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When Mark Carney took the job as governor of the Bank of England in 2013, he negotiated a five-year term rather than the traditional eight-year tenure. The sense was that he was eager to get back to Canada to run for office in the next federal election. But that election came and went in 2019, and Carney instead extended his tenure at the Bank, ultimately leaving it in 2020. A year later, the Guardian asked him whether he’d be prime minister of Canada some day. Carney was deliberately coy. “Er, look at the time!” he laughed, with a raised eyebrow.
No need to be cute any more. On Sunday evening, Carney won the Liberal leadership race in a landslide, capturing 85.9% of the overall riding points on the first count. The party allocates 100 possible points to each constituency (or ridings, as they’re known), and those points are distributed based on the ratio won by each candidate in each riding (the ballots are ranked). Carney’s commanding win outdoes even that of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who won the leadership in 2013 with a little over 80% of the points.
Carney is now not only Liberal party leader but in the coming days will be sworn in as prime minister. His grip on the latter will be tested quickly. The expectation in Ottawa is that Carney will quickly call a federal election, both because he otherwise would be open to accusations of illegitimacy – as a prime minister without a seat in the House – and because, for the first time in two years, the Liberals are beginning to close the gap on the opposition Conservatives in the polls.
It has been a stunning turnaround. Just two months ago, when Trudeau announced his resignation, the Liberals were barely scraping 20% support among Canadians. Now, the party is pushing 30%. Donald Trump is partly to thank. He has quickly refocused Canadians’ attention externally, and forced them to rethink their priorities, including whom they trust to deal with the US president. Since early February, the answer to that for Canadians broadly has increasingly been the Liberals – with Carney at the helm. “Everything in my life has helped prepare me for this moment,” Carney told the Liberal crowd on Sunday. At the moment, it seems that a lot of Canadians agree.
No doubt this has frustrated Carney’s main rival in the leadership race, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland. On Sunday, Freeland finished second in the party voting, but with just 8% of the points. Carney even handily beat Freeland in her own riding, by 1322 votes to 188. It was, frankly, a terrible outcome for her – and one few would have predicted a few months ago.
Freeland’s own resignation from cabinet on 16 December – on the morning she was due to present the government’s budget, no less – was what finally pushed Trudeau to step aside in early January. It also immediately positioned Freeland as the assumed front-runner. But her campaign was bad. As abrupt as her break with the Trudeau government was, it was impossible for her to separate herself entirely. And at times, particularly when it came to Trump, she didn’t want to. Freeland told everyone she knew from experience how to deal with a Trump administration. Few believed her. Freeland finished her campaign on a lacklustre note, by promising to appoint Carney as her finance minister, should she win – an obvious acknowledgement of the trending mood. Carney has not yet made a reciprocal offer.
Still, on Sunday night, Carney thanked Freeland and the others for running, and praised Trudeau’s “strength and compassion as a fighter for Canada”. It was perhaps a nod to Trudeau’s last few weeks as much as the preceding nine years. Trump helped make Canadians nationalists again, no question. But it’s Trudeau, in his final act, who has helped Canadians feel like they still belong together. He has always been good in a moment of crisis, and his responses to Trump’s tariff imposition(s) are proof. Trudeau’s frank language, his direct appeals to Americans, and his framing of Trump – or “Donald” – as a buffoonish tool, have matched the national mood perfectly. He has also, finally, wrong-footed the Conservatives. Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s years of negativity and snark have completely undermined his credibility as a force for unity. That’s clearer now than ever.
Back in 2021, Carney explained: “If I had stayed in private finance, the opportunity cost of me being in public service for 20 years is enormous. Do I care about money? Obviously, I have a family to provide for and stuff, but I am in bloody Ottawa. I am back in Ottawa.” That is truer now than ever. An election looms soon for Canada, and we’ll see whether everything in Carney’s life has prepared him for one more win. In the meantime, it seems like Carney is right where he wants to be.
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Colin Horgan is a Toronto-based writer and a former speechwriter for Justin Trudeau
