Mark Carney stood in front of a crowd of Liberal supporters and remembered the sounds of tapping skates. In Laurier Heights in Edmonton’s west end, next to the rink where Carney used to play, he painted Canada as a hockey team that’s in between the second and third periods of a losing hockey game.
The good times are over, and things are anything but normal.
Carney is entering the race for leader of the Liberals and Prime Minister of Canada after Justin Trudeau announced his intent to resign earlier this month.
“As I learned on the ice out there, when it’s cold, when your opponent is tough, you have to step up,” said Carney.
After months of bad numbers at the polls, the NDP tore up the supply and confidence agreement, which propped up the Liberal minority government. A few months later, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland shocked the country when she resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet after learning she might be replaced.
The one intended to be replacement was none other than Carney, who today says “the intention was to reinforce the team, not change the team.”
Now, the Liberals are indeed down in the third period, warming up after a painful and frigid session in parliament, and whoever wins this leadership race will have just months to get things back on track before an election.
Carney plans for Trump, calls out Poilievre
Perhaps this whole hockey metaphor (which is now feeling like something out of The Mighty Ducks) is made worse when considering that the fattest, meanest bully in the neighbourhood just showed up, ready to pick a fight.
Trump was on the tip of many tongues at Carney’s announcement. Carney said he was the exclamation point to the crisis Canada faces, and that he’s dealt with him already during Trump’s past presidency.
“He’s a negotiator. He’s transactional,” Carney said, adding that he plans to get the economy glowing, which would be Canada’s best bargaining tool.
After the hockey metaphors, the rest of his opening speech made a large bid for Canada’s political centre, as the former governor of the Bank of Canada says he plans to scrap the consumer carbon tax and make the economy his main focus.
He jabbed at Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, saying his ideas were “naive and dangerous,” adding that “populists don’t understand how the economy and our society actually works.”
He also didn’t shy away from the far-left, adding, “they too often see government as the solution to every problem.”
While Carney is a stranger to actually running in politics and still unknown to many Canadians, he’s used to working with governments, having advised the British prime minister, French president and the Trudeau government in the past. Still, he claims to be an outsider.
“I know I’m not the usual suspect, but this is no time for politics as usual,” Carney said. When asked about his ties to past high-profile jobs, like his most previous employer Brookfield, he said he’d resigned from all positions, boards, and roles.
This includes his role as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action, his spot on the board of PIMCO Investment Management, and as chair of the board for media giant Bloomberg LP.
He said he’s committed to following the federal government’s “robust conflict of interest system” and ethics standards when he becomes an MP, but didn’t elaborate when asked what he was doing to mitigate conflicts during his campaign.
All eyes on Edmonton
It’s remarkable that out of all the potential bids for the next prime minister, two of the main candidates in the conversation grew up in or around Edmonton. Chrystia Freeland, who also plans to run, is from Peace River and went to high school in the city.
“Welcome to Edmonton,” were some of the first words Carney said to the crowd, and when asked later about his roots, he admits the last time he lived here full time was when he was just 18, right before a hockey scholarship sent him to Harvard University.
He has no idea which riding he’d represent, whether in Edmonton or elsewhere, but says, “I’ve got good ties in Edmonton, good ties across the country, but I’m running for prime minister.”
As reporters began to pack up and leave, I spoke with some young folks to see what they had made of it. They seemed to like the whole hockey metaphor, but were more impressed with his credibility.
“Personally, I just think he has better credentials than many other candidates right now,” said Sebastian Perez, a political sciences student at the University of Alberta. He added that it was great seeing Liberals in Edmonton, which historically votes Conservative.
With lots of eyes on Carney right now, it also means lots of eyes on Edmonton.
Another U of A student, Luke Markowski said, “most [federal] politics happen in Ottawa, and now that it’s happening more in a place like Edmonton, it feels a lot closer to home.”
Photography by Amanda Erickson.
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