Mark Carney: A Technocrat in the Populist Age

Carney’s election as the new Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister of Canada presents an interesting change in Canadian politics. In the face of a trade war with the United States and geopolitical tensions with India and China, Carney’s landslide victory shows his party is united behind him. Carney has promised to use his substantial fiscal experience to grow Canada’s stagnant economy, and this comes at a challenging moment. Canada’s GDP per capita has decreased since 2022. The nation’s overall GDP growth depends almost entirely on immigration, which reached over a million in 2023. But this has presented another issue for Canadians – a housing crisis. With demand at its highest and supply at its lowest, Canadian house prices are amongst the highest in the world.

Who is Mark Carney?

Mark Carney is a 59-year-old economist from Canada’s Northwest Territories. Having never been formally elected before this, Carney has positioned himself to the public as an outsider who is ready to shake up the political scene with his extensive business experience. Educated at Harvard and Oxford (St Peter’s College and Nuffield College), Carney spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs before working for the Bank of Canada and the G7. Stephen Harper, former Conservative Prime Minister, praised Carney for helping Canada avoid the worst of the 2008 Financial Crisis. However, he has recently stated that his praise for Carney was overblown.

Carney then became Governor of the Bank of England, the first non-Briton to do so. His tenure was marred in controversy, notably his staunch criticism of Brexit, which he labelled a “cliff edge”. Carney received criticism from Conservatives and Labour MPs alike. This includes former British PM Liz Truss, who has strongly advocated against Carney’s “woke” economic policies. Despite this, he is still highly praised for having helped the UK avoid the worst of Brexit. Author Will Hutton stated that “he managed to organise the Bank of England’s behaviours so the fallout from it was less disastrous than it could have been.”

Mark Carney is also a proud environmentalist, having become a UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. He admitted that, given his resume, he may be viewed as a globalist, but still argued that his extensive experience is a strength. His advocacy for green energy initiatives places him firmly within Canada’s political consensus on the reality of climate change. However, the national debate is less about whether to act and more about how quickly the transition should happen, with conservatives often arguing that the Liberal government’s approach is too aggressive.

What does he stand for?

Carney stood on a largely anti-Trump platform, rejecting the president’s call for Canada to become the US’s 51st state. Trump’s comments have deeply angered and worried Canadians, with genuine fears that the president may attempt annexation. 

Canadians have risen to his threats with Premiers of several provinces removing American alcohol from supermarkets as part of their “Buy Canadian Instead” initiatives and booing the US anthem at the 4 Nation Face-Off Hockey final. The Current Leader of the Opposition and the former favourite to be Canada’s next PM, Pierre Poilievre, has faced declining approval ratings as some view him as being too soft on Trump and sharing too many ideological similarities. 

This has galvanised the Liberals. Polls in January showed a 26-point deficit to Poilievre’s Conservatives; the same polls now show a deficit of fewer than 5 points, with some even suggesting a tie. Carney, by contrast, has consistently attacked Trump. He stated that Canada now faces “dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust”. Following this, he has thus advocated for greater Canadian self-sufficiency and collaboration with European partners.

Carney also plans to balance the budget, cut the carbon tax and reduce the reliance on immigration for growth. These plans are shared by his opponent, Pierre Poilievre, who has famously coined the phrase “Axe The Tax”, referring to the highly controversial carbon tax. The carbon tax is a fee on fossil fuels based on their carbon emissions. Critics argue the fee is regressive, raising fuel and heating costs for low-income households and harming domestic industry competitiveness. Mark Carney’s proposal to abolish the consumer-facing tax in favour of maintaining stricter measures on large industrial emitters seeks to preserve the environmental benefits of carbon pricing without imposing undue financial hardship on everyday consumers.

This is a notable departure from the policy adopted by the Trudeau administration, but Carney has also proposed other economic changes. The nearly CAD 62 billion (£33.3 billion) deficit for the 2023-24 financial year was seen as a huge failure of Trudeau’s government. This was especially because Canada’s post-pandemic recovery per capita was significantly slower than the rest of the G7. Carney has proposed a business-like approach of running a zero-deficit budget to reduce public expenditure and support growth.

Carney’s centrist platform also includes building energy infrastructure, which has faced major delays in recent years. Other promises he has made include increasing the housing supply, increasing trade between the provinces, and reducing the size of the federal government (which grew 40% in the time under Trudeau).

Going forward

Before Trudeau resigned as Prime Minister, the question was seemingly not if Poilievre would win but how much he would win by. But with Carney’s election as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister, the election is all to play for.

Poilievre’s polling has steadily declined since Trudeau’s resignation, and Carney seems perfectly positioned to make this election far closer than pollsters anticipated. Canada is a generally liberal country, with only one Prime Minister from the modern Conservative party in the past. With support floundering for the New Democratic Party’s Jagmeet Singh, Canada’s centre-left party that formed a coalition with Trudeau, Carney has a real chance to rally Canadians behind him and deny the Conservatives a majority. Perhaps, he could even take home a fourth consecutive Liberal election victory.

Recent polls have shown Carney leading by fourteen points in Quebec, an electorally strategic province, should he win the election. Other polls show that 40% of Canadians believe Carney would handle Trump best compared to only 26% for Poilievre. As Harold Macmillan once said, “events” can change everything in politics, and Carney’s rise to power shows that this rings true.

If the usually placid Canadians are changing the name of the Americano to the Canadiano, then anything is truly possible.