Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney is one of the leading candidates to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal Party leader and prime minister. He has no political experience, has never held or run for a federal seat, and doesn’t even slightly understand the blood sport that he wants to become a part of.
Ah, but Carney believes he has a game-changing strategy to win Liberal hearts, minds and votes. He’s going to become a rare example of a left-leaning political “outsider.”
That’s the key word he used to describe himself in an interview with The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. When the comedian asked him how he would win an election if he became leader after a decade of Liberal policies, Carney said, “Let’s say the candidate wasn’t part of the government. Let’s say the candidate did have a lot of economic experience. Let’s say the candidate did deal with crisis. Let’s say the candidate had a plan to deal with the challenges in the here and now.” This led Stewart to say, “You sneaky; you’re running as an outsider,” to which Carney responded, “I am an outsider.”
Yeah, sure. A so-called “outsider” who, in actuality, is very much on the inside.
Carney was reportedly at the centre of Trudeau’s tete-a-tete with then-Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. According to the Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife, Stephanie Levitz and Marieke Walsh on Dec. 18, 2024, Freeland claimed Trudeau told her on a Zoom call that Carney was going to replace her as finance minister. This led to their very public break — and, in many ways, his political downfall. Dominic LeBlanc, not Carney, ultimately assumed this role. The reasons have never been revealed, but one assumes that when Freeland’s resignation letter exploded in Trudeau’s face, he may have had second thoughts.
There’s also the rumoured involvement of high-ranking members of Trudeau’s team in Carney’s forthcoming leadership bid. (He will reportedly launch his campaign on Thursday in Edmonton.) Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley wrote on Jan. 11 that “former top advisor Gerald Butts is part of Carney’s campaign team while others close to Trudeau, including Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford, are making calls on Carney’s behalf… and that much of the PMO staff is behind Carney as well.”
The Carney campaign has disputed this fact, but there could be something to it. Many of the key players have known each other for decades, and worked together on previous campaigns. It’s also worth mentioning that Diana Fox Carney, who is Carney’s wife, is a senior advisor for the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy group whose vice-president is…Gerald Butts.
Carney first advised the Trudeau Liberals in 2020, when he helped out with Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He even became a special adviser and chair of a Liberal Party task force on economic growth last September. There’s obviously nothing illegal about this, but he’s hardly on the outside looking in.
When you put everything together, Carney is actually a political “insider,” not “outsider.” He’s misrepresenting himself to both the Canadian public and an American TV audience.
Speaking of which, it’s rather interesting that Carney appeared on The Daily Show just shortly after Trudeau appeared on CNN (with Jake Tapper) and MSNBC (with Jen Psaki, a former press secretary for U.S. President Joe Biden). Hmm. Left-leaning politicians appearing on left-leaning U.S. TV shows with left-leaning hosts and left-leaning audiences. You could almost swear it was a coordinated effort and a means of ignoring the Canadian media that’s been more critical of the Liberals as of late.
Nah, that’s just crazy talk. Or is it?
“When it comes to politics,” I wrote about Carney in a July 6, 2021 National Post column, “the red-hued economist is as green as they come.” This was during the time that he was being touted as a possible candidate in the federal riding of Ottawa Centre to replace the then-departing Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna. I also made this assessment, “Liberals who are touting him as a political juggernaut, future party leader and prime minister-in-waiting should take several deep breaths and engage in sober second thought. If history is any indication, their political saviour may end up being nothing more than a political pretender.”
Nothing has really changed with Carney’s knowledge, ability and political IQ in roughly four years. His leftist ideology, which includes massive support for environmental policies like net zero climate solutions, building a sustainable world economy, tackling wealth inequality, and declaring the radical Occupy Wall Street protests were “entirely constructive,” is likely still the same. What has changed is the dire circumstances that the Liberals currently face, and he knows it.
In normal times, this type of technocrat politician who wants everything handed to him on a silver platter would be rejected by a rational-thinking party caucus. These aren’t normal times for the federal Liberals, and rational thinking for this government went out the window long ago. After years of Trudeau’s mediocre, ineffective and delusional leadership — and terrible policies that hurt the Canadian economy and our reputation on the international stage — the Liberals are looking for any possible means of political survival. Even someone as potentially catastrophic, and very much on the inside, as Mark Carney.
National Post