It was summer 2007. Deep in the Canadian Ministry of Finance, senior officials stared at the global financial fall barrel.
They were not sure exactly when the market collapsed, but as Mark Carney says, “We knew the matter would fall apart.”
It was a turning point for Mr. Carney, a public officer at the time, and began the next career chapter by managing economic crises as a governor of national banks in Canada and Britain.
It was also a transformative moment in the political evolution of Mr. Carney: he saw a financial crisis as a catalyst for a long and steep decline in public trust of Western institutions.
“People have released the system,” said Mr. Carney, 59, at a meeting of the Research Group in Ottawa, a Canadian capital, in November. “How do you renew that trust?”
The Canadian Liberal Party, with the backward support of the voter after almost 10 years in power, is now being viewed in the mirror and the same question is asked.
Mr. Carney introduced himself in response, while on Sunday he won the leadership of the Liberal Party and became a prime minister, inheriting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in both roles.
An elite choice
The institution of the Liberal Party gathered around Mr. Carney, an economist from Albert who became a distinguished leader of global monetary policy and later Green investing. The polls show that he is a leading candidate, with his lifelong friend Chrystia Freeland behind him.
Much has changed in two months since Mr. Trudeau announced her resignation. The domestic questions that contributed to his fall, from immigration to inflation, are overshadowed by the tariff threats of President Trump, which became reality on Tuesday. By Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump temporarily reversed some of them. But he made it clear that he intended to continue the policy of extra charge against Canada.
Many voters, economic qualifications of Mr. Carney and the measured temperament make him suitable for Mr. Trump’s takeover, though it is not clear how long Mr. Carney will be Prime Minister. The Liberal Party does not have a majority in parliament, and Mr. Carney would have to call the election, which must be held until October, but could come before. As he is not currently a member of the Parliament, his campaign indicated that he would move to the rapid federal elections.
When it comes to Mr. Trump, Mr. Carney was mostly careful, not providing any sense of his strategy to deal with the US president, who is outside the tariff tariffs, also spoke of the annexation of Canada.
In a recent interview with the Canadian Radio Dodiphus Corporation, Mr. Carney insisted that the discussion of his views of Mr. Trump be bad form and will give “conflicted signals” during Mr. Trudeau’s negotiations with Washington. In contrast, Mrs. Freeland said she would distract the tariff retaliation in the dollar.
Mr. Carney also faced criticism that he was too privileged and beyond contact with the life of many Canadians.
He is also kept on the trace of the campaign compared to his opponents, often denied the basic details of events, such as their locations, and rarely giving interviews. His representatives did not respond to several New York Times demands for an interview.
Not even a politician
Mr. Carney’s education at Harvard and Oxford University and his expansive summary, which includes an increase in the Goldman Sachs and sitting general at the World Economic Forum Foundation, added the perception that she was part of the global elite.
But he set his background in the banking sector as assets to attract private investment in Canada and solve his long -standing problems with productivity.
“I’m not a politician,” Mr. Carney said in a recent campaign advertisement, pointing to his work as a senior official at the Ministry of Finance of the Liberal Government in 2004, which continued when a conservative government was elected in 2006.
Mr. Carney was then eavesdropped on to run the Canada Bank in 2008. For a month in his mandate, he reduced interest rates as part of the answer to the global financial crisis. For his fast action, Canadian financial papers He marked it “one of the worst central bankers in the world.”
Maclean’s, Canadian magazine, gave Mr. Carney on the page on the page, calling him “Canadian hired to save the world.”
Mr. Carney was born in Fort Smith, a small river town on the northern border of Albert, and the home of the largest Canadian National Park. He was raised at Edmonton in Alberti, where his parents were teachers.
His father was strongly involved in the Catholic Community of the Province, and Mr. Carney said he was regularly attending the church and serving it in the Committee on the Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican. He is married to Diana Carney, an economist, and they have four daughters.
In 2013, Mr. Carney became the first person who was not British to be engaged as the governor of England, which he led until 2020. He became the name of a household in Britain as he tried to direct the earth through Brexit. The consensus is that he was able to compete with the crisis competently, but critics thought that he was too political for the Governor of the Central Bank and the supporters of Brexit. They said his warnings were that Brexit would unnecessarily encourage fear.
Jim Flaherty, a former Canadian Finance Minister, said that the foreign appointment of Mr. Carney had sent an important signal in the world that Canada was constantly managing her economic affairs.
But Mr. Carney’s opponents accused him of overpowering his influence in helping Canada to consider the financial crisis in 2008.
“I listened to, with increasing disbelief, so that Mark Carney would try to accept the merits of the things he had little or nothing to do with,” wrote Stephen Harper, a conservative prime minister who preceded Mr. Trudeau, in a letter to conservative donors this week.
Conservatives also called on Mr. Carney to discover their financial assets and any conflict of interest. Mr. Carney’s campaign said on Thursday that if he wins, his property “immediately” will be put into blind trust – which means he would not have control over them – to avoid a possible conflict of interest.
The same – but differently
In addition to the support of the seating liberal members of Parliament, Mr. Carney must perform a sensitive dance to convince the voters that he is moving a different path from the Trudeau Government.
He also had to personally distance himself from Mr. Trudeau, who touched him in 2020 to be a special economic advisor.
But fans say it was a limited role.
“It’s, I think, more cosmetic values for Trudeau than significant values,” said Evan Siddall, a Canadian business leader who collaborated with Mr. Carney and raised funds for her campaign.
The platform of Mr. Carney, in a large divergence from Mr. Trudeau, involves cutting the prime minister’s deeply unpopular carbon tax and replacing the industrial system of the prices of large pollutants that would include the payment of consumers to reduce their carbon imprint. Its climatic plan includes incentives for the transition of green energy, while trying to avoid any reaction in Alberti, the heart of the Canadian oil and gas industry.
Mr. Carney said he would also cancel the increase in the capital gain of the Government Trudeau and limit the size of the Government’s workforce.
Although he presented a softer, more sympathetic version of himself on the campaign path, Mr. Carney is a technocrat without nonsense, who is sometimes known to have a barbed and custic way.
“I’ll say this,” Mr. Siddall said, “don’t suffer fools.”
