There’s about as much truth to Mark Carney being an outsider as there is to Christy Clark having never signed up for the Conservative party. Like Clark, who left a trail of evidence of her deceit, Carney’s now undeniable long-time interests in Liberal leadership and associations with members of the party have left a florescent trail of breadcrumbs, raising serious questions about Carney’s integrity overall and the reason he left Canada in the first place.
In 2012, shortly before Carney exited Canada for the prestigious role of governor of the Bank of England, reports began to surface that some Liberal party members at the time saw him as the “perfect alternative to Justin Trudeau” and had spent the summer of 2011 attempting to woo him into contesting the leadership.
And it looks like they had Carney’s ear. According to Globe and Mail reporting at the time, which included “dozens of interviews,” Carney was “responsive to the efforts.” Over that summer, he reportedly “asked questions,” sought “clarification about the job” and “what it would take to beat Trudeau,” and bunked at then Liberal MP Scott Brison’s Nova Scotia home for a week-long holiday with his family. Cozy.
It must’ve been a nice holiday, because that September, Liberal officials reportedly tried to assemble a team of supporter and organizers, and some were “sworn to secrecy.” They had their eyes on a Carney victory at their next leadership convention and were mapping it out. Sources told The Globe that the discussions even included a pro-Carney Liberals’ leadership ballot strategy.
Who was backing him? Well, Globe and Mail reporting at the time even named names. Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna was referred to as a “booster” of Carney’s, but wasn’t as involved in “laying the groundwork” for Carney’s candidacy as Tim Murphy, who was a Toronto lawyer and former chief of staff for Prime Minister Paul Martin. A Liberal organizer in touch with The Globe was quoted as being less confident than Murphy about Carney’s chances of winning the leadership back then, putting the odds at 25 per cent.
Looking back, this would all be fine, if Carney weren’t fibbing about his long-standing ties to the Liberals, declaring “I’m an outsider,” and if he wasn’t Governor of the Bank of Canada at the time — a role that indisputably requires political non-partisanship.
According to the Bank of Canada’s conflict of interest policy, employees are required to act honestly and impartially when carrying out their duties. They’re also required to “avoid outside activity that could reasonably be perceived as a conflict of interest.” It’s questionable whether a governor of the Bank of Canada who had already openly sympathized with the frustrations of the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time could ever be impartial, or wise, for that matter, given his profession. And gearing up to run for the Liberals while sitting as Governor of Bank of Canada would’ve, no doubt, been perceived as a conflict of interest.
Carney eventually intuited this as well. A source told The Globe that Carney had expressed concerns about the appropriateness of going “straight from the governorship into politics.”
Word spread, as it does. And Carney’s lack of respect for the press was put on full display for the first time. When it came to questions about what he told Liberals who contacted him in the summer of 2011, he told TheGlobe: “This isn’t True Confessions” — as if his possible intentions to run for Liberal leadership while Governor of Bank of Canada wasn’t a need-to-know for Canadians.
This led to Carney unsuccessfully trying to kill the story in September 2012 through officials at the Bank of Canada. When that didn’t work, he tried going public with reporters in Nanaimo B.C. a month later. He told them: “I have gainful employment and I intend to continue it,” and then arrogantly remarked, “Why don’t I become a circus clown?”
But Carney did not choose to continue his gainful employment, like he said. Only six weeks later, he told reporters he was going to part ways with Canada for the Bank of England, before his seven year term was even over.
After this sudden announcement about his pending departure, and after amassing dozens of interviews from Liberal sources, The Globe pressed Carney to go into details about the conversations he’d had, and to explain why, as a non-partisan public servant who happened to be working under a Conservative government at the time, he did not shut down the campaign efforts immediately. He refused to answer. He then took off for merry old England. No doubt breathing a sigh of relief at the time, having escaped further questioning about summer 2011. Until now.
Efforts to recruit Carney resumed in 2019. Carney made it clear to the Liberals that Ottawa was his preferred riding. You know. If he were to run. In a 2021 virtual Liberal convention held during the pandemic, he gave a keynote address where promised to do “whatever I can to support the Liberal party.” And last spring, according to reporting in the Toronto Star, efforts to recruit Carney were renewed, continued over the summer, and led to him writing an economic report that would become part of the Liberal’s future platform. All very “outsider” activities.
After prematurely and precipitously exiting his Bank of Canada post, the long-awaited “perfect alternative to Justin Trudeau” is finally back to run the leadership campaign he said he never wanted and to continue the deceit he began in 2012. And he thought Canadians wouldn’t figure him out? I guess he was serious about becoming a circus clown.
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