Will the real Mark Carney please stand up?

Can Sir Mark avoid the Kim Campbell Car Crash?

The Star column I should have written this week was one that ruminated about Mark Carney, former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and former Ontario P.C. Leader John Tory, Q.C. all being actively recruited by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and PMO CoS Katie Telford to join his Tariff War Cabinet; and but for a 2nd source, I would have. When asked by the media last week why he (yet again) hadn’t joined Mr. Trudeau’s Merry Band, Mr. Carney responded in a way that seemed transparent to all assembled (via Ryan Tumilty of The Star’s Ottawa bureau):

Carney wouldn’t confirm what position he was offered, but said he was being asked to join a team to confront Donald Trump’s tariffs.

“In the end, the team didn’t come together for reasons that we know. We still have the crisis there’s still a need to stand up and I’m standing up, because of that.”

The “team didn’t come together for reasons that we know,” was naturally taken to mean that then-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland hadn’t agreed to a demotion — one that would see Mr. Carney taking her Cabinet spot. While that is certainly true, and a predictable outcome even to a Conservative (see prior post “Freeland as "The Fall Gal” Dec 15-24), that may not have been the full story. Was Mr. Carney actually going to link arms with Ms. Notley? Is there more to the “team didn’t come together” storyline than is being told?

And, of no less interest to his many fans, were Gerry Butts and Katie Telford so creative that they almost kept Mr. Trudeau in power?

At any rate, the list of things I got wrong about Mr. Carney continues to grow: last July, I wrote that he’d sit tight until “February,” assuming that Mr. Trudeau could survive until then. He couldn’t wait that long in the end, and I don’t blame him one bit. And I was also wrong in predicting that Ms. Freeland would support his bid for leader, in lieu of launching her own campaign. Ms. Freeland’s energy reserves know no bounds!

If Mr. Carney wins the Liberal Leadership, he’s PM! If he loses, he goes back to all of the same corporate roles that he had a week ago. Life decisions are a lot easier when there’s no real downside, but that doesn’t take away for the fact that Mr. Carney is putting himself out there. Hear hear.

If you want to see how this week’s Star column ends, buy a print copy, use your Apple News, or subscribe to The Star online via my special discount code: www.thestar.com/informed:

I’m the last person to criticize Mark Carney for throwing his goalie mask into the Liberal leadership ring. Canada probably benefits when broadly experienced 59-year-old Bay Streeters named Mark who once played goal volunteer for meaty public service roles.

The former investment banker was quick to ditch traditional Bay Street decorum at his campaign launch last Thursday. Speaking to a crowd in Edmonton, he took a shot at Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre: “Populists don’t understand how the economy in our society actually works.”

Has Carney forgotten his own populist instincts? As governor of the Bank of Canada, he told the country’s banks that if they didn’t want to increase their capital levels, they could always cut bank employee compensation by 10 per cent instead. What’s more populist than beating up on bankers’ salaries?

Carney’s populist credentials were solidified when he apparently rebuffed both a knighthood and a peerage from the late Queen Elizabeth II, honours that have been held by every other U.K. bank governor since the First World War. I imagine he anticipated that if he were ever to run for office, being introduced to Rotarians as “Sir Mark” might be a turn-off.

I first noticed Carney almost 20 years ago, and I took an early shine to his efforts within then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s Ottawa.

Long before Carney tried to jawbone our energy sector into oblivion, I even recommended that Harper appoint our then-governor to his cabinet as Minister of Economic Transformation. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had his hands full, and I thought Carney would make a good junior partner as Canada’s economy slowly recovered from the global financial crisis.

Every great team can benefit from additional talent, and my premise was that you don’t make your way from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, to Goldman Sachs — the pinnacle of Wall Street — unless you’re special. But Carney will face a host of hurdles in this next challenge, some of his own making.

No fans of white-shoe banks, NDP swing voters may despise that phase of Carney’s career. This, after all, is a bank that Rolling Stone once called a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” It remains unclear whether Carney will drive Ottawa’s blood funnel deeper into taxpayers’ pocketbooks should he become prime minister.

To read the rest of the piece, hit the link.

MRM

(this post is an Opinion Piece)