{"id":136123,"date":"2025-05-04T06:21:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T06:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/not-everybody-who-voted-for-carney-quite-knows-what-they-got-canada-eyes-its-new-prime-minister-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T06:21:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T06:21:02","slug":"not-everybody-who-voted-for-carney-quite-knows-what-they-got-canada-eyes-its-new-prime-minister-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/not-everybody-who-voted-for-carney-quite-knows-what-they-got-canada-eyes-its-new-prime-minister-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not everybody who voted for Carney quite knows what they got\u2019: Canada eyes its new prime minister – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing up to the erratic US president will be a key task for Mark Carney, but experts say economic challenges might prove far more testing
For most of his adult life, Mark Carney<\/a> has thrived in a world where facts matter and logical arguments can suffice.
But Canada\u2019s prime minister, who until this week had never held elected office, now enters a domain in which personal slights, ambition and ego often hold more sway than truth or reason. And Carney, who dealt with politicians, some hostile, as a central banker, has now become one, occupying a role in which he\u2019s all but guaranteed to disappoint someone.
On Monday, Carney led Canada\u2019s Liberal party to a victory that only months ago few would have thought possible<\/a>. Running as the candidate best-equipped to defend Canada\u2019s sovereignty against Donald Trump, he emerged with a minority government.
After a congratulatory phone call on Wednesday, Donald Trump called Carney a \u201cvery nice gentleman\u201d, said the prime minister \u201ccouldn\u2019t have been nicer\u201d and predicted \u201cwe\u2018re going to have a great relationship\u201d. Notably, he did not refer to Carney as \u201cgovernor\u201d \u2013 a slight he appeared to have reserved for the former leader Justin Trudeau. The pair will meet at the White House on Tuesday \u2013 their first in-person encounter in Carney\u2019s role as prime minister.
Carney used his first post-election press conference to once again quash any idea Canada was interested in becoming the 51st US state, a proposal repeatedly floated by Trump.
\u201cIt\u2019s always important to distinguish want from reality<\/a>,\u201d Carney said on Friday, referring to a firm belief that Canada joining the US will \u201cnever, ever happen\u201d.
Standing up to the erratic US president \u2013 prone to dressing down allies on a whim<\/a> \u2013 will be a key task for Carney. But experts say his economic challenges might prove far more testing than managing Trump.
\u201cThere\u2019s actually only so much we can do if the Americans decide to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot and inject uncertainty into their economy, the North American economy and the global economy,\u201d said Robert Gillezeau, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto.
\u201cAnd let\u2019s imagine we got the best-case scenario \u2013 the Trump regime says: \u2018We messed up, tariffs are off the table, we\u2019re going to go back to a reasonable and rational global approach to economics.\u2019 We\u2019d still probably be in a fairly deep recession. Tariffs matter, but the uncertainty also matters. And at this point, in terms of business investment, nobody has any idea what the hell they\u2019re going to do.\u201d
As a veteran central banker who helped establish stability amid first the 2008 financial crisis and then Brexit, Carney\u2019s argument to Canadians was that he was the consummate fixer. \u201cI am most useful in a crisis,\u201d he said on the campaign trail. \u201cI\u2019m not that good at peacetime.\u201d
It was an argument that convinced many voters, who gambled that what the country needed was a safe pair of hands.
Carney ran \u2013 and won \u2013 as a newcomer to politics and sought to draw a clear line between himself and his Liberal predecessor Justin Trudeau<\/a> \u2013 but he nonetheless is steering a government into its fourth term.
To run again, he would be asking voters for a fifth consecutive Liberal win in a country that \u201cbelieves it healthy for different parties to govern\u201d, said Gillezeau.
\u201cThere\u2019s a real likelihood that he gets between two and four years as prime minister. And because he\u2019s been thinking for long about entering politics, I suspect he\u2019s aware of that \u2013 and so there is a meaningful chance that he does make good use of the time.\u201d
By midweek, it became clear the Liberals had fallen just four seats short of a majority government, with some races decided by a handful of votes.
For a brief period of time as votes were counted, it appeared as though the Liberals would be forced to rely on the Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, a separatist party that is politically toxic outside Quebec<\/a> and whose leader recently claimed Canada was an \u201can artificial country with very little meaning\u201d.
Parliament resumes on 26 May<\/a>, with King Charles travelling to Canada to formally open proceedings the following day – \u201can historic honour that matches the weight of our times\u201d, said Carney.
Once the grind of legislating begins, Carney can partner with three parties to pass bills, giving his minority government far more stability. The most likely partner for the Liberals are the New Democrats, who faced a wipeout but managed to win seven seats held by incumbents. Those federal seats, alongside the Liberal\u2019s 168, give the two parties more than enough to pass legislation.
\u201cMinority governments will take political sophistication to navigate. It\u2019s about seeing the whole chessboard listening and taking counsel from many people,\u201d said Jordan Leichnitz, a former senior strategist with the New Democratic party. \u201cThis will give us a glimpse into whether Carney has the intangible skills that make somebody a durable political leader and able to survive in this environment. Because there\u2019s a question mark over whether he has any interest or is capable of doing this. And not everybody who voted for Carney quite knows what they got.\u201d
In its electoral collapse, the NDP also lost both its leader, Jagmeet Singh, and official party status, which grants certain parliamentary privileges, including the ability to ask questions during question period and to sit on key committees. With the Bloc and Conservatives both potentially hostile to the Liberals, they could use the committees to grind government to a halt.
\u201cIt\u2019s in the power of the Liberals to lower the threshold for party status and grant it to the NDP. Doing so wouldn\u2019t be out of the goodness of their heart, but instead reflect an understanding of political considerations,\u201d said Leichnitz. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll see soon if this government \u2013 and Carney \u2013 has these instincts.\u201d
The nature of his victory and the unusual cobbling together of his voter base \u2013 a mix of progressives fleeing the NDP and older voters typically voting Conservative, gives the prime minister a shorter than typical honeymoon.
While Trump figured prominently in the early days of the federal election to Carney\u2019s benefit, many of the issues that previously fueled growing support for the Conservatives are likely to bubble back to the surface in the coming months.
Housing remains unaffordable, the cost-of-living crisis hasn\u2019t yet abated and wage growth feels stagnant to young workers. A somewhat chastened Conservative party, whose leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost his own seat, will want electoral revenge.
And despite winning seats in every province, the prime minister also faces a hostile Prairie region, where a small but vocal minority are agitating for oil-rich Alberta to secede from the country.
\u201cCarney could be in a Keir Starmer situation where he\u2019s elected, but it\u2019s a loveless victory and he has a very short window in which to deliver what voters think they should be getting from him,\u201d said Leichnitz. \u201cIf you don\u2019t deliver soon and people began peeling away, it can be really difficult to recover from that. And so in many ways, I think his honeymoon ended the minute he stepped off the stage after giving his victory speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Standing up to the erratic US president will be a key task for Mark Carney, but experts say economic challenges might prove far more testingFor most of his adult life, Mark Carney has thrived in a world where facts matter and logical arguments can suffice.But Canada\u2019s prime minister, who until this week had never held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}