Who is Mark Carney? No, really

Jeff Green | Apr 02, 2025

The centre and the centre left in Canada are coalescing around the Liberal party under the leadership of Mark Carney.

He may be the luckiest non-politician politician in the history of Canada. After years of personalising all of his attacks against the Liberal government of the day against Justin Trudeau, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his team made it pretty easy for Mark Carney to walk in the door and not be Justin Trudeau.

That would not be enough to bring back an unpopular, spent, 9 year of government from the brink of political annihilation, but Carney has two other things going for him. He is, as we all know, a banker – which means he understands money, and in the face of the money-based administration in the United States and talks of tariffs and trade deficits, the Canadian electorate wants someone who knows money to counter that.

To top it off, it turns out that not only was Pierre Poilievre fixated on Trudeau, Trudeau, Trudeau, it turns out the US President was as well. Carney won his praises after their phone call last week, mainly by not being Trudeau.

Instead of telling the President what he should be thinking if he were right thinking, it appears Carney said he understands what the President is trying to do and why, and explained that he was going to do the same thing for Canadians.

It is still early in the election campaign, too early to concede victory to the Liberal Party, but it is not that early anymore. And at least as of April 2, the polls are saying that the Liberals are still gaining support, and the vast majority of that strength is coming from the left, disaffected Liberal supporters coming back, NDP and Green voters. The Liberal train surge needs to crest and then start to drift over a week or more, before a Conservative rebound can occur. That can all happen in 4 weeks, but it probably can’t happen in only two weeks.

So, at this point if things have not shifted away from the Liberals and Carney before the debates in the middle of the month, all he will have to do is muddle throughout without saying anything too damaging, and the Liberals will be returned to power, on a Conservative fiscal platform.

But, who is this Mark Carney that the small but consistent progressive majority of Canadians are rushing to support.

For voters concerned about indigenous reconciliation, gay, lesbian and transgender inclusion, publicly funded healthcare, don’t tend to be supporters of Pierre Poilievre. He is no red Tory, he is no Hugh Segal, he is not even a middle of the road Tory with moral fibre. He is no Brian Mulroney.

He loves to be anti-woke, and as such he will never be supported by anyone concerned about a whole range of human rights issues.

But, is Mark Carney woke. Does Mark Carney have compassion, a moral backbone. We do not know, one way or another, because he has not demonstrated that to us yet.

We all found Justin Trudeau’s moralising irritating, it had an edge of self-righteousness that was part of why he became so unpopular. We don’t need that from Carney, but we should insist on seeing something before we hand the government over to him.