This week saw former central banker Mark Carney officially announce his candidacy for leader of the Liberal Party and thus the prime minister’s office. In a speech in Edmonton defined by long pauses, he promised a “plan,” not a “slogan,” taking care to pronounce each word so that they rhymed.
In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Mark Carney.
Monday
I do not need to be doing this. I have options. Oxford University offered to make me their first Chair of Scholastical Eco-Economistry. The European Council is practically begging me to become their Special Envoy on Sustainable Protein Alternatives.
Not to be coarse, but I could spend the rest of my life on a Caribbean island somewhere, eating naught but fresh local fruits and doing naught but swimming in shimmering ocean waters — emerging only an hour or two each day to remotely chair a BlackRock board meeting.
But I feel a curious, thrumming appetite deep within me. It is not ambition. It is certainly not pridefulness. It is — dare I say it — the siren call of duty. It is the same klaxon that sent our forebears over the top at Vimy Ridge. That sent voyageurs down uncharted waterways to stake out the outlines of a new country.
Mark Carney as prime minister? Would it were not my calling.
Tuesday
It is a common libel against central bankers that we are culturally estranged from the masses: A condition known in Latin as “procul.”
The allegation is that a career spent in spreadsheets and forecasts divorces us from the street-level workings of a society that we so often reduce to trendlines and figures.
This might be true of a Sir Edward George or a Ben Bernanke, but not Mark Carney. I enjoy plebeian alcoholic beverages such as Stella Artois or Heineken, even when premium options are available at negligible additional cost. The “camp” impressions of Scarborough’s own Mike Myers appeal to me.
Truth be told, I would much rather spend my evenings in a mid-level executive suite Scotiabank Arena than the Royal Box in Wimbledon or Cheltenham. Keep your Yorkshire Pecorino and racks of lamb, Your Majesty; this Canadian boy wants a hot dog!
Wednesday
What ails Canada? It was a question posed to me everywhere from Lloyd’s of London luncheons to meetings with the Daily Mirror editorial board. You might say I was their “token Canuck.”
To them, my polite, well-mannered homeland had suddenly transmogrified into a preserve of boorish disquiet. Dyspeptic truckers glorying in the wanton expenditure of unsustainable fuels. A Conservative Party trafficking in American-imported slogans such as “law and order.”
My answer was always the same: I did not recognize my own country. My Canada is a Canada of blue-helmeted peacekeepers, of uncontroversial metrication, of proud people grateful to pay a premium for milk or to hear radio stations that play a Gordon Lightfoot song every 20 minutes. I didn’t leave Canada; Canada left me.
Thursday
How to mend what is not broken? Imagine yourself to be a repairer of musical instruments. A client brings in an oboe, claiming that it is unplayable. But upon closer inspection, you see that the pads remain supple, the keys free of tarnish, the grenadilla wood is stable and uncracked. The client demands that you restore his beloved oboe, but you begin to suspect that the real problem is one of expectations.
Inflation is at 1.9 per cent. Asking rents went down by 1.2 per cent last year. Crime is a concern, but the Crime Severity Index is merely hitting 20-year highs — hardly an unprecedented tide of random stabbings. Fatal drug overdoses are high, but still not quite as high as Scotland. Yes, 74,000 Canadians have died on health-care wait lists since 2018; but are we to declare a national emergency over the loss of 0.195 per cent of the population?
I understand that I must give voice to public grievances if I wish to obtain high office. But what grievance? Do these churls require negative rents and five per cent growth to be happy?
Friday
I was one of the many to watch with disappointment as the United States fell once again to vacuous populism. And in my darkest hours, I entertain the thought that the fault is due primarily to the incumbent administration. That Kamala Harris, despite representing the sane and sober path forward governmentally, categorically failed to connect with voters on a superficial level.
It is an intriguing thought, but one that obviously has no lessons for me. I used to run the Bank of England.