When Mark Carney became leader of the federal Liberals in March, he received congratulations from colleges, organizations, and institutes from Europe and America, where he had been a student, member, or officer.
It underscored a truth about Carney, Canada’s 24th prime minister: He is a citizen of the world. In international economics, he has the most experience and the finest education of any of his predecessors. While all were seasoned politicians, none had his singular mix of academic and professional achievement.
You might say that Canada has had no prime minister with more experience in public service and less in political office — an extraordinary irony that has created this extraordinary meeting of the man and the moment.
With Donald Trump’s economic declaration of war and breezy talk of making Canada the 51st state, the country faces a threat to its prosperity and security that has angered, alarmed, and united Canadians. The reason they are turning to Carney and the Liberals, polls suggest, is that he is a former central banker, public servant, and economist. To supporters, he projects confidence, calm and authority, a safe pair of hands in the crisis.
If, in the breadth of his international resume, Carney is the most qualified for the job, his main rival, Pierre Poilievre, is perhaps the least. Canadians appear to be skeptical of Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, who was the frontrunner and presumptive prime minister up to the turn of the year. That was before the arrival of Donald Trump and the departure of Justin Trudeau, who was seeking, against the odds, a fourth consecutive mandate as prime minister.
In the head-snapping way things shift in politics, Canadians now seem to find Poilievre shallow and aggressive. Liberal campaign ads say he echoes Trump’s language and tone, declaring Canada a broken, failed country of open borders, rising crime, and political correctness.
In Carney and Poilievre, the differences in character, ideology, and experience are stark. A political dilettante versus a career politician. A centrist versus a conservative. A technocrat, cool, clinical, and bland, versus an ideologue, shrewd, smooth, and theatrical. A self-proclaimed elitist from high table and high finance versus a populist with disdain for the media, convention, and the chattering classes.
Until recently, Poilievre’s complaint had traction. His case against Trudeau — wealthy, remote, woke — might be used against Carney, too. But, if polls are right, his attack has fallen short. The difference is context. Canadians didn’t worry about their future in January the same way they do today. They now appear unpersuaded that their country is “broken,” that nothing works, and that Carney is the same as his predecessor. Poilievre, who can sound like Trump (“Canada First”) and has supporters who like Trump, is now on the wrong side of events and racing to catch up.
The lives of Carney and Poilievre are vastly different. Although they are both native Albertans and sons of educators — Carney born in the Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton, Poilievre born and raised in Calgary — Carney is a product of government, business, and the academy. He has degrees from Harvard and Oxford and maintains his college ties. His marquee position abroad was almost seven years as governor of the Bank of England, the first foreigner to hold the office. He was appointed as United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change and Finance. Before public service, he spent 13 years with Goldman Sachs in London, Tokyo, New York, and Toronto. He has written a dense book bristling with policy ideas, with another to come this summer. He is cerebral and halting. He speaks like a seminarian.
Poilievre is a creature of politics. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Calgary, where his passion was campus politics. His forum is Parliament, called Canada’s best opposition leader since John Diefenbaker. He has a message, and policy, too, but it is shaded by a strong sense of grievance and belief in personal freedom.
As Poilievre is combative, Carney is conciliatory. But Carney has yet to show he has the rhetoric and the instincts to succeed in politics, despite winning the Liberal leadership with a staggering 86 per cent of the vote. Poilievre, for his part, has yet to show an instinct for consensus and moderation necessary to lead a country uneasy with ideology and political extremes. Historically, the Liberals have managed this, which is why the party has governed Canada for 87 of the last 129 years.
What makes Carney unique as prime minister? George Osborne, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer who appointed him governor, says Carney has “the most international experience in the whole of Canada.” Carney took on British citizenship (which he is now renouncing). Like other cosmopolitans, Carney has a network of associations. He was a member of the World Economic Forum at Davos, president of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London, a member of the board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., and a member of the international advisory board of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.
Past prime ministers have also had deep international experience (King as consultant to the Rockefellers; Pearson as ambassador, foreign minister, and Nobel Laureate; Pierre Trudeau as a student in London and Paris and intrepid traveller).
But most came to office with little or no foreign credentials, such as R.B. Bennett, Diefenbaker, Joe Clark, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau. None, though, were as parochial as Poilievre, who shows little interest in the world. He has, for example, made his key foreign policy promise to slash Canada’s program of development assistance, mirroring Donald Trump.
Elections can be about policies as much as personalities, and in many ways, the contrasts between Canada’s two main parties are narrow. The Liberals have reduced the capital gains tax and dropped the consumer carbon tax, while the Conservatives have pledged to maintain the national dental care and pharmacare programs.
But if this race is about character and experience, the differences have never been greater.