Ottawa (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The Liberal leadership race to replace Justin Trudeau is over. Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney will be the 24th Prime Minister of the country.
Mark Carney won the race to replace Prime Minister Trudeau, who resigned as Liberal Party leader on January 6. He got 85.9 percent of the votes.
Everything in my life has helped me prepare for this moment,
he said.
My government will put into action our plan to build a stronger economy, to create new trading relationships with reliable partners, and to secure our border.
The election took place between February 26 to March 9. Registered Liberals voters chose Carney over former Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, former Liberal House leader Karina Gould and businessman and former Liberal MP Frank Baylis.
The end of the Trudeau era
The transition from the previous government is expected to happen as quickly as possible. Trudeau will officially give up on his role in the upcoming days, and Carney will have to form a new cabinet. Some of the 37 current ministers are expected to stay and they might take on more than one role given the rushed circumstances.
Those who have been leading the talks with Trump’s team, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly and Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, are the one questioned the most: will they stay, given their familiarity with the US administration, or will they be gone to mark a new (probably short) era?
Federal elections are officially scheduled in six months, but may happen as soon as in April. When he resigned, Trudeau also prorogued Parliament – meaning that the House cannot pass new laws – until March 24, and Conservatives might force an early election.
Alternatively, Carney could also call for nation-wide elections to get to work with a decisive mandate from all voters.
Mark Carney: previous experience and goals list
Carney, 59, has never held elected office before and went all in with his economic expertise from the beginning of the race. His campaign focused a lot on his role as Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and then Governor of the Bank of England until 2020. Then, he served as a United Nation envoy on climate change and finance.
The new Prime Minister promises to use his knowledge in the service of Canadians and make the national economy stronger. He intends to balance the government’s operational budget in three years, to reduce government spendings on things like salaries and debt financing. He also pledged to eliminate the unpopular carbon tax on families, farmers and small businesses.
In his acceptance speech, Carney committed to create “new trading relationship with reliable partners.” This could also meaning bringing Canada and the EU closer, given that he’s also an EU citizen with Irish nationality – beside the Canadian and British ones.
He’s confident that he will successfully guide Canada through the trade war with the U.S., given his experience in dealing with economic crises as bank governor in delicate times, namely the 2008 financial crisis in Canada and Brexit in the UK.
Conservatives: “You can’t believe a word he says”
As soon as Trudeau resigned, the Conservatives already had a derogatory nickname for Carney, expected from the beginning to be a prominent candidate in the race. Pierre Poilievre, leader of the party, and his team focused intensely on “Carbon Tax Carney’s” closeness to the previous administration, suggesting that he would be no different.
Another perplexity has to do with Carney’s potential conflict of interest.
After leaving the Bank of England in 2020, Carney has been chair of Brookfield Asset Management and of Bloomberg LP and member of the board of Stripe, a payment processor. He officially resigned on January 16 as he publicly announced his candidacy.
Starting today, the new Prime Minister has 60 days to disclose his assets to the Conflict of Interests and Ethics Commissioner. This requirement is nothing new in the Canadian system, where all public office holders have to respect it.
Carney has not complied with it in advance, as many candidates do. According to the Canadian newspaper Toronto Star, his competitors Gould and Freeland already did, and so have Poilievre and New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh. Trudeau also did it before he was lawfully required to years ago.
Most of the Conservatives’ attacks particularly focus on the company Brookfield, which Carney chaired in the past four years. A recent Financial Times report questions the transparency of the company and points out deceptive presentations of its circular flow of cash.
The article, published on March 6, highlights Brookfield’s ability to “shuffle assets among its many subsidiaries, potentially shifting risks from its own balance sheet to unwitting third parties such as the holders of annuity policies issued by its insurers.”
The company also recently moved – with Carney’s approval in December – its headquarters from Toronto to New York City, a non very patriotic move according to Poilievre, especially now that the country’s economy is under attack by the Trump administration.
Last Wednesday, the newly elected Prime Minister’s campaign committed to Toronto Star to immediately put his considerable assets in a blind trust if he were to become Prime Minister.
In the meantime, Conservatives keep feeding doubt and distrust among Canadians, but Liberals have an ace up their sleeves: patriotism.
In a way, Trump has helped the Liberals. Will that be enough?
As soon as the new US administration called Trudeau a “governor” and threatened, then started a trade war, the Canadian people got closer.
This is the so-called “rally around the flag” effect, which is a sudden increase in support of a government due to circumstances that are, per definition: international, involving the country as a whole, specific and dramatic.
Trump’s tariff put many Canadian jobs at risk, in a time when the national economy is already troubled and the costs of living reached skyrocketing peaks. His provocative statements questioned the country’s autonomy and sovereignty, to the point that the Prime Minister had to reaffirm many times what should be the obvious.
After a decade of Liberal governments, Canadians’ frustrations for their economic struggles was channeled completely towards Trudeau. At the end of 2024, Conservatives were leading the polls by a lot: 45% against the Liberals at 20%.
Then, in the past two months Liberals reached 35% and Conservatives went down 5 points for the first time since Poilievre got elected (September 2022).
The main talking point shifted from fixing the country’s budget – still a priority, though – to protecting Canada from the U.S., something in which the Liberals have more experience than Poilievre, as they were leading during Trump’s first term.
A recent poll suggests that the majority of Canadians would prefer Carney to Poilievre in dealing with Trump, also because the Conservative candidate lacks experience in the international scene.
Canadian newspapers are now publishing articles on how to support truly local brands at the grocery store, national flags sales increased dramatically and many Canadians canceled trips South of the borders, Reuters reported.
While this still might not be enough for now for Liberals to win another election, it is definitely putting more pressure on the Conservatives and unifying the country around the national flag.
