Mark Carney

• 1. Introduction

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  Mark Carney won the leadership of Canada's Liberal Party on the 9th of March 2025, taking over 85.9 percent of the vote on the first ballot. He carried all 343 electoral districts. That result beat the margin Justin Trudeau had posted in 2013. The winner was a former banker whose career had unfolded in investment houses, finance ministries and central banks. He had guided Canada's central bank through the 2008 financial crisis and later led the Bank of England. How does a central banker become the person a political party turns to? What did an economist from Edmonton learn along the way that both markets and voters came to trust? And what has he done with power since he took it?

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• 2. Edmonton to Wall Street

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  Mark Joseph Carney was born on the 16th of March 1965 at St. Ann's General Hospital in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He had an older brother, Seán, an older sister, Brenda, and a younger brother, Brian. When he was six, the family moved to the Laurier Heights neighbourhood of Edmonton, Alberta. His father, Robert, was a high school principal and later a professor at the University of Alberta. Robert also ran as the Liberal candidate for Edmonton South in the 1980 federal election and finished second. His mother, Verlie, returned to university to pursue a career in education when Mark was ten. Three of his four grandparents were Irish, from Aughagower in County Mayo.

  In 1983 Carney graduated as valedictorian of St. Francis Xavier High School. Harvard University offered him a partial scholarship and financial aid. There he played backup goalie for the varsity ice hockey team. His roommates included Mark Benning, a former player, and Peter Chiarelli, a future general manager in the NHL. He lived in Winthrop House and graduated magna cum laude in economics in 1987.

  Oxford came next, at St Peter's College and Nuffield College. He earned a Master of Philosophy in 1993 and a doctorate in 1995, both in economics. His master's thesis carried the title "Competitive advantage and the advantage of competition: a theoretical analysis of national champions, learning-by-doing and spillovers". His doctoral thesis was called "The dynamic advantage of competition", and Margaret Meyer supervised it. On the ice he co-captained the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club with fellow Canadian David Lametti. Carney would later appoint Lametti as Canada's Permanent Representative to the UN. Oxford also introduced him to the British economist Diana Fox. They married in July 1994, while he was finishing his thesis.

  Before public service, Carney spent thirteen years at Goldman Sachs, working from offices in Boston, London, New York City, Tokyo and Toronto. His senior roles included co-head of sovereign risk and managing director for investment banking. He worked on South Africa's first steps into international bond markets after apartheid. He was also involved in Goldman's work during Russia's financial crisis of 1998.

  In 2003 he joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor. A year later the Department of Finance Canada recruited him as senior associate deputy minister, starting on the 15th of November 2004. He served two finance ministers, the Liberal Ralph Goodale and the Conservative Jim Flaherty. Carney oversaw the controversial plan to tax income trusts at source. He also led the sale of the government's 19 per cent stake in Petro-Canada, which turned a profit. He left the department in October 2007, when he was named to the top job at the Bank of Canada.

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• 3. The Crisis Governor

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  Carney formally took over from David Dodge on the 1st of February 2008, after spending months as Dodge's advisor. He had been chosen over Paul Jenkins, the senior deputy governor, who was widely seen as the front-runner. Among the central bank governors of the G8 and G20 nations, Carney was the youngest. The financial crisis was only beginning.

  In March 2008, one month into the job, he cut the overnight rate by 50 basis points. The European Central Bank raised its rate that July. Carney had anticipated that the leveraged-loan crisis would spread across the globe. Once Canadian rates reached their effective lower bound, he used an unusual tool called conditional commitment. In April 2009 the bank promised to hold its policy rate for at least one year. Extra liquidity flowed into the financial system as well. Output and employment began to recover from mid-2009. Canada outperformed its G7 peers and was the first of them to see both GDP and employment return to pre-crisis levels.

  Outsiders noticed. In 2009 a Newsweek columnist wrote, "Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it." Canada's cautious banking rules also got credit for the result. Carney was named to the Financial Times list "Fifty who will frame the way forward" and to the 2010 Time 100. Reader's Digest called him its "Editor's Choice for Most Trusted Canadian" in May 2011. In October 2012 Euromoney named him "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012".

  The cheap money had a cost at home. Housing prices and household debt both surged. In April 2012 Carney conceded there were "issues in some segments of the housing market" and that some properties were "probably overvalued". He did not blame low rates. He put the onus on borrowers, banks and the federal government's mortgage lending rules. By the time he left for London, some people were calling for rate rises because Canadians carried record debt.

  His reach extended beyond Ottawa. He chaired the Committee on the Global Financial System at the Bank for International Settlements from July 2010 to January 2012. On the 4th of November 2011 he was named chairman of the Financial Stability Board in Basel. The job was part-time, so he could finish his Canadian term. On the day he was appointed, the board published a list of 29 banks large enough to threaten the global economy if they failed. Reappointed in November 2014, he would hold the chair until 2018, long after he had left Canada.

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• 4. The Outsider at the Bank of England

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  On the 26th of November 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that Carney would run the Bank of England. He took over from Sir Mervyn King on the 1st of July 2013. No Commonwealth citizen from outside Britain had held the post since the bank was founded in 1694. The bank was gaining new powers, including the ability to set bank capital requirements. It was also absorbing financial regulation duties from the Financial Services Authority. The usual term was eight years, but Carney said he planned to serve only five. Reports put his pay package at about £624,000 a year, roughly £100,000 above his predecessor's.

  Friction arrived early. Before starting, Carney had clashed with Andy Haldane, the bank's Executive Director of Financial Stability. He was quoted as saying Haldane lacked a "proper understanding of the facts" on bank regulation. Once in office, he made far more media appearances than his predecessors. That included controversial announcements during two referendums.

  His best-known policy was forward guidance. The bank promised not to raise interest rates while unemployment stayed above 7%, hoping to encourage business lending. The policy came with many conditions, and it was later judged confusing and complicated.

  Housing worried him in London as well. In May 2014 he called the heated market the biggest risk to financial stability. He pointed to limited supply and noted that Canada built twice as many homes as the UK, with half the population. In 2014 he also warned that an independent Scotland would struggle to keep the pound without giving up some powers. In 2015 he cut the yearly interest rate meetings from twelve to eight and ordered minutes published with each announcement.

  Brexit dominated his final years. Before the 2016 referendum, he warned that leaving the European Union could cause a recession. Brexit activists accused him of backing the Remain side. He replied that he felt it was his duty to speak up. After the vote, he reassured the public that the financial system would operate normally. The bank then cut rates from 0.5% to 0.25% and restarted quantitative easing. At the urging of Theresa May and Philip Hammond, he agreed to stay one more year. In September 2018 he added seven months, and he later added two more to hand over smoothly to Andrew Bailey. In November 2018, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he warned that fewer than half of businesses had started contingency plans for a no-deal exit.

  Life in London had its own rhythms. Carney held British citizenship from 2018, which he had promised to take when he accepted the role. He ran the 2015 London Marathon in 3 hours, 31 minutes and 22 seconds, 17 minutes faster than at Ottawa in 2011. He is an Everton supporter with relatives in Liverpool, while his wife supports Arsenal. He became an Officer of the Order of Canada on the 20th of November 2014 and a Freeman of the City of London. As he prepared to leave in March 2020, the bank cut rates by 0.5% against the coming pandemic shock. That same pandemic would soon draw him back toward Canadian politics.

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• 5. Climate, Money and Ideas

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  In January 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Carney as finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. In March he also became the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance. The summit was first set for November 2020 and then postponed to November 2021. At COP26 he helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and became its co-chair.

  The private sector pulled him in too. In October 2020 he became vice chairman at Brookfield Asset Management, leading its environmental, social and governance strategy. In February 2021 he retracted a claim that its US$600 billion portfolio was carbon neutral. The claim had rested on emissions avoided through renewable energy, and critics called it an accounting trick. He also launched the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets with Bill Winters, drawing more than 40 leaders from six continents. In a December 2020 Financial Times article, he called a voluntary carbon offset market an "imperative". That February he joined the board of the fintech company Stripe. From 2022 to January 2025 he advised Watershed, a climate technology company. In August 2023 Michael Bloomberg named him chair of the board of Bloomberg L.P. In 2020 he had also informally advised Justin Trudeau on Canada's economic response to the pandemic.

  His ideas were as striking as his titles. In 2011 he called the Occupy Wall Street protests "entirely constructive". In a December 2016 lecture in Liverpool he warned of "staggering wealth inequalities". On the 23rd of August 2019, at the Jackson Hole symposium, he argued that dominant use of the US dollar in trade invoicing had a destabilizing effect. About half of international trade relied on the dollar. He floated a "new Synthetic Hegemonic Currency", perhaps built on a network of central bank digital currencies. He named Libra as an example.

  On the 2nd of December 2020 he gave the first of four BBC Reith Lectures. The talk was titled "How We Get What We Value , From Moral to Market Sentiments". He argued that society had slid from market economies to market societies, valuing financial worth over human worth. The series traced three crises, in credit, Covid and climate. His book Value(s), published by Signal Books in 2021, won the National Business Book Award that year.

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• 6. The Reluctant Candidate

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  By Carney's own account, in 2012 Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked him to become his finance minister. Carney said no. In a February 2025 CBC interview he said it "wasn't appropriate", because he did not think it right to "go directly from being governor into elective politics". Some Liberal officials approached him ahead of the party's 2013 leadership election. He declined that too.

  In 2021 he addressed the Liberal policy convention and declared support for the party. He stopped short of promising to run. Later that year he ruled himself out of the expected federal election, citing his COP26 commitments. In 2022 he endorsed Catherine McKenney for mayor of Ottawa. In October 2023 he endorsed Rachel Reeves, then Labour's Shadow Chancellor, to become chancellor. After Labour won in 2024, he served on a taskforce that led to a British National Wealth Fund.

  On the 9th of September 2024, Trudeau named him chair of the Liberal Party's Task Force on Economic Growth. Shortly afterward it emerged that Brookfield had asked the federal government for C$10 billion toward a $50 billion Canada-only asset fund. Carney did not need to follow the ethical disclosures required of prime ministerial advisors, because the party employed him, not the Prime Minister's Office. When Chrystia Freeland resigned, his name was briefly floated as a possible finance minister.

  On the 16th of January 2025, he announced his bid for the Liberal leadership. He stepped down from every executive, board and advisory position to focus on the race. By the 9th of February his campaign had raised more than $1.9 million from over 11,000 donors. He held endorsements from 66 members of the Liberal caucus. Freeland ran against him, even though he is godfather to her son. He also resigned from Harvard's Board of Overseers around this time.

  A question of loyalty followed him. Carney held Canadian, Irish and British citizenship, having obtained Irish citizenship in the late 1980s. Shortly before taking office he said he had begun renouncing the Irish and British ones. In April 2025 his campaign said the process was complete before he was sworn in.

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• 7. Governing From the Centre

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  On the 14th of March 2025, five days after the leadership vote, Carney was sworn in as the 24th prime minister of Canada, alongside the 30th Canadian Ministry. He became the first prime minister born in a territory rather than a province. He was the third born west of Ontario, after Joe Clark and Kim Campbell. William Lyon Mackenzie King was the only earlier prime minister with a PhD. Carney was also the first to have never held elected office. He was the first since John Turner not to hold a seat in the House of Commons when appointed.

  His first act was a directive to end the consumer carbon tax by the 1st of April, while keeping that month's carbon rebate. Governor General Mary Simon affirmed it with an order in council. On the 17th of March he visited France and then the United Kingdom, where he met King Charles III for the first time as prime minister.

  On the 23rd of March he asked Simon to dissolve Parliament for an election on the 28th of April. The Liberals chose him to run in Nepean, a south Ottawa riding, over options in Alberta, Toronto and Ottawa. His party won 169 seats, three short of a majority. Carney won Nepean. No prime minister since Wilfrid Laurier, in 1908-1910, had represented an Ottawa-area riding. None since Lester B. Pearson had sat for an Ontario riding. To open the 45th Parliament, he invited Charles III to read the Speech from the Throne. The speech signalled that Canada would join ReArm Europe, a European defence initiative.

  In June 2025 the government passed Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, with Conservative support. It lowers federal barriers to internal trade and speeds up projects with Cabinet approval, and some Indigenous advocacy groups opposed it. The November budget promised to cut about 40,000 civil service positions and balance operational spending by 2029. It also aimed to reach NATO's 2% of GDP military spending target by 2026. Carney reversed the Trudeau government's capital gains tax increase. His government also launched the Build Canada Homes agency and created a sovereign wealth fund.

  The biggest fight was the pipeline. Carney and Alberta's Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding for an oil pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. British Columbia's David Eby, most local First Nations and some Liberal caucus members opposed it. The deal exempts the project from climate rules such as the emissions cap, while Alberta agrees to invest in carbon capture. Steven Guilbeault resigned from Cabinet but stayed in the caucus. Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who had backed the budget, called the deal a "significant betrayal and a reversal". Opposition MPs crossing the floor helped the Liberals reach majority status in April 2026.

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• 8. A Rupture, Not a Transition

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  In June 2025, Kananaskis, Alberta hosted the 51st G7 summit with Carney in the chair. Among his guests were Narendra Modi of India and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Carney called hosting Modi a "great honor", and the meeting began a reset after a diplomatic row under Trudeau. India's Ministry of External Affairs announced plans to resume high-level dialogues and revive stalled free trade talks. On the 23rd of June, Carney marked the 40th anniversary of the Air India Flight 182 bombing, which killed 329 people. He called it the "deadliest attack in our country's history".

  The Middle East tested him. In April 2025 he rejected the accusation of genocide in Gaza but backed an arms embargo on Israel. In September 2025 Canada formally recognized the State of Palestine, the first G7 nation to do so. In October he confirmed that Canada would honour its International Criminal Court commitments and detain Benjamin Netanyahu if he entered Canadian territory. Carney also reaffirmed "Israel's right to defend itself" after the June 2025 attacks on Iran, while calling for restraint.

  Trade deals multiplied as relations with the United States cooled. In September 2025 Carney and Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto signed the first bilateral free trade agreement between Canada and an ASEAN member. In November he announced a $70 billion investment agreement with the United Arab Emirates. Human rights advocates criticized it over the emirates' alleged role in arming the Rapid Support Forces militia in Sudan.

  China shows the biggest shift. On the 9th of June 2025, Carney warned of threats from an "assertive China". By October he was meeting Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in South Korea, and both sides called it a "turning point". In mid-January 2026 he spent three days in China. Beijing agreed to cut tariffs on Canadian canola oil from 85% to 15%, and Canada agreed to cut tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%. He described a partnership that was "realistic, respectful and interest-based". Asked about human rights, he answered, "We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be."

  On the 20th of January 2026, Carney spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He told the audience that international economic partnerships were "in the midst of a rupture, not a transition". He argued that the rules-based order was over and that middle powers must act together. He received a standing ovation, which is unusual at the forum. His second book, The Hinge: Time to Build an Even Better Canada, was due on the 13th of May 2025 but was delayed indefinitely.

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