Who Is Mark Carney, the Newly Elected Liberal Prime Minister of Canada?

The Liberal Party of Canada won a narrow victory on Monday night, catapulting its leader, Prime Minister Mark Carney, to his first general election win.

The win is a fourth consecutive term for the party, and a remarkable reversal of fortune for Carney, who had originally faced a nearly 30-point deficit in polling to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

As of Tuesday morning, the liberals had captured 154 seats in Parliament, while the Conservative Party of Canada had won 131 seats. Time will tell whether the liberals win an outright majority—that would require 172 seats—or need to form a coalition government with another party in its parliamentary system. 

Carney had been a prominent figure on the world stage in banking for nearly two decades. A graduate of Catholic schools in Canada, he was named the most influential Catholic in Britain by the Catholic newspaper The Tablet.

In a twist for the future leader of the Canadian nation, Carney drew all of his higher education from institutions in the U.S. and England. He played ice hockey and studied economics at Harvard University before continuing on to a Ph.D. in the field at Oxford, where he also managed the university’s hockey team.

After more than a dozen years at Goldman Sachs, he traded in the lucrative life of an international banker for government service. After stints at the Department of Finance Canada and as deputy governor, he became governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008. In 2013, he was named the governor of the Bank of England, serving until 2020. 

Despite considerable government experience, Carney is a relative newcomer to electoral politics. He has only served in the Canadian Parliament since earlier this month.

President Donald Trump already has a strong relationship with Carney, who has served as prime minister of Canada since March 14. Carney’s predecessor was Justin Trudeau, who famously visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago before the latter returned to office. After a crushing drop in popularity, Trudeau announced his resignation from leading the party and heading the government in January.

Canada and the U.S. are currently in the midst of a trade dispute launched in part by Trump, who thinks the U.S.’s northern neighbor is not acting in America’s best interest. In March, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on goods imported from Mexico and Canada. Even after the president announced a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs he had imposed on many other countries, Trump kept the duties on Canadian goods in place. 

With Carney, Trump will face a tough negotiator known to stare down Wall Street executives like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. But at least one political commentator is predicting the relationship will go better than one might initially think.

The post Who Is Mark Carney, the Newly Elected Liberal Prime Minister of Canada? appeared first on The Daily Signal.