Mark Carney to lead Canada as liberal party secures win

Carney competed against former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, former minister and leader of the Liberal Party caucus Karina Gould, and businessman and politician Frank Baylis.

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

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

At the start of February 2008, he became the Governor of the Bank of Canada, the country's central bank. Experts credit his monetary policy with safely guiding the Canadian banking sector through the global financial crisis of 2007-2010, partly triggered by the mortgage crisis in the US.

In the financial world, he was noted for an unexpected decision in March 2008, when he reduced the main interest rate by 0.5% to bolster the Canadian market against the widening financial crisis. The low interest rates boosted consumer confidence, and by 2009 the economy had started to recover, making Canada the first G7 nation to see GDP growth and a decline in unemployment.

In November 2012, Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of England. After 5.5 years at the helm of Canada's central bank, he took charge of the British central bank on 1 July 2013. He led the Bank of England during the UK's exit from the European Union due to Brexit and at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He concluded his tenure 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 specialising in asset management. In 2023, the firm managed assets valued at £700 billion. He also served as a special envoy on climate and finance for the United Nations.

During the pandemic, Carney served as an informal adviser to Prime Minister Trudeau and later became the leader of a group within the Liberal Party focused on economic growth.

In January of this year, he decided to run for the Liberal Party leader position, resigning from all business roles and renouncing his British and Irish citizenship. As he explained in a 2021 interview with the Irish Times, he acquired Irish citizenship in the late 1980s due to his Irish heritage and connection to his Irish roots.

A few days ago, Carney told the media that he does not criticise Canadian politicians who hold citizenships other than Canadian. Still, he believes that if he became Prime Minister of Canada, he should possess only Canadian citizenship.

Carney will not assume the role of Prime Minister immediately; he will take over following Trudeau's official resignation. On Tuesday, Trudeau said the transition of power would occur "reasonably quickly." He also noted the complicated global situation.

In 2022, Carney published Value(s): Building a Better World for All, advocating for an economy and society rooted in human values rather than being driven solely by market forces. He draws on the insights of Harvard political philosopher Michael Joseph Sandel, who argues that a nation's citizens are more committed when more is asked of them, and that civic values develop organically from the ground up rather than being imposed from above. Carney also references Oscar Wilde’s observation from Lady Windermere’s Fan that a cynic knows the price of everything but understands the value of nothing.