Who is Mark Carney, Canada’s new Prime Minister, and how are his political views different from Trudeau’s?

Earlier this week, the Liberal Party of Canada revealed their new leader (and, by extension, the new prime minister-designate of Canada) in one Mark Carney, whose landslide victory with 85.9% of the first ballot votes is made especially significant by the fact that he will be first prime minister in history never to have held elected office before.

His victory comes roughly two months after former Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau announced his resignation from the prime ministry, which will be made official on March 24. Carney will be sworn in as prime minister on or around that date.

So, what can we expect from the 24th Prime Minister of Canada going forward?

Who is Mark Carney?

Carney’s background as a high-profile economist is bound to walk the walk in this big step he’s taken into politics. He chaired Trudeau’s Task Force on Economic Growth, and has served as the governor of the Bank of England (Carney also has Irish and British citizenship, which he said he’s in the process of revoking, per CBC). He also informally advised Trudeau on Canada’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Needless to say, he’s been keeping an extra-sharp eye on Donald Trump’s obsession with tariffs, even long before Trump’s current term. In 2019, shortly after the then-POTUS played up his threats of subjecting China to additional tariffs, Carney urged global banks to work together to move away from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, which would subsequently dampen the United States’ “domineering influence” on international trade, per his speech at the 2019 Jackson Hole Symposium.

To do this, Carney suggested the use of a Synthetic Hegemonic Currency provided through a network of digital currencies from central banks all over the world.

At the 2023 Global Progress Action Summit, Carney urged elite progressives to use their wealth and influence to build “health care, infrastructure, schools, opportunity, sustainability and prosperity,” per the National Observer. He has been a vocal opponent of wealth inequality for over a decade, having referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement as “entirely constructive” in 2011, per the HuffPost.

Elsewhere, Carney has promised to spend 2% of Canada’s GDP on defence over the next five years, and was appointed as the United Nations’ special envoy for climate action and finance in 2020. On the topic of climate change, Carney had this to say in an interview on CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live:

We can’t self-isolate from climate change. Ultimately, we’ll all be affected. So we all have to act. There’s a recognition that the advice of scientists should be listened to. They advised on the risks of pandemics and we didn’t fully listen to them anywhere in the world. They’ve been advising for a long time of the risks on climate change. It is time to listen.

In a recent appearance on The Daily Show (per The Globe and Mail), Carney identified Canada’s oil industry as the country’s biggest culprit in the global climate crisis, noting how lifestyle changes in Canadian citizens alone cannot make up for the damage that the industry causes. Per CBC, during his campaign, Carney suggested scrapping the carbon tax for citizens, while keeping the tax active on the oil industry and other large-scale emitters.

A consumer incentive program that rewards environmentally-friendly choices was also named in that proposal, and he further promised to introduce financial penalties on Canadian imports coming from countries with high-pollution, low-environmentalist policies.

Perhaps most pertinently, Carney has no intent on backing down against Trump’s tariff odyssey (as if the Donald needs any help putting America in hot water). Per The Wall Street Journal‘s report of Carney’s recent speech to a crowd in Edmonton, Carney stated “We did not ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves. Make no mistake, Canada will win,” promising to match the tariffs imposed on Canada by Trump and otherwise negotiate with the firmest possible hand.