It would be wrong to think that this was all inevitable. The Conservatives might try to make it sound that way. They might suggest, perhaps, that Mark Carney’s victory in the Liberal leadership race was, like Michael Ignatieff’s, simply a matter of being anointed. Indeed, Carney has flirted with the Liberal Party for a while. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed him last September as chair of the Liberal task force on economic growth. And Carney’s name has been floated publicly since at least late 2023 as a potential successor to Trudeau—including by Carney himself.
All that said, not too long ago, Carney wasn’t the frontrunner in this race. It was Chrystia Freeland. Her abrupt departure and resignation letter, in which she implied the prime minister was wasting time on “costly political gimmicks,” not only precipitated Trudeau’s resignation but also initially positioned her as a strong candidate to replace him. It probably wasn’t until Carney showed up on The Daily Show, affably chuckling with Jon Stewart, that people started to think he might just have the chops for this sort of thing.
And in fairness to Carney—or just “Mark,” as he told everyone during his campaign launch—he did, for the most part. His campaign wasn’t perfect. He stumbled during the French debate, saying that the Liberal Party agreed with Hamas rather than agreeing that Hamas should be excluded from Middle East peace talks—a mistake Freeland corrected him on immediately mid-debate.
Carney also had to answer questions about how Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., for which he served as chair, recently relocated from Toronto to New York City. The company’s move was announced in October as part of an effort to make its shares more attractive to US investors, among other things. It’s possible that the semantics of the accusation will be lost on most people. It’s also likely that all this attack will do is remind everyone about Carney’s loaded résumé. But the Conservatives are saying it’s proof that Carney is “sneaky” and that he would happily move Canadian jobs to the US to appease Donald Trump.
But it was against Trump—or at least against Trump’s economic and, at times, geographic imperialism—that Carney looked strongest amongst his peers.
The day after Carney announced his candidacy (and three days before Trump’s inauguration), Nanos Research asked Canadians to name their most important national issue of concern. Nearly one-fifth (19.4 percent) said it was jobs and the economy; only 1 percent said “Trump/US Relations.” By February 14, when Nanos asked again, nearly the same proportion of respondents ranked jobs and the economy as most important, but this time, the proportion of Canadians who said Trump and US relations were most important jumped to 15 percent.
In the last week of February, Leger asked Canadians who they’d vote for federally. Forty percent of Canadians told Leger they would vote Liberal if Carney were the party leader. That same week, Ipsos asked Canadians which leader would be a tough negotiator with Trump to “get the best deal for Canada.” Only 11 percent said Trudeau, while 28 percent said Pierre Poilievre—an apparent win for the Conservative leader. But the same poll showed about a third of Canadians (31 percent) said Poilievre “would roll over and accept whatever Trump demands.” While slightly fewer Canadians said Carney would be a tough negotiator with Trump (23 percent), only 6 percent felt he would “roll over” for Trump.
Thanks to Trump, Canadians appear to have tacked hard emotionally from angry to afraid, deflating the Conservative sails and—if I may extend this metaphor further—forcing Canadians to find someone who will right the ship, not dismantle it. Had Carney not been in the race, Freeland could have more convincingly argued that she was best positioned to be that person. After all, she’s dealt with Trump in the past. To that point, Ipsos found that Canadians thought her least likely of all to “roll over” and accept Trump’s demands. But they didn’t see her as being as tough a negotiator as Carney. Freeland is determined but not diplomatic.
Here’s something else interesting about that Ipsos poll. Alongside these questions about dealing with Trump directly, Ipsos asked Canadians who they think has the best skills “to put in place the right government programs to deal with the hardships Canadians will face” because of Trump’s tariffs. Here again, Carney essentially tied with Poilievre. Granted, it was just one question, but if it proves to be broadly representative, surely this one will hurt the Conservatives most.
So far, Poilievre’s Conservatives have built the foundation of their support on the promise that they would end the bad times of the Trudeau years. They have promised more housing, less crime, and more efficient government. Yet here’s Carney, equally the definition of a well-heeled elite globalist as Trudeau, apparently appealing to the everyman just as much as Poilievre.
Still, appealing to millions as Liberal leader amidst a national campaign is a lot different than getting a bunch of registered Liberals to like you. And despite Liberals catching up in the polls, Poilievre has already shown he can build support across Canada. He’s also proven he can rankle Carney one on one. In the spring of 2021, Carney testified at the parliamentary committee on industry, science, and technology about the need for Canada to transition to net-zero emissions via, among other things, a sustainable energy strategy. Poilievre, a member of the committee, needled Carney, first about Brookfield—accusing the company of collecting massive energy subsidies from the Ontario government, which Poilievre argued made energy more expensive for ratepayers—and then about the Northern Gateway pipeline, which Carney opposed. Poilievre has argued that blocking projects like Northern Gateway only deepens Canada’s reliance on the US for oil exports.
Poilievre verbally outflanked Carney, who struggled to get his point across against Poilievre’s berating. He got baited into tit-for-tats. And when he could be heard, Carney made tactical errors. He bureaucratized with phrases like “instrument of solidarity to address poverty” and patronized by saying at one point, “I’m trying to explain a bit how the economy works.” Carney seemed unprepared for Poilievre. He can’t let that happen again. A similar exchange in a campaign debate might make Canadians see Poilievre as unreasonable and childish—which he was—but Carney can’t count on that.
What he can count on for now, it seems, is the benefit of the doubt. Carney can work with that as long as he remembers to embody one of the key values he highlighted in his 2021 book, Value(s): Building a Better World for All. “Humility matters,” Carney wrote. “It matters because it is an attitude to leading and governing. Not an impediment to acting.”
I might add that humility matters now for Carney because a healthy dose of it will help him escape the perception that he was simply anointed. It also matters because if you were to make a list of stereotypical Canadian attributes, being humble would be high on the list. And it’s something that neither Poilievre nor Trump is known for.
