Canada elects new prime minister. Who is Mark Carney?
A former governor of the central bank of Canada, who has no direct political experience, 59-year-old Mark Carney has won the election for leader of the ruling Liberal Party of Canada. He will succeed Justin Trudeau as prime minister.
This is according to official election results, Reuters reports.
Thus, Mark Carney won 86% of the vote, defeating former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in an election in which nearly 152,000 party members took part.
Trudeau announced in January that he would step down after more than nine years in power as his approval ratings plummeted, prompting the ruling Liberal Party to hold a snap election to replace him.
The party, which was trailing by 20 or more points in early 2025, has now tied with the official opposition Conservatives, led by career politician Pierre Poilievre, in several polls.
The prime minister's departure comes at the height of a trade war with Canada's longtime ally the United States since the inauguration of Donald Trump.
"There's someone who's trying to weaken our economy. He's attacking Canadian workers, families, and businesses. We can't let him succeed," Carney said of Trump, drawing loud cheers at the party's convention.
He added: "This won’t be business as usual. We will have to do things that we haven’t imagined before, at speeds we didn’t think possible."
Who is Mark Carney
Carney received a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1988, and a master's and doctorate in economics from Oxford University. Like many Canadians, he played hockey and was a backup goalie at Harvard.
His wife, Diana, was born in the UK, and he has four daughters.
As the Associated Press summarizes, Carney has no experience in politics. He headed the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. After helping Canada weather the worst of the 2008 financial crisis, he became the first non-British to head the Bank of England since its founding in 1694.
He left this position to become the UN envoy for climate action and finance.
According to the Independent, while previous governors of the Bank have generally remained in the shadows, Carney has made a number of controversial statements, including warning that an independent Scotland may have to hand over powers to the UK if it wants to continue using the pound ahead of the 2014 referendum.
And in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, he warned that a vote to leave the EU could trigger a recession in the UK. After the vote to leave the EU, following the resignation of David Cameron as Prime Minister, he addressed the nation, trying to reassure the public as the pound fell.
Interest rates were later cut from 0.5% to 0.25%, and the Bank resumed its quantitative easing programme to support the economy.
His last week in office came at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, when the Bank cut interest rates to 0.5%, and Carney told the country that the economic shock "should be temporary."
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, The New York Times (NYT), citing its own sources, stated that US President Donald Trump, in conversations with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, stated that he did not consider the Canada-US border treaty concluded in 1908 to be valid.
Bloomberg reported, citing its own sources, that the US rejected Canada's proposal to create a group to monitor and combat the so-called "shadow fleet" of tankers of the aggressor country russia. The refusal of the US President's administration is related to the revision of positions in multilateral organizations.