Who is Mark Carney, the man who would be Liberal king?

Article content

Last month, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney appeared poised to become the country’s next finance minister. Now, he has an even bigger post in his sights.

Article content

Article content

On Thursday, Carney is expected to announce he will run to succeed Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party Canada, a contest that could elevate him within weeks to the post of prime minister — if only until a widely expected federal election.

Article content

Carney’s official entry into the Liberal race will come after months of speculation about his political ambitions following a notable career in finance and central banking.

Born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Carney grew up in Edmonton before pursuing a degree in economics at Harvard University and master’s and doctoral degrees in 1993 and 1995, respectively, at the University of Oxford.

Becoming a banker wasn’t always the obvious career choice, he told The Guardian newspaper in a 2021 interview. Instead, he fancied being a marine biologist but prioritized banking as he found it the most “most effective way” to pay off his student loans.

He worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for 13 years in various roles including as a managing director in the investment banking division before joining the Bank of Canada as deputy governor in 2003.

A year later, he joined the Department of Finance as a senior associate deputy minister.

Carney played a key role as part of the team that successfully sold Ottawa’s 18.6 per cent stake in Petro-Canada in 2004 for $3.3 billion — which at the time was Canada’s biggest ever equity offering.

Article content

“The transaction was completed without major glitches, under an aggressive timeline at the peak of the market, to the maximum benefit of all those involved, and without controversy — a feat for a major deal involving the federal government,” the Financial Post reported in 2005.

In 2008, Carney was appointed as Bank of Canada governor. At the time, he was the youngest central bank governor among the group of eight industrialized nations and his appointment came as a surprise, to some: Paul Jenkins, then the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, was the favourite among economists to take the job.

In a report published on Oct. 5, 2007, the Financial Post described Carney as “relatively unknown” and that his position on issues facing the Canadian economy was “something of a mystery.”

“He was deputy governor for just over a year, between 2003 and 2004, and I actually cannot find a speech that he gave,” one economist told the Post.

Carney’s first interest rate announcement as governor, a month into the job in March 2008, turned out to be a bit of a nail-biter. It was near the height of the financial crisis and though economists were sure interest rates were going down, they were divided over whether the bank would cut by a quarter of a percentage point or a half.

Article content

Article content

Carney announced a 50-basis-point cut. He then gradually took Canada into uncharted territory by lowering the benchmark lending rate to 0.25 per cent in 2009 — the lowest level possible to support the economy — and signalled it would remain there until June 2010.

In addition to lowering interest rates, he also declared his intention to be a more “forceful advocate in influencing public policy and market behaviour” to ensure financial stability, according to a Financial Post report published on Dec 18, 2008.

Advocacy “is something in which we want to be more prominent and do a better job of, quite frankly,” Carney told reporters.

While the United States spent more than US$400 billion to help its financial institutions stave off collapse during the financial crisis, Canada did not have to bail out any banks.

Some analysts credited Carney’s 13-year experience at Goldman Sachs for helping him navigate the crisis. Critics have argued that the ultra-low interest rate policies he ushered in — and which became a recurring theme in the post-crisis years — have had long-term consequences, including encouraging Canadians to borrow more than they required.

Article content

For the most part, the accolades flowed in the wake of the crisis. In 2010, Time magazine selected Carney as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2011, Reader’s Digest Canada named him the Most Trusted Canadian, and in 2012, he was named the Central Bank Governor of the Year by the editors of Euromoney magazine.

With his stardom on the rise in central banking circles, Carney took on prestigious roles at several global regulatory bodies. In November 2011, he was named chairman of the Basel-based Financial Stability Board, a body that was established after the financial crisis to protect the global financial system.

Carney then became governor of the Bank of England in 2013. It was a surprise considering he had denied being a candidate for the role that year.

“It might have been less of a surprise had the governor announced a bid for the Liberal leadership — speculated and strongly denied as well,” the Financial Post reported in November 2013.

Some felt that Carney was shirking his responsibilities in Canada, in departing while interest rates remained at extreme lows.

Article content

Carney at the time said it was a difficult decision, but the “right decision.”

“I’m going to where the challenges are greatest because I’m confident that the strengths are as deep and as broad as they are here in Canada,” he said.

Carney’s time in England was largely regarded as successful, but he was criticized from some in government for being too outspoken, especially on Brexit.

British politician Jacob Rees-Mogg called for Carney’s resignation after the governor suggested that leaving the European Union could trigger a recession.

MP Pat McFadden in 2014 compared the Bank of England to an unreliable boyfriend due to its mixed signals over the timing of future interest rate rises.

Carney stepped down from the position in 2020 after completing his term, and much of his subsequent work has been geared toward encouraging the financial sector to address climate change.

He joined Brookfield Asset Management where he is the head of transition investing, focusing on ESG investments.

In February 2021, Carney walked back an earlier claim that Brookfield was carbon neutral amidst criticism from green advocates who said it ignored emissions from the firm’s investments in fossil fuel-based projects.

Article content

Carney is also co-chair of a global alliance to combat climate change called The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which was formed in 2021. Recently, a host of major U.S. banks announced that they were leaving a sub-group of the alliance called the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Their departures followed Donald Trump’s election as president for the second time.

During this period, Carney also began to signal an interest in entering politics. In 2021, he delivered a virtual speech to the Liberal party convention.

In September 2024, he took on a formal role with the party as chair of the Task Force on Economic Growth, reporting back to the prime minister on economic options for the country.

In October, he took aim at the Conservatives on a podcast show run by Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith.

“One of the things that has drawn me more into politics right now is we have an opposition who is leading in the polls (and) who doesn’t understand the economy,” he said.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has been equally critical of Carney, referring to him as “carbon-tax Carney” on several occasions.

Article content

Following the surprise resignation of Chrystia Freeland in December, Poilievre sought to emphasize Carney’s ties to Trudeau.

“The prime minister with the help and instigation of carbon-tax Carney pushed Ms. Freeland to bring on massive, unsustainable, irresponsible spending increases that blew through her self-imposed guardrail,” Poilievre told reporters after Freeland resigned.

“He thought that he would simply push her through that guardrail and off the cliff so that she and not he and Mr. Carney would take the blame for the crisis.”

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com

Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the business news you need to know — add financialpost.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.

Article content