Mark Carney’s smaller, 24-member cabinet, sworn in at Rideau Hall on Friday, was supposed to symbolize more focus, and all action. By the end of the day, he would kill the unpopular consumer carbon levy.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Last Saturday, the Liberal Party had an election-campaign plane with no name on the side: A new leader hadn’t been chosen. Today, Mark Carney is Prime Minister. Next weekend, he will probably be running for office for the first time.
There have been unelected prime ministers without a seat in the House of Commons before, but he’s the first who has never been elected. Few new prime ministers launched election campaigns as quickly as he intends. And it will come in the heat of a trade war with a U.S. President who threatens tariffs, or pauses them, between social-media posts about annexing Canada.
The unpredictable future is rushing fast at Canada. And at Mr. Carney.
The smaller, 24-member cabinet Mr. Carney named as he was sworn in at Rideau Hall on Friday was supposed to symbolize more focus, and all action. By the end of the day, he would kill the unpopular consumer carbon levy.
“The moment is a moment of crisis,” Mr. Carney said.
But he’s never done this before – not just being PM, but campaigning in an election, let alone amid a trade war. He was bubble-wrapped and protected in a soft, quick Liberal leadership campaign. Now, he faces hard knocks on the hustings, notably from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Canadians have never done this before – not just choosing a government in a snap election expected to be called by a rookie-politician Prime Minister. They will do so in a crisis that raises the bigger prospect that the comfortable platform on which the country has sat – once it was the British Empire and more recently partnership with the U.S. in a cohesive, democratic “West” – might be burning.
In 1890, the U.S. passed the steep McKinley tariff that some leading Republicans hoped would press Canada to become the 45th state. Sir John A. MacDonald used it as a platform for his last campaign in 1891 – but he ran on Canada’s own existing tariffs while trade with the U.S. shifted back to the British Empire. A lot has changed.
This new Prime Minister had five days for transition briefings, choosing a cabinet, taking power, and setting an initial course for dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump – as well as breakfast with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and an awkward hard-hat photo op at a Hamilton steel mill. He has another week to finalize a platform and campaign plan being put together for an election that mere weeks ago the Liberals were sure to lose.
Now, it’s close. Surging anxiety about Mr. Trump’s tariffs made the economic crisis-management experience of the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor look reassuring.
But underneath, the frustrations about the cost of living and deep-rooted desire for change that had made Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives the front runners for two years are still palpable.
There are two approaches to governing in a Trump crisis: Mr. Carney promises reassuring crisis management and making government work again, while Mr. Poilievre promises to sweep away “broken” swaths of government and big tax cuts, including as an immediate response to the trade war. Mr. Poilievre has notched up attacks on Mr. Trump for “betraying” Canada, and argued that Liberal taxes would be compounded by Trump tariffs.
A torrent of events in Canadian politics was set off just over two months ago by Justin Trudeau’s reluctant, belated, announcement that he would resign, but Mr. Trump has made it a deluge.
On Wednesday, Liberal strategists were still trying to plot out plans for the days between Mr. Carney’s swearing-in and the launch of the election campaign. By Friday, he was announcing his first foreign trip to London and Paris.
There was, in the swearing-in of his government, some studied symbols of a change in style from Mr. Trudeau. A handshake and a hand on the elbow for newly-sworn ministers, not a hug. Elements of tradition, in a speech that referred to three founding peoples and the Crown. Some curt answers at a news conference. And a phrase borrowed from Stephen Harper, circa 2006 – Canada’s new government.
Mark Carney was formally sworn in as Canada’s prime minister on Friday, putting him in a position to fight tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump that could devastate the trade-dependent Canadian economy.
Reuters
Most of the ministers were familiar faces from Mr. Trudeau’s government, however, albeit some in switched roles – and Conservatives quickly derided the same-old Liberals.
Mr. Carney did cool down the confrontational tone about Mr. Trump from his leadership-campaign victory speech, calling the suggestion that Canada should become the 51st state “crazy” but noting that he respects Mr. Trump. “He knows, and I know from long experience that we can find mutual solutions that win for both.”
But right now, Mr. Carney has an unusual, temporary term. In perhaps a week, the Prime Minister will morph to campaigning candidate, governed by a caretaker convention that is supposed to leave most governing to routine business handled by civil servants. Typically, a skeleton staff is left in the Prime Minister’s Office in case anything unusual comes up.
In the 2015 election campaign, it was Conservative staffer Howard Anglin who was left behind to check in with senior officials in the Privy Council Office. “The main thing that came up was the signing of the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] treaty,” Mr. Anglin said. That had been anticipated, and officials agreed it could be signed despite the caretaker convention “because the limited window to sign on ended before the election,” he said.
But Mr. Carney would be expected not to start and conclude some entirely new trade-treaty negotiation, for example. He shouldn’t dole out new spending.
Yet he will almost certainly have to do an unusual amount of governing – responding to new tariffs, and directly or indirectly talking, or negotiating, with Mr. Trump’s White House.
One of the messages that then-finance minister Dominic LeBlanc carried to his Thursday meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was that Canada is going into an election campaign, providing a possibility of a reset with a new government – and the administration could cool its rhetoric. But who can keep Mr. Trump quiet for six weeks?
By Canadian standards, Mr. Carney’s transition to power was rapid, five days compared with the usual two or three weeks.
It usually means long days of hammering out a legislative agenda and sequencing plans over years. Mr. Carney’s rushed transition – headed by Janice Charette, a former clerk of the Privy Council and head of the civil service, working with the current clerk, John Hannaford – had one advantage: He can plot out the next four months instead of four years.
“He can be very, very focused on the Canada-U.S. chessboard and almost everything else could be put aside,” Michael Wernick, another former Privy Council clerk who authored Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics. “That’s what makes it unique.”
Mr. Carney’s transition had to focus on campaign plans, even though Liberal Party officials appointed by Mr. Trudeau had already done some of that work ahead of time.
The slogan Mr. Carney unveiled last Sunday – “Canada Strong” – had already been market-tested by the party, along with others proposed by other leadership candidates. Draft election-platform documents included options for a new leader. Members of Mr. Carney’s leadership team have joined the national campaign already headed by Andrew Bevan.
In some ways, Mr. Carney has more experience than most. He was associate deputy minister of finance, organizing budgets and coping with the early ripples of financial crisis that became his focus after he was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008. He sat in meetings with G7 and G20 central bankers and had a global role after becoming chair of the international Financial Stability Board in 2011, and was seen as a global central-banking star before he moved to head the Bank of England in 2013.
The CV is one of the few things most Canadians know about Mr. Carney – the crisis-manager experience that has been his biggest political asset.
The other thing they might have heard is Mr. Carney’s mantra that “plan beats no plan,” a phrase he picked up from then-U.S. treasury secretary Timothy Geithner during the 2008 financial crisis. In his 2020 book, Value(s), Mr. Carney made clear in a section on leadership that that means having a plan that’s ready to execute – not “searching endlessly for the best.”
He was known in those posts as a demanding manager sometimes withering in judgment, who expected people to speak up.
“He’ll go around the table. He’ll call on you,” said Evan Siddall, a long-time friend who worked with him at the Bank of Canada. “Cabinet meetings will be real debates of real issues.”
This is electoral politics. There won’t be much time for debates. Mr. Carney is a political leader, and his job now will be campaigning on his platform – while he deals with Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump is the issue.
A Nanos Research poll found that the President’s trade war has made two-thirds of Canadians feel anxious for the future. More than 30 per cent are avoiding news, 22 per cent are feeling financial stress, and 12.5 per cent report trouble sleeping.
“It is the equivalent of the shock and anxiety of the global pandemic,” said pollster Nik Nanos.
Canadian prime ministers have faced other anxious moments, of course, including the close vote for Quebec separation in 1995, and two world wars.
Mr. Trudeau coped with Mr. Trump’s erratic threats to tear up the North American free-trade agreement in the President’s first term. This is not the same.
“In the first term, they wanted a bit of our dairy industry. Now, they want everything,” said Eurasia Group vice-chair Gerald Butts, Mr. Trudeau’s principal secretary from 2015 to 2019, who has been offering advice to Mr. Carney.
Mr. Trump now talks about renegotiating water treaties, and calls the border an arbitrary line.
In his first term, he often used the 51st-state gibe in private with Mr. Trudeau, but back then, Mr. Butts said, his aides could go to members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and warn that it was politically radioactive in Canada: “If he ever says this in public, the NAFTA negotiations would end right away. Because we couldn’t talk to you any more.”
“Now, there are no guardrails,” Mr. Butts said. “That’s a big difference.”
Not just that: Mr. Trump has raised doubts about security alliances, intelligence co-operation, and the geopolitical lines on which the world turned for decades. The defence and security briefings that Mr. Carney received this past week would be vastly different from those Mr. Trudeau was given in 2015.
In recent days, there wasn’t really a substantive trade negotiation taking place between the White House and Mr. Trudeau’s government. There were tariffs and countertariffs, threats, pauses and reversals.
Mr. Trump’s next set of tariffs are so-called “reciprocal” tariffs that are slated to be imposed April 2 – he has mused about punishing Canada for supply-managed dairy, Canada’s digital-services tax and ridiculously, the GST.
Mr. Carney would have to respond, presumably with retaliatory tariffs – and perhaps a comeback to a presidential social-media post. Politics will demand that the PM with a “Canada Strong” slogan hang tough. But normally, a new prime minister faced with a trade war would be working the White House.
“You have to figure out a way to develop a relationship, and you need to unearth their intent and what the best-case scenario is against the challenge you’re presented,” said Bill Morneau, the finance minister from 2015-2020. Mr. Morneau is a big believer in Mr. Carney’s abilities. “But it’s not going to be easy.”
It’s not the only thing. Conservatives have tried to punch a few holes in Mr. Carney’s central-banker résumé – Mr. Poilievre retweeted a British article blaming Mr. Carney for the inflation rate 30 months after he left the Bank of England. But the Tories won’t beat Mr. Carney on whether the former banker can manage a crisis, but perhaps on whether he can manage it for the benefit of ordinary folks.
Mr. Carney’s involvement in the decision to move the headquarters of a company of which he was chair, Brookfield Asset Management, from Toronto to New York, will be embarrassing baggage – Mr. Poilievre accused him of putting himself, not Canadians, first. And voters seem to want fight as much as acumen.
“I think people want champions to embody that fight,” said Kory Teneycke, the campaign manager for Ontario Premier Doug Ford in the election that the Premier won by a landslide in February.
Three months ago, the biggest issue in the country was frustration with Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Teneycke said. The second biggest was the carbon tax. Both have been blunted. The biggest issue now will be protecting people during the trade war.
Mr. Carney sends a reassuring message that Canada can protect itself by working on its own economy, breaking down internal trade barriers, building infrastructure, and controlling day-to-day expenses of government.
Those policies aren’t far from Mr. Poilievre’s, but the Conservative Leader suggests he’d fuel the development of oil and gas aggressively and issue “massive” tax cuts – both in response to the trade war and as longer-term policy.
There’s little doubt that Mr. Poilievre is a more finely-honed main-street communicator – if sometimes over the top. And Mr. Nanos notes that a desire for change and cost-of-living issues are still on the minds of Canadians, and neither candidate has decisively won the battle over who would be best to handle Mr. Trump.
But a year or two ago, a Mark Carney campaign would have seemed very different, with a wealthy former central banker running in a campaign about ordinary folks making ends meet. Mr. Trump’s crisis has made it possible for a Prime Minister Mark Carney to be sworn in, and run, plausibly, for election.
That’s before a rookie politician, rushed into office atop a once-collapsing party, heads into a campaign amid a governing crisis that suggests bigger questions for the country’s future.
A mid-campaign curveball from south of the border is more likely than ever. Mr. Poilievre won’t want to be receiving another endorsement from Elon Musk, Mr. Teneycke noted. A presidential post on Truth Social could be a foil for Mr. Carney to wave the nationalist flag or a trap that catches him in a bind.
It’s like juggling in a windstorm – and for Mr. Carney, on a whole new stage. The new Prime Minister has an unpredictable crisis election rushing at him of a kind Canadians haven’t seen before.
