him as “a boring guy who in general doesn’t have a lot of charisma.”

But Carney insists that he can do it. “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.”

The many challenges facing Carney

While Canada prepares for Carney’s innings, it may not be the longest, as the country is preparing for polls where the opposition is led by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre , who is a seasoned politician.

Poilievre and the opposition have tried to paint Carney as an elite who doesn’t understand what regular people go through. Poilievre has also said, “Working for Trudeau, Carney made Canada weaker and poorer; working for himself Carney made the United States richer and stronger.”

Lori Turnbull of Dalhousie University told AFP that if Carney is unable to connect with the public, it will end his political career. “He is unusually well-equipped to deal with economic crises but it’s very hard to see how anybody would be successful in politics if you can’t bring people on board with you,” she told AFP.

And it is this fear — his lack of political experience and charisma — that even leaders of the Liberal Party share. Immigration Minister Marc Miller told TIME, “It’s hard to go from a minister to prime minister. It’s hard to go from just a backbencher to prime minister. It’s really hard to go from politically nothing to prime minister.”

But this isn’t the only concern that Carney has to contend with. US President Donald Trump, who has stepped up attacks against his neighbour with threats of annexing the country and tariff threats, is perhaps the biggest challenge for Carney.

But, many believe that Carney’s financial expertise and educational qualifications may make him the right person to go up against Trump. And Carney, himself, has been vocal in his criticism of the US president.

Speaking at an event amid Trump making statements on making Canada the 51st US state, Carney compared him to the villain in the Harry Potter series, Voldemort. “When you think about what’s at stake in these ridiculous, insulting comments of the president, of what we could be, I view this as the sort of Voldemort of comments.”

“Like I will not even repeat it, but you know what I’m talking about,” he said last month.

While campaigning, he has also called Trump a bully, saying: “President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down. We’re united and we will retaliate.”

And in his acceptance speech, Carney took on Trump directly. “Donald Trump as we know has put unjustified tariffs on what we build, on what we sell, on how we make a living.

“He’s attacking Canadian families, workers and businesses and we cannot let him succeed, and we won’t.”

Carney added, “We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves, so the Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade as in hockey, Canada will win.”

Carney’s chances of winning the polls

Many pollsters and pundits believe that Trump’s tariffs and controversial comments about Canada will help Carney in the next election. A study by non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds that 43 per cent of Canadians believe that the former central banker would be best to square off against the US president, compared with 34 per cent who choose Poilievre.

Jamie Tronnes, the executive director of the Centre for North American Prosperity and Security, also believes that nationalism will benefit the Liberal Party and, in turn, Carney. Speaking to NPR, he said: “Canadians are really feeling angry, hurt. Canada feels so disrespected in this relationship right now. This has led to a resurgent nationalism, which is something that we haven’t seen the likes of in a long time in Canada, that has really benefited the Liberal Party.”

We will have to wait and see what happens next, but for now, Carney is preparing to be sworn in as the 24th prime minister.

With inputs from agencies