InFor the next few days, Mark Carney will be sworn as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister. This is a political beginner who stepped on the ice at the greatest danger moments, both in his party and in his country.
Carney, the backup goalkeeper for Harvard’s hockey team years ago, will find himself in front of the net for a game he can’t afford to lose. Donald Trump is threatening to use economic power on Canadian annex, and Canadians are expected to go to vote within weeks to decide who will protect the net.
It will be a difficult job for rookies as well as politicians. Although Carney was never elected, Canada’s desperate liberals gave him a strong mission to lead the party on Sunday, with 86% of the votes in the first vote. That decisive vote was entirely based on the strength of Carney’s CV.
Asking about Carney’s resume is “like asking someone if war and peace are good books,” says Miller, who supported him to take over from Justin Trudeau. “That’s a good book.”
Read more: How Canada Falls Out of Love with Trudeau
Trudeau, a high school teacher before he was elected to Congress, had the thinnest CV in Canadian history. He took office in 2015 with the majority government based on his good looks, his endless energy on the campaign trail, and his surname. He is the son of former prime minister and liberal icon Pierre Trudeau.
Kearneys are hardly different. He lacked the gift of Trudeau to work the crowd, and was not particularly dashing, and his father was the high school principal of Fort Smith, a town of 2,000 people in Canada’s far north. Trudeau has always been considered charismatic lightweight, and Kearney is the powder stone type from the nose. He went on his path to Harvard, then the governor of Oxford University, then Goldman Sachs, and the first Bank of Canada – there he elicited global admiration for managing the 2008 financial crisis – and after the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, he kept the UK Bank to the UK Bank.
Kearney’s cool was tested by a chaotic Brexit era, and he created a lifelong enemy among Brexithea. But George Osborne, the man who gave him the job, was finance minister under conservative prime minister David Cameron, and he believes he has done a great job.
Osborne recently told CBC that CARNEY has the technical knowledge and “street smart” to deal with the trade wars Trump has imposed on Canada.
“If you’re sending someone to the bat for Canada, you’d want Mark Kearney,” he said. “The Canadian with the most international experience in Canada is Mark Kearney.”
Canadian liberals hope that the experience of managing the crisis will be sufficient to persuade voters to be re-elected in the expected election this spring.
Canadians looked horrified as they repeatedly threatened a 25% tariff that could kill up to 600,000 jobs in Canada unless they agreed to become the 51st province. Trump ordered tariffs twice, pulling back to the final moments. Some came into effect Tuesday, but he temporarily suspended others after the stock market fell and three carmakers sued time.
Canadians initially responded to tariffs with ice horror, which became more intense with rage and resolution. They repeatedly booed Starspangle banners at hockey and basketball games, robbed bourbons from the shelf, canceled Florida holidays, and boycotted American produce.
After Trump’s initial tariff threat, Trudeau responded by trying to shuffle Finance Minister Christia Freeland from the cabinet to give way to Carney. She quit instead, and Trudeau was forced to resign, leading to the succession race that Carney won on Sunday.
Trump’s factors disrupt Poilierbre’s careful reliant plan, which he had certainly seen to win the next election. For two and a half years, Poilievre has built up momentum as an agent of change. A pure critic with a relentless instinct to find the weakness of his enemy, he has used his widespread anger towards living crises, record immigration, and one of the world’s worst housing crises to make a great consideration of Trudeau’s “awakening” policy. But the rage of truck driver protests over vaccine missions, messages borrowed from the MAGA movement and the message that now makes him vulnerable, Polyerbre has taken over his party.
The Liberal Party surged in polls when Trump began attacking Canada and Trudeau announced his resignation. Future elections now look like the heat of death. It’s a shocking turn of events where candidates usually get the boost coming out of the Leadership Treaty, starting as conservatives start as losers, leading 20 points two years later, and the Liberals faced election oblivion.
Beneath the number of horse races, there is even worse news for conservatives. Poling shows that voters are more likely to trust Carney than PolyAirel to manage Trump. Probably because some of Polyavel’s bases are Pro Trump.
But that doesn’t mean that Kearney will definitely win. The fatigue with the liberals is profound after almost a decade of power. Car challenges are faced, especially with other issues, such as climate and resource development. He has a long record advocating for financial market emission reductions – he was a UN climate envoy. This may make it difficult to appeal to voters who have sufficient liberal restrictions to oil and gas production.
Read more: How Canada became obsessed with the US economy
And Kearney’s victory was a cor crown. When Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden, there wasn’t enough time for a proper contest to test Trudeau’s potential alternative. The liberal leadership race was compressed and Kearney was far ahead, so his opponents weren’t motivated to challenge him too much. Freeland, once Trudeau’s trustworthy right-handed, appears to want to join Carney’s team.
Abbreviated race means that Carney has not been tested, and may be prone to making mistakes for newcomers. He struggled to explain his decision to move from Toronto to New York to the headquarters of Brookfield Asset Management, where he was chairman. It was not a fatal mistake, but like many from the business entering politics, he has not been coordinated for the demands of public office.
He showed appeal when he mocked his leadership announcement at the January Daily Show, but he speaks French like a bureaucrat, not an electric speaker, and has little experience in discussion.
Kearney often says he is not a politician, in contrast to Poilierbre, who has never done anything else. However, it may be difficult for technocrats and multi-millionaires to present themselves as outsiders and exchange agents. Even the people on his team have admitted some fear.
“It’s difficult to go from a minister to prime minister,” Miller said. “It’s difficult to go from just the back venture to Prime Minister. It’s really difficult to go from Prime Minister to Prime Minister politically.”
However, the liberals don’t have a backup goalkeeper and the puck is about to drop.
