Mark Carney takes helm of Canada's liberal party, set to succeed Trudeau

Carney competed with Chrystia Freeland, former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister; Karina Gould, former minister and head of the parliamentary Liberal party caucus; and Frank Baylis, a businessman and politician.

In the voting, Mark Carney received 85.9% of the party members' votes.

Born on March 16, 1965, in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Carney studied economics at Harvard and Oxford, where he received his doctorate in 1995. He then worked at Goldman Sachs and became Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. In 2004, he moved to the Canadian Ministry of Finance.

In early February 2008, he became the Governor of the Bank of Canada, the nation's central bank. Experts note that his monetary policy helped the Canadian banking sector navigate safely through the global financial crisis of 2007-2010, partly due to the mortgage crisis in the US.

In the financial world, he was recognized for his unexpected decision in March 2008 to lower the main interest rate by 50 basis points. This prepared the Canadian market for the expanding financial crisis. The low interest rates bolstered consumer confidence, and by 2009 the economy began recovering, making Canada the first G7 country to record GDP growth and a decrease in unemployment.

In November 2012, Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of England, and after 5.5 years in Canada's central bank, he took over as head of the British central bank on July 1, 2013. He led the Bank of England during the UK's exit from the European Union due to Brexit and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He concluded his term at the Bank of England in 2020. Carney was the first non-British head of the Bank of England since its founding in 1694. He obtained British citizenship in 2018.

After leaving the Bank of England, he worked at Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian-American firm specializing in asset management. In 2023, its assets were valued at about $1.2 trillion CAD. He also served as a special envoy on climate and finance for the United Nations.

During the pandemic, Carney informally advised Prime Minister Trudeau and later led a group within the Liberal Party that focused on economic growth.

In January of this year, he decided to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party, resigning from all business roles and beginning the process of renouncing his British and Irish citizenships. In a 2021 interview with the Irish Times, he mentioned that he acquired Irish citizenship in the late 1980s because of his Irish ancestry and connection to his roots.

Recently, Carney told the media that he does not judge Canadian politicians who hold other citizenships but believes that if he were to become Prime Minister of Canada, he should hold only Canadian citizenship.

Carney will not immediately become Prime Minister; this will occur after Trudeau's official resignation. On Tuesday, Trudeau mentioned that the power transfer would happen "reasonably quickly." He also noted the complex global situation.

In 2022, Carney released Value(s): Building a Better World for All, in which he explored the importance of shaping the economy and society around human values rather than purely market-driven principles. He references Harvard political philosopher Michael Joseph Sandel, who argues that a nation's citizens show greater commitment when more is asked of them and that civic values develop organically from the ground up rather than being imposed from above. Carney also draws on Oscar Wilde’s remark from Lady Windermere’s Fan that a cynic is someone who understands the price of everything but fails to appreciate its true value.