Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Ottawa| Mark Carney earned acclaim for steering countries on two continents through economic turmoil. On Monday, Canada’s Liberals chose the former central banker to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as the nation faces economic warfare and threats to its sovereignty from US President Donald Trump.
Carney’s win was widely expected. He led in the polling, raised more funds than his rivals and earned the backing of the Liberal establishment. He prevailed over three candidates, including former deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney delivers his victory speech during the leadership announcement in Ottawa. AP
Carney, 59, is expected to formally replace Trudeau as prime minister in the next week. A federal election must be held by October but could come sooner. Carney could call a snap election, as analysts expect, or the opposition parties could bring the government down, as they have suggested they might after a new session of parliament begins this month.
“America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” Carney said in his acceptance speech to an electric crowd of party faithful. “We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.”
So Americans should make no mistake,″ Carney added. “In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”
Trump’s actions have so severely ruptured the bilateral bond that officials, business leaders and ordinary people in Canada say the damage could be permanent.
Last week, Trump imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, spurring Canada to impose retaliatory levies. Then, over the following 72 hours, he temporarily paused the tariffs for some products, before threatening even more tariffs. Trudeau warned Canada could be embroiled in a trade war for “the foreseeable future”.
During the campaign, Carney cast himself as an even-keeled political outsider with the crisis management experience to take on Trump and manage the fallout of a trade war that could tip the economy into a recession, touting his record of steering Canada through the 2008 financial crisis as Bank of Canada governor and navigating Brexit as head of the Bank of England.
New Liberal Party leader Mark Carney with outgoing prime minister Justin Trudeau. AP
Before Trudeau said on January 6 that he’d step down, the Liberals were trailing the Conservatives by 20 points and headed for a drubbing, polls showed, amid concerns about the high cost of living and a stagnating economy. But since Trudeau’s resignation and Trump’s return, the Liberals have significantly narrowed the gap.
Carney is untested as a politician. He has stumbled in speaking French, which could prove an issue in the battleground province of Quebec. It’s unknown how he will fare in a campaign against Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, a lifelong politician with a go-for-the-jugular style.
“Because [Carney] is so new to the political arena, people are able to project their wishes onto him … to see him as a kind of saviour,” said Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. “There’s a set of expectations about who he is and how he’ll perform, and they haven’t been fully tested yet.”
The contest to replace Trudeau was an unusually genteel affair. The four candidates spent little time attacking one another, focusing instead on who is best placed to counter Trump’s “America first” agenda.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheers as new Liberal Party leader Mark Carney delivers his victory speech. AP
Carney vowed to respond to Trump’s tariffs with dollar-for-dollar levies on US goods and to use the revenue to help Canadian workers. He said Canada should focus on diversifying trade relationships and becoming less reliant on the United States.
In his first term, Trump’s “objective was to take more of our market”, Carney said during a debate. “Now he wants to take our country.”
‘The Canadian hired to save the world’
Speculation about Carney’s political ambitions has swirled for more than a decade.
He was born in a town in the Northwest Territories and raised in Edmonton. He studied at Harvard and Oxford, and then catapulted to the upper echelons of the world of finance as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs.
Carney began a term as governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008, during the global financial crisis. He quickly cut interest rates to almost zero. When he was named chair of an important global financial group in 2011, he was hailed by Maclean’s magazine as “the Canadian hired to save the world”.
During the Liberal leadership campaign, Carney revealed that then-prime minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, asked him to be his finance minister. Harper has not disputed that claim but has complained that Carney is taking more credit than he merits for Canada’s response to the financial crisis.
In 2013, UK prime minister David Cameron’s Conservatives poached Carney to head the Bank of England – the first non-Brit in the job in the bank’s history. Carney warned before the referendum that Brexit would usher in economic tumult and then worked to cushion the blow.
He was a fixture of the British media, which called him a “rock star”. He made news for taking the London Tube on his first day of work.
Trudeau named him a special economic adviser last summer and then offered him Freeland’s job as finance minister – before her resignation upended the government.
Poilievre’s Conservatives have already begun to attack Carney, seeking to link him to Trudeau. They have labelled him “sneaky”, and called him a “globalist”.
Nik Nanos, a pollster, said the Conservatives have struggled in their attacks in part because “on paper, he looks very much like a conservative”. But his experience could prove a double-edged sword, Nanos added, as Poilievre seeks to harness anger at the establishment.
