Is Canada’s Mark Carney the man to challenge the rise of toxic global politics?
It may not have attracted quite as much comment and controversy as the second arrival of Donald Trump, but today’s swearing in of Mark Carney as the 24th prime minister of Canada is quite possibly a moment of equal global importance. As the 59-year-old central banker took the oath of office, ending Justin Trudeau’s heady decade in the role, one could be forgiven for thinking that yet another major nation had lurched to the corporate right. However, there is actually little ideologically that separates the two Canadian leaders, and much the same ministers and advisors will be helping Mr Carney to deliver many of the the same Liberal objectives of his predecessor.
The Trudeau presidency landed amidst a global drift towards liberal morality and a particular form of inclusive democracy that seemed set to become the prevailing social order for decades to come. In westernised countries across the globe old certainties and old prejudices were swept away with little concern for what actually might be dying in the process. In Canada the new secularism and personalist mentality promised a better life for all but on the ground the hard realities of economics just couldn’t match the aspirations, and the country slumped under spiralling national debt, soaring house and food prices and an increasing dependence on the United States, a reliance which became catastrophic when Donald Trump returned to the White House and started signing those contentious tariff orders.
For two countries that had almost seemed as one economic entity under previous administrations, the relationship between Trump and Trudeau was never going to end well. The old team spirit and smooth deal sharing was swept away swiftly by Trump, who slapped heavy taxes on Canadian goods only to find Trudeau retaliating by announcing a 25% tax on some American goods. This might have been predictable posturing on both sides, but the relationship disintegrated sharply into personal insults, and a final heated phone conversation that Trump described in his own inimitable manner as “sort of friendly”, but Trudeau said was “colourful”. An evidently tearful and shaken President Trudeau giving a press conference shortly afterwards was an early sign that global politics had shifted profoundly, and potentially for the worse as far as Canada is concerned.
So enter Mr Mark Carney, who is well known to UK Catholics, but perehaps less so to the people of Canada. Born in 1965 in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Mark Joseph Carney graduated from Harvard and Oxford University and worked at the American multinational investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs before becoming deputy governor of the Bank of Canda in 2003. He became familiar to the British public in 2013 when he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England, leading the British bank’s response to Brexit and the early phase of the Covid pandemic.
During this time he not only became a regular voice on fiscal matters in the media, but he became involved heavily in trying to develop more considered and socially aligned mechanisms for the management of both private and government finances. He also developed a particular interest in ethical finance and environmental, social and governance policies, to the extent that in January 2020 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed him to the position of finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow.
Previously Carney had been explicit that he would never run for senior political office in Canada, but clearly Trump Two has changed all that.
Carney’s win marks the first time an outsider with no real political background has become Canadian prime minister, but many feel that his financial acumen, and even his underlying Catholic social values, might just make him the ideal person to face off Donald Trump, and even some others.
“There is someone who is trying to weaken our economy,” Carney said in a speech last Sunday. “Donald Trump, as we know, has put unjustified tariffs on what we build, on what we sell and how we make a living. He’s attacking Canadian families, workers and businesses and we cannot let him succeed and we won’t.”
He warned that Canada will keep retaliatory tariffs in place until “the Americans show us respect.”
“We didn’t ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” he said
“The Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win … the Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country. Think about it. If they succeed they would destroy our way of life.”
“These are dark days,” Carney concluded, “dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.”
The bullish rhetoric is impressive, and has rapidly won him many supporters who are profoundly hopeful he might just be the antidote to MAGA ideology – but Carney’s credentials run deeper still. His father Robert had been director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’Association, had served as a board member the of Newman Theological College and was by all accounts a very heavyweight contributor to his local Catholic community. This outlook has undoubtedly influenced his son, whose views on market forces align closely with Catholic social teaching.
In his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Carney makes the unexpected – for a corporate capitalist – assertion that financial wealth and happiness are not at all the same thing, and argues that the commonly held belief that that unrestricted and unhindered financial markets create happiness and prosperity is in fact a very dangerous fallacy. He goes even further and, in words that hark right back to Leo XII’s Rerum Novarum, argues that effective commerce and economic prosperity only works if paired with compassion, solidarity and human fairness.
This isn’t particularly surprising, given that Carney sits on the Steering Committee of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism (SCCIC) at the Vatican. Spearheaded by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, billionaire philanthropist, businesswoman and two-time fundraiser for the presidential bids of Hillary Clinton. SCCIC is known as the Vatican’s “capitalism with a human face” and seeks to move “the private sector to create a more inclusive, sustainable and trusted economic system.”
Carney has been involved with the council from the outset, and is also quite open in admitting that the inspiration for his 2021 book came from Pope Francis himself.
When a “range of policymakers, business people, academics, labour leaders and charity workers gathered at the Vatican to discuss the future of the market system,” Pope Francis “surprised us by joining the lunch,” says Carney, almost certainly refering to a meeting of the SCCIC.
Carney then recalls that Pope Francis said:
Our meal will be accompanied by wine. Now, wine is many things. It has a bouquet, colour and richness of taste that all complement the food. It has alcohol that can enliven the mind. Wine enriches all our senses.
At the end of our feast, we will have grappa. Grappa is one thing: alcohol. Grappa is wine distilled.
He continued:
Humanity is many things – passionate, curious, rational, altruistic, creative, self-interested. But the market is one thing: self-interest. The market is humanity distilled.
And then he challenged us:
Your job is to turn the grappa back into wine, to turn the market back into humanity. This isn’t theology. This is reality. This is the truth.
It was this encounter, Carney said, that led him to realise that “upheaval the world has been experiencing demonstrates that it is vital to rebalance the essential dynamism of capitalism with our broader social goals. This is not an abstract issue or a naive aspiration.”
For Carney one of the most fundamental problems that lead to financial disruption, social marginalisation and general unrest in a country is the trends for people in power “prioritizing their own interests over the common good.” Quite how that will play out in a meeting with Donald Trump is anyone’s guess, but I have a hope – if not a valiant expectation – that Mr Trump may struggle to outmanoeuvre a man who not only knows the fiscal landcape like the back of his hand, but also cherishes a profound understanding of the human condition and what motivates people and nations to positive rather than destructive actions.
This morning Mr Carney not only took up office, but swore in his chosen, slimmed down cabinet. The return of many familiar faces was undoubtedly intended to demonstrate stability and continuity, but the subtle ripples of change were there also. The Carney cabinet has no minister of labour, but there is, however, a Minister of Jobs and Families – a nuance that is at once both minor and profound. He also said in this morning’s press conference that protecting Canadian workers and their families “in the face of unjustified foreign trade actions” will be one of the main priorities his new government will be focussing on.
But he also sees no particular urgency in meeting with the US president. Instead he intends to head to the UK and France in the coming days in an effort to deepen ties with “reliable” – a word he underscored – trade partners.
Just a few days after Donald Trump secured his first presidential term in 2016, Carney was asked about the potential implications of that new presidency.
“From the rising spectre of global terrorism to intensifying geopolitical tensions and financial crises, for too long, for too many people, the world seems to be getting riskier,” he observed.
“We need to move towards more inclusive growth where everyone has a stake in globalisation.”
Eight years on we’re back in another Trump era, which must be giving Carney much to reflect on. Some things may have moved forward in the world, but sadly most have not and by all accounts society and civilisation seems to be regressing into a primitive state rather than blossoming into an equitable, peaceful and prosperous society.
As Carney expressed in his 2021 book:
“My experience in the private and public sectors accords with Pope Francis’s parable. Value in the market is increasingly determining the values of society. We are living Oscar Wilde’s aphorism – knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing – at incalculable costs to our society, to future generations and to our planet.”
Over the coming months Mr Carney will need to occupy himself heavily with the responsibilities and pressures of his new office, and he will also need to navigate the 2025 Canadian federal election on 20th October, which is very likely to be a keenly contested and not entirely certain battle.
That done, it would be nice to think he might have the time to put pen to paper again – as the world is sorely in need of meaningful moral narratives to guide it through the uncertainties and dangers that undoubtedly lie ahead.
Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and public theologian
Pic: CC BY-SA 2.0