Mr. Prime Minister (but for how long?)

Into this unprecedented moment in Canadian and world history, political neophyte Mark Carney enters.

It's been a long time coming. At least as far back as the summer of 2012, an eager group of Liberals had tried and failed to woo him. That same year, according to Carney, Stephen Harper (the Conservative prime minister who’ d first appointed him to be Bank of Canada governor) asked him if he wanted to be finance minister.

When Carney first took the role as governor of the Bank of England in 2013, it did not escape notice that he negotiated a five-year stint rather than the traditional eight-year term. There was the sense (at least from the chattering classes) was that he was eager to get back to Canada to run for office in the next federal election. But that election came and went first in 2015, then in 2019, and Carney instead extended his tenure at the Bank, ultimately leaving it in 2020. A year later, he was asked whether he’d be prime minister of Canada someday. Carney was deliberately coy.

What a difference five years make. Carney now has two feet planted firmly in the political world, but he and everyone else is faced with a reality that would have been scarcely imaginable in 2013 — an American president in Donald Trump who is an agent provocateur extraordinaire, forcing Canadians to confront existential, multi-faceted questions about sovereignty and national identity.

Governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England, deputy minister in the Department of Finance, UN special envoy for climate action, chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, banker with Goldman Sachs. That’s a long list of formers.

He is now the 14th leader of the Liberal Party and he will soon become the 24th prime minister of Canada. The question now is how long he will occupy that office — whether he is the man for this moment or a man who will only momentarily be prime minister.

On Sunday evening (March 9th), Carney won the Liberal leadership race in nothing less than a resounding landslide, capturing 85.9% of the overall riding points on the first ballot. The party allocates 100 possible points to each constituency (or ridings, as they’re known), and those points are distributed based on the ratio won by each candidate in each riding (the ballots are ranked). Carney’s commanding win outdoes even that of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who won the leadership in 2013 with a little over 80% of the points.

Given the hurried circumstances which brought him to power, Carney's grip on the job will be tested quickly. The expectation in Ottawa is that he will quickly call a federal election, both because he would be open to accusations of illegitimacy – as an unelected prime minister without a seat in the House – and because, for the first time in two years, the Liberals are not only beginning to close the gap on the opposition Conservatives in the polls, in some they are actually tied and even ahead.

It has been a remarkable reversal of fortune. Just two months ago, when Trudeau announced his resignation, the Liberals were barely scraping 20% support among Canadians. Now, the party is pushing 30% plus. As we have written previously, Donald Trump is partly responsible. He has quickly refocused Canadians’ often attention externally away from cost-of-living issues, temporarily put paid to fractious interprovincial squabbles and forced the voters to rethink their priorities, including whom they trust most to deal with the disruptive American president. Since early February, the answer to that for Canadians broadly has increasingly been the Liberals – with Carney at the helm.

No doubt this must have deeply frustrated Carney’s main leadership opponent, former finance minister (and named ‘minister of everything’ for the multiplicity of other portfolios she’s held) Chrystia Freeland. On Sunday, Freeland finished second in the party voting, but with a paltry 8% of the points. Carney even handily beat Freeland in her own riding, by 1322 votes to 188. Most pundits had thought the result would be much closer, with a maximum ceiling of 60% for Carney. It was, frankly, a shocking subpar outcome for her – one few would have predicted a few months ago - and may damage any future re-run. Voters not only seemed to repay her for turning on Trudeau by abruptly resigning on February 16th (however justifiable her outrage at his planned unceremonious dumping of her) as well as were eager to find a candidate without the Trudeau-era baggage with whom she is inevitably closely associated.

But her campaign was also a fraught and somewhat schizophrenic affair. One moment she tried to distance herself from her former boss. At others, particularly when it came to the big Orange Man in the Oval Office Freeland made hay of the fact that she knew from experience how to deal with a what many Canadians have come to see as his bullying tactics. Alas, few bought her. marketing Freeland finished her campaign on a lackluster note, by promising to appoint Carney as her finance minister, should she win – an obvious acknowledgement of the trending mood. Carney has not yet made a reciprocal offer and it will be interesting to see how he crafts his cabinet, much less any position he might offer her.

Still, last Sunday night, in tune with Canadians’ intrinsic politeness, Carney graciously thanked Freeland and the others for running, and praised Trudeau’s “strength and compassion as a fighter for Canada,” as much a nod to Trudeau’s last few weeks as much as his previous near decade in power. Whatever Trump’s aspirations to make the United States great again, Trump helped make Canadians nationalists again, even to the extent of blunting what might have become a resurgent Quebec separatist movement.

But in one of the vagaries of history, it’s been Justin Trudeau, in the final act of a career that started with such promise but then slipped into ‘progressive’ left wing policies out of the mainstream, who has summoned the eloquence and steely conviction reminiscent of his father and helped Canadians feel like they actually belong together. He has always been good in a moment of crisis as evidenced during the Covid years, and his responses to Trump’s tariff imposition(s) have had just enough bipartisan tone in it to transcend party affiliations. Trudeau’s blunt language, his direct appeals to Americans, minus the occasionally sugary overwrought messaging to which he has occasionally employed, and his framing of Trump as “Donald,” – as if breaking the fourth wall, have matched the national mood perfectly and provided an effective communications tool which contributed to the uncharacteristic toughness of some of Carney’s victory speech remarks. He has also, finally, managed to wrong-foot the shrill, one- note ‘I’m not Trudeau’ Conservatives. The Opposition and Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s years of negativity and sheer snarkiness have compromised his credibility as a force for unity, resulting in a timely but tonally jarring pivot to a unity and anti-Trumpian message that jars with his obvious affinity for the president’s politics.

As with virtually everything in history, we’ve been here before. there are at least two cautionary tales that loom in the background as Carney has ascended to the pinnacles of power: John Turner and Michael Ignatieff.

The last time the Liberal Party of Canada replaced someone named Trudeau at the top of their ticket, the ‘winner’ was Turner. And the last time Liberals gravitated toward a figure who had built an international reputation outside politics, they (eventually) went with Ignatieff. That ended badly too, except insofar as it indirectly (and ironically) led the Liberals back to a Trudeau.

Ignatieff is the easiest point of comparison to Carney. The son of a Canadian diplomat, Ignatieff was a celebrated intellectual (i.e. academic at the University of British Columbia, Cambridge, London, LSE, Oxford among others) and author who was whip-smart, worldly, decent and interesting. But he failed to master politics, most importantly the ability to convey authenticity, and couldn't provide the leadership, organization or vision the Liberals needed when he took over in 2008. Subsequently, the 2011 election resulted in a calamitous defeat, the party's historical worst (34 seats), even surpassing the previous low established by Turner in 1984 (40 seats).

Carney's political abilities — how he handles the constant poking and prodding from the media, not to mention the already stinging jabs from the opposition parties (with still the bare-knuckled hothouse atmosphere for a federal election soon to come — are still being tested. In those terms he is still very much a work in progress.

Nonetheless, he’s not quite a proverbial babe in the woods, having been involved with the public and private sectors at the highest levels. He also already seems to have a clearer idea than Ignatieff of what he wants to do in politics — namely, unsurprisingly a primary focus on strengthening the Canadian economy. And he has passed the first test, cruising to an overwhelming victory in his first electoral contest by securing the Liberal helm.

With Justin Trudeau's government worn down by the wages of time and the cost of inflation, the Liberals entered this leadership race in desperate need of something different. And among the leading contenders to replace Trudeau, Carney was in the best position to represent change — a word he used half a dozen times in his remarks on Sunday night. His unique resumé added a sense that he was a serious person for a serious time.

Like Carney, John Turner, deemed the "golden boy" of Liberal politics, seemed to revive Liberal fortunes after Pierre Trudeau's long period in office. He was a start athlete, Rhodes scholar, former finance minister, but he came from outside the government, a highly-accomplished corporate lawyer with real-world credentials. In the spring of 1984, Turner comfortably defeated Jean Chrétien, a trusted lieutenant of Pierre Trudeau. Buoyed by favorable polls, he proceeded directly to an election.

And saw things fell apart with alarming alacrity. Whatever chance Turner ever had, he was undone by disorganization, a party that wasn't ready to wage a campaign, a hostile press, a patronage scandal and his own mistakes (including a bad debate and a "bum-patting" controversy). The better-organized and better-funded Progressive Conservatives won a massive majority. Turner’s prime ministerial tenure was a scant 79 days, the second-shortest stint in history.

Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives have already begun throwing everything that isn't nailed down in Carney's direction, if only to see what might stick. The attack ads began airing on television well before last Sunday. Poilievre is a formidable opponent: an accomplished speaker, street fighter whose ambition for the big chair is unrequited though he has been remarkably vague on specific policy other than not being Justin Trudeau. The Conservative party machine is flushed with cash, well-schooled in the dark arts of attack ads and the leader is a superb debater with more than the capacity to land punches against the relatively genteel Carney in a televised engagement. The challenge for both Poilievre and the party he leads is to pivot hard and fast enough to offer a bold, optimistic way forward through the thicket of issues so urgently facing the country.

In one case, Carney has already learned how easy it is to stumble in politics. His attempt to present a nuanced answer over the decision to list Brookfield in the United States turned what in reality is a minor issue easily explained into a multiple-day story. The first rule of politics is to attack and answer potentially troublesome issues head-on, so as to get it off the news cycle radar screen as soon as possible and then move on. Such masters of the game like Pierre Trudeau, Bill Clinton and even Donald Trump (who has taken this art even further than anyone else by throwing up so much chaff no one quite knows on which controversial or provocative comment to concentrate) would have easily sloughed off the subject.

While the rest of the world may move to a relatively conventional playbook, it is impossible to know what the American administration might do from one day to the next — as evidenced by the whiplash-inducing changes in Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war — but Canadian leaders have no choice but be obligated to take all of it, no matter how outlandish or unjustified, seriously. And while Trump's presence does not suspend the laws of politics, it has thoroughly scrambled the playing board and rewritten the ballot question facing Canadians at the next election.

On Sunday, speaking to a national and global television audience, Carney pressed the case that not only was he uniquely well suited to this moment, but that Poilievre was uniquely unqualified — that the Conservative leader wouldn't just fail to stand up to the American president, but that his politics were similar to what Canadians have watched play out in the United States. In other words, Poilievre was worse than MAGA, he was a MAGA wannabe.

"Donald Trump thinks he can weaken us with his plan to divide and conquer," Carney said. "Pierre Poilievre's plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered."

Highlighting his own experience in the private sector — and Poilievre's lack of same (he’s been a career politician all his working life)— Carney needled the Conservative leader's faith in the free market. After "change," Carney's second-favourite word Sunday night was "build." Hinting at what sounded like a wartime effort, he said "we will have to do things we haven't imagined before at speeds we didn't think possible."

This is as eloquent as this particular former banker and corporate leader gets. Whilst Carney may still be new to the political scene, but he grasps the value of a slogan. His apparently will be "Canada strong" — no doubt a rejoinder to Poilievre's "Canada first."

In such a critical upcoming contest with a country united against Trump’s ambitions, even if the polls are right and neither Carney nor Poilievre prevail with a majority in parliamentary seats does either man have the historical sense to reach across the aisle and form a government of national unity? It’s only happened once (Robert Borden’s administration in 1917). Now that would be something to behold.

As for Mark everything – his humble start as the son of teachers from the Northwest territories to his scaling of Canada’s corporate and bureaucratic heights—has led up to this moment. The world will see whether everything in Carney’s life has prepared him for one more win, to meet the exigencies of the moment. Carney is right where he wants to be. Will Canadians in the upcoming election want him to stay there?