For­mer cen­tral banker Mark Car­ney is Cana­da’s new prime min­is­ter af­ter be­ing sworn on Fri­day fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Justin Trudeau, who an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion in Jan­u­ary but re­mained prime min­is­ter un­til his suc­ces­sor was sworn in. Car­ney won last week­end’s con­test for the prime min­is­ter­ship by a land­slide, win­ning 85.9 per cent of the vote.

“There is some­one who is try­ing to weak­en our econ­o­my,” Car­ney said. “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.”

“The pres­i­dent is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man and deal mak­er. We’re his largest client in so many in­dus­tries,” Car­ney said. “Clients ex­pect re­spect and work­ing to­geth­er in a prop­er com­mer­cial way.”

Car­ney nav­i­gat­ed crises when he was the head of the Bank of Cana­da dur­ing the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, and then in 2013 when he be­came the first nonci­t­i­zen to run the Bank of Eng­land — help­ing to man­age the worst im­pacts of Brex­it in the U.K.

Car­ney, a for­mer Gold­man Sachs ex­ec­u­tive with no ex­pe­ri­ence in pol­i­tics, be­comes Cana­da’s 24th prime min­is­ter. He said pro­tect­ing Cana­di­an work­ers and their fam­i­lies in the face of un­jus­ti­fied trade ac­tions and grow­ing the econ­o­my will be his top pri­or­i­ties.

Car­ney said he will trav­el to Eu­rope to vis­it French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron and U.K. Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer in the com­ing days. He re­ceived in­vi­ta­tions from both.

“We must di­ver­si­fy our trade part­ners and strength­en our se­cu­ri­ty in so do­ing,” Car­ney said.

Trump put 25 per cent tar­iffs on Cana­da’s steel and alu­minum and is threat­en­ing sweep­ing tar­iffs on all Cana­di­an prod­ucts April 2. He has threat­ened eco­nom­ic co­er­cion in his an­nex­a­tion threats and sug­gest­ed the bor­der is a fic­tion­al line.

Car­ney called the idea “crazy.”

The US trade war and Trump’s talk of mak­ing Cana­da the 51st U.S. state have in­fu­ri­at­ed Cana­di­ans, who are boo­ing the Amer­i­can an­them at NHL and NBA games. Some are can­cel­ing trips south of the bor­der, and many are avoid­ing buy­ing Amer­i­can goods when they can.

Car­ney said he’s worked with Trump be­fore at G7 and G20 sum­mits dur­ing Trump’s first pres­i­den­cy.

“We share some ex­pe­ri­ences. I have been in the pri­vate sec­tor. I have worked in the re­al es­tate sec­tor. I have done large trans­ac­tions,” Car­ney said. “We will both be look­ing out for our coun­tries but he knows, and I know from long ex­pe­ri­ence, that we can find mu­tu­al so­lu­tions that win for both.”

The op­po­si­tion Con­ser­v­a­tives hoped to make the elec­tion about Trudeau, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty de­clined as food and hous­ing prices rose and im­mi­gra­tion surge.

But af­ter decades of bi­lat­er­al sta­bil­i­ty, the vote on Cana­da’s next leader now is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on who is best equipped to deal with the U.S.

“He will do very well. He’s re­spect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Jean Chré­tien told re­porters Fri­day. But, he added: “There is no mag­ic so­lu­tion. This is not a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion. We’ve nev­er seen some­one who changes his mind every five min­utes as pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.”

A new Cab­i­net of 13 men and 11 women was sworn in, small­er than Trudeau’s 37-mem­ber team. François-Philippe Cham­pagne be­comes Cana­da’s new fi­nance min­is­ter, the gov­ern­ment’s sec­ond most pow­er­ful po­si­tion. Cham­pagne has said a new prime min­is­ter of­fers a chance of a re­set with Trump.

Do­minic LeBlanc goes from fi­nance to to in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal af­fairs. Mélanie Joly re­mains for­eign min­is­ter. Chrys­tia Free­land, a for­mer deputy prime min­is­ter and fi­nance min­is­ter who lost to Car­ney in the Lib­er­al Par­ty lead­er­ship race, be­comes min­is­ter of trans­port and in­ter­nal trade.

Car­ney met with his Cab­i­net on Fri­day af­ter­noon. He strong­ly sug­gest­ed he would scrap an un­pop­u­lar car­bon tax en­act­ed by Trudeau by the end of the day. He called his gov­ern­ment “Cana­da’s new gov­ern­ment” in an ef­fort to dis­tance him­self from Trudeau.

Car­ney al­so took aim at op­po­si­tion Con­ser­v­a­tive leader Pierre Poilievre, a ca­reer politi­cian who Car­ney said is al­ways neg­a­tive.

“Neg­a­tiv­i­ty won’t pay the rent or the mort­gage. Neg­a­tiv­i­ty won’t bring down the price of gro­ceries. Neg­a­tiv­i­ty won’t win a trade war,” he said.

Poilievre urged Cana­di­ans not to give the Lib­er­als a fourth man­date, say­ing it’s the same Lib­er­al gov­ern­ment and that Car­ney is “just like Justin.”

Car­ney is 59. He was born in Fort Smith, North­west Ter­ri­to­ries, on March 16, 1965, and raised in Ed­mon­ton, Al­ber­ta.

Cre­den­tials

Car­ney ran the Bank of Cana­da from 2008 to 2013 and the Bank of Eng­land from 2013 to 2020. Af­ter help­ing Cana­da man­age the worst im­pacts of the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, he was re­cruit­ed to be­come the first non-Brit to run the Bank of Eng­land since it was found­ed in 1694.

In 2020, he be­gan serv­ing as the Unit­ed Na­tions’ spe­cial en­voy for cli­mate ac­tion and fi­nance.

Car­ney is a for­mer Gold­man Sachs ex­ec­u­tive. He worked for 13 years in Lon­don, Tokyo, New York and Toron­to, be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed deputy gov­er­nor of the Bank of Cana­da in 2003. He has no ex­pe­ri­ence in pol­i­tics.

Ed­u­ca­tion

Car­ney re­ceived a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in eco­nom­ics from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in 1988, and mas­ter’s and doc­tor­al de­grees in eco­nom­ics from Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Like many Cana­di­ans, he played ice hock­ey, serv­ing as a back­up goalie for Har­vard.

Cit­i­zen­ship

Car­ney has Cana­di­an, UK and Irish cit­i­zen­ship. He has moved to even­tu­al­ly have sole­ly Cana­di­an cit­i­zen­ship, which is not re­quired by law but seen as po­lit­i­cal­ly wise.

Polls

His chances of re­main­ing prime min­is­ter for more than a few weeks seem to be im­prov­ing. In a mid-Jan­u­ary poll by Nanos, the Lib­er­als trailed the op­po­si­tion Con­ser­v­a­tives and their leader Pierre Poilievre 47 per cent to 20 per cent. Ear­li­er this month, the polls had Lib­er­als at 35 per cent and the Con­ser­v­a­tives at 36 per cent.

Car­ney nav­i­gat­ed crises when he was the head of Cana­da’s cen­tral bank and when he be­came the first non-cit­i­zen to run the Bank of Eng­land since it was found­ed in 1694.

His ap­point­ment won bi­par­ti­san praise in Britain af­ter Cana­da re­cov­ered from the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis faster than many oth­er coun­tries.

Car­ney is cred­it­ed with keep­ing mon­ey flow­ing through the Cana­di­an econ­o­my by act­ing quick­ly in cut­ting in­ter­est rates to their low­est lev­el ever of 1 per cent, work­ing with bankers to sus­tain lend­ing through the cri­sis and, crit­i­cal­ly, let­ting the pub­lic know rates would re­main low so they would keep bor­row­ing.

And it wasn’t just that he had good poli­cies — he sold them to the pub­lic in a way every­one could un­der­stand. He was the first cen­tral banker to com­mit to keep them at a his­toric low for a def­i­nite time, a step the US Fed­er­al Re­serve would fol­low.

What’s next for Cana­da?

The Lib­er­al Par­ty mem­bers picked a new leader in a se­cret vote by about 140,000 mem­bers last Sun­day. The new leader is ex­pect­ed to trig­ger an elec­tion short­ly af­ter­ward. Ei­ther the new Lib­er­al par­ty leader will call one, or the op­po­si­tion par­ties in Par­lia­ment could force one with a no-con­fi­dence vote this month.

Daniel Bé­land, a po­lit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al, said Car­ney’s calm de­meanor and out­stand­ing re­sume make him a re­as­sur­ing fig­ure to many Cana­di­ans at a time when Trump is go­ing af­ter their coun­try’s econ­o­my and sov­er­eign­ty.

Bé­land said that style and pro­file stands in strong con­trast to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty’s Pierre Poilievre, whom he called a true ca­reer politi­cian who has em­braced a pop­ulist rhetoric not un­like Trump’s. (AP)