The Decibel - An analysis of Mark Carney’s first year as Prime Minister

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

It’s been one year since Mark Carney became Prime Minister. He was long known as a technocrat, having held the position of central banker for both Canada and the United Kingdom. But when Justin Trudeau resigned, Liberals – and later, Canadians – decided Carney was the man for the moment. One year later, his popularity is holding strong: an Angus Reid poll found that 60 per cent of Canadians held a positive view of him as Prime Minister. How has Carney managed to keep Canadians onside despite having so little experience in elected politics? Shannon Proudfoot is a feature writer and columnist for The Globe. She’ll unpack what she’s observed about how Carney has cultivated his political persona, and whether there are any signs that his honeymoon phase with Canadians might be coming to an end. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A year and a half ago, a lot of Canadians didn't know who Mark Carney was. Now he's been Prime Minister for a year. I, Mark Carney, do solemnly and sincerely promise and swear that I will truly and faithfully, and to the best of my skill and knowledge, execute the powers and trust reposed in me as Prime Minister. Let's fast forward to Carney's speech at Davos this January. The Angus Reed Institute found that 60% of Canadians held a positive view of him as prime minister. That's a good stat for any prime minister, but particularly surprising for one that many people saw as a political neophyte. So how has Carney managed to keep this honeymoon with Canadians going for over a year?

And are there signs that support for him might crack? Shannon Proudfoot is my guest today. She's a feature writer and columnist based in our Ottawa. Bureau. She's been observing the prime minister as he's cultivated his political persona over the last year, and she's here to explain what she's learned. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin in for Cheryl Sutherland. This is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Shannon, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. There are a couple ways we could talk about Mark Carney's first year in office. We could talk about what kind of policies he's brought in, things like that. But why do you think we need to

talk about his politics, about him as a political creature instead? Well, it's because he's a complete historical aberration. We've never had a prime minister before who landed directly in that role without otherwise kind of going through the farm system of electoral politics. He's incredibly unusual. He's unique in that way. And so it's been so fascinating this past year because not only have we watched a changing of government in a very strange, fraught moment, you know,

know, in geopolitical terms, we've also watched this guy who's kind of been in the wings for a long time learn how to do politics in front of us. It's been so fascinating. Can you remind us where we started a year ago? Can you give me a sketch of the Mark Carney that Canadians met once he became liberal leader? How did he introduce himself as a politician to the Canadian public back then? It's such a good question because the past year has really been one of those, what a decade the past year has been kind of experiences, right? So if we rewind our headspace to where we were a year ago, if it's okay, I'll talk about where we all were, not just Mr. Carney, the level of public anxiety and frustration and sort of heightened awareness was such that every time there was

like a Trump tariff day, like a new day where he was going to announce something, if you remember, it was like an all-day news affair. You would have TVs on in newsrooms, in homes, everyone would be super attuned to it. People were scouring their groceries. for a Made in Canada label. People were booing the American anthem at hockey games. So that was sort of the public side of the equation, was this very heightened, I would say frustration, but also like really, really anxious feeling

toward what is the U.S. going to do to us, how bad is it going to be? And into that environment sweeps this central banker guy that Angus Reed polling shows us that about 18 months ago, so say the fall, right around the time Trump was being reelected, almost a third of us, 30% of Canadians had no idea who Mark Carney he was. So I think what that tells us is that he had this aura. He came in with this reputation. This guy's supposed to be smart. He's led to central banks in Canada and in England through the 2008 financial crisis through Brexit. This is kind of a guy who seems to somehow magically show up

when there's an emergency situation. He's smart. He's competent. He seems calm in demeanor and in the way he kind of operates on the public stage. I would argue he is the opposite of three different people, Trudeau, Pollyev, and Trump. And so I think there was sort of a perfect fitting together of puzzle pieces between that enormous public anxiety about something that really none of us could control or do anything about. And this guy who stepped into the frame and sort of the offer was, well, I can maybe try to do something about it. I've handled stuff like this before. Would you like me to handle this for you? And you profiled Carney during the April election last year. What was the takeaway that you learned from that reporting, what you learned about Mark Carney? as a person. Yeah, there are some really interesting qualities that came up over and over that I think we've seen woven through this year. This sounds like, I don't know, fanboy content, but the reality is when you talk to people about Mark Carney, pretty much the first thing everyone mentions is how smart he is, how sharp he comes across. But there was a very particular quality to his intelligence

that people described to me that I found really interesting that I think has come into play over this year. And it's people sort of said he's not necessarily a creative visionary thinker. It's that he's highly analytical and this sort of distilling idea where they would go through a very complex meeting and there would be lots of pieces of information and sort of moving parts about what should be done, what needed to be acted upon. And people talked about him having this very strategic mind that could kind of cut through the noise and figure out what mattered most, what needed to be done to move the ball forward. And I think we've seen that over this past year. He would like to say he's pragmatic. But there's that kind of sense of a mind sifting through things.

there's also enormous confidence. Some people say arrogance or ego. I talked to a couple of people who said, you know, when he was ending up in pretty impressive, heavy hitting rooms as a central bank governor, he told a friend that he looked around at these meetings that were, you know, world leaders and financial experts. And he kind of looked around the room and thought, I deserve to be here. Like, I'm one of them. And I think, too.

He's not having imposter syndrome. No, I do not feel that Mark Carney suffers from much imposter syndrome. or he hides it extremely well, which is interesting because I don't think Mark Carney has much of a poker face. So I feel like if he had imposter syndrome, we might be seeing it. He's supremely confident. I mean, if you put confidence and intelligence together, it can slide into arrogance, which is certainly a critique that's been leveled of him when he was at the Bank of England. And there's also this kind of a Cerebrook quality that people talk about,

him being a very demanding teammate and boss that if he felt like people weren't upholding their end of the bargain, and he could be quite cutting about it. At the Bank of England, the term of art they used for it, there was getting tasered by the governor. And all of those things, I feel like we've seen different versions of that play out in this year since he became prime minister. Shannon, can you give me an example that illustrates what Carney was trying to do in those early months? Yeah, there's this moment that stands out to me, which is kind of funny because it wasn't a big set piece speech.

It was in February. He went to Flying Monkeys Brewery and Berry, which incidentally makes really good beer. So good choice. And he was just doing one of those classic, like this was during the leadership campaign, not during the general election campaign. And he was doing one of those classic things. You know, you show up in a public place. There's supporters in the room and you do your things.

So he stood behind the bar. But one of the things he said that to me is basically the bumper sticker of the Mark Carney experience and why he ended up becoming prime minister is he said, look, I'm most useful in a crisis. Look, if there's not a crisis, you wouldn't be seen me. I am most useful. I'm honest, I'm most useful in Christ. I'm really, I'm, I'm, I'm not that good in peace time. Don't tell anyone because I might, you know. And I think that is simultaneously the exact offer he made to Canadians and the offer that Canadians said, yes, please, sir, come and do that job and handle our crisis too. But it's also this amazing kind of political thing he has on his side. Because think about the implications of that. If you were just stepping up to handle a crisis, a crisis, it means you're not trying to be a political animal. It lets him operate in a political space while occupying this identity of being sort of apolitical, of being something more noble.

And to be clear, I'm not saying he is all of these things. I'm sort of positioning analytically the way I think he's appeared. It's kind of like the branding for a new brand of soft drink. Here's what the offer is. And so that was very much what his offer was. I've handled crises in the past. Canada's having a pretty big one. I have skills that I can bring to bear on this. So maybe this is my moment. This was a situation that somehow just through coincidence, divine providence, whatever, was a perfect fit for what he was offering because there's absolutely no other reason that we still have a liberal government right now instead of a conservative government led by Pierre Poliyev. And on the apolitical side, after Polyev lost his seat in the general election,

Carney kind of immediately came out and said, yes, we're going to have a by-election really quickly. No games is what he said. I've already indicated to Mr. Polyev that if it's the decision of him and the Conservative Party to trigger, if I can put it that way, a by-election, I will ensure that it happens as soon as possible. No games, nothing straight. I think that shows us that he knows and his team knows that that a political posture is incredibly valuable and is a thing he needs to maintain. this idea of being sort of above games and making a point of telling people you're not going to play games

because that sort of, it maintains a kind of political high road position, I think. It suggests that you're just here to do the job and then it means there's all kinds of like really advantageous, wonderful spin-off effects of that for him. It means that, you know,

I think we usually process, or at least I do, process what politicians say and do through the lens of, okay, you're saying you're doing this for this reason, but what are you really? because there's a lot of double speak in politics. There's a lot of opportunism or pretext.

And it means that Mr. Carney has sort of removed all of that. And he said, I'm just here to do a job for you guys. And you sort of, you called me up and here I am. I think this idea that he comes in onto the scene with this aura of someone who's calm, confident, but new to politics. I want to just push on that a little bit because this is his first seat in politics. Yes, but he was governor of the Bank of Canada for five years, which is not a public.

elected position, but it is a role that does involve politics. So how true is it that he wasn't really involved in politics before he became prime minister? Yeah, it's a good question. I would say it is untrue that he was a political outsider. We would think of that as someone who's just come in from another walk of life. He's been very politically adjacent. He's also been thinking about this job for at least 10 years. I talked to someone who said, you know, when he was recruited to the Bank of England job 10 years ago, he asked a friend. And do you think this cancels me out for being a Canadian prime minister if I go overseas? So we know he was very specifically thinking ahead about this job.

He's also been in the wings around federal politics. He was an economic advisor to Justin Trudeau. There was tons of chatter as Trudeau's star started to really fade. And there was a lot of fractiousness a year and a half ago. He was known to be one of the people who would either give Trudeau sort of an economic credibility infusion when he was naming him as an advisor. or he was seen to be one of the people who would certainly run for the leadership in his stead. So he's always been politics adjacent.

So no, your point stands, I don't think it would be valid to call him a political outsider. But I think that is a different thing from actually practicing politics and doing the thing that gets you elected because there's a very different set of skills and considerations and tradeoffs there that would not have operated on him

when he was a Bank of Canada governor because it's not an elected job. It's a job where you're supposed to be very special. specifically adjacent to but fenced off from politics. So I think that's the difference is us watching him learn to do retail politics on a national level in what is like really, really, really, really very much not an entry level job and not an entry level moment this year. Of course. So Shannon, you said that one of the ways Carney has been defining himself this year is in opposition to three people. So that was Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump, and Pierre

Palliav. So let's go through those three people, starting with Justin Trudeau. How has he managed that? It's really interesting because you'll notice that at the beginning, sort of this time last year, Pierre Pollyev and the conservatives were often saying, O'Karney, he's just another liberal. He's just like Justin was the tagline. And it was understandable why they were making those arguments. We were, you know, 10 years into a liberal government people were pretty sick of.

And along comes a new leader. And so you assume that trajectory is going to continue. But one of the interesting things about Pierre Paliov is he's got such tight message discipline that when he sort of floats an argument and that abandons it, it's a real tell that it just wasn't landing. And he doesn't talk about that anymore. He doesn't talk much anymore about Carney being just like Justin. And it's because this government really does not operate like the last one at all. And a lot of those changes are really embodied in Carney himself. With Trudeau, it was very frustrating from the perspective of journalists because we would ask mechanical questions

about policies or about choices they were making. And we would ask about tradeoffs and will this really work the way you think it will? And most often what you get was a values-based answer. You just get brushed off with like a hand over heart statement about how, you know, we believe in standing up for Canadian families and things like that that were, there are no answer. It was very values forward government and a very values-forward way of thinking about policy and about being in the world.

And Carney is extremely, extremely not that. It's not to say he's perfectly transparent and answers all our questions the way we would like him to, but it's much more about sort of facts and mechanics. You see that kind of technocratic role that he occupied at the central banks coming out. And it's also been a very different approach to government because with the Trudeau government, there were sort of a million priorities and there was lots and lots of making sure that you were touching on different constituencies, different issues, lots of focus on social issues. With Carney, it's very brass tax.

It's like we are doing economic things. We are trying to shore up the Canadian economy. We are trying to make trade deals with other countries. We are trying to deal with the U.S. That's it. That is what we're doing. So what about Pierre Palliev? How has Carney defined himself as the un-Pierre Pahliav?

Yeah, one of the two big knocks on Pierre Palliav is that he didn't engage enough with the issue of the U.S. and the problem with Trump during the election that he kind of just kept having the campaign he intended to have talking about cost of living. And also that he comes across as unserious or petty. or vindictive that he doesn't he hasn't found a statesman-like gear and Carney has taken the knees out on him on both of those issues from the moment he stepped

onto the scene he was seen that elbows up slogan that during the campaign all of his rallies there was like red and white maple leaves everywhere you know you saw the branding that must have been driving the conservatives crazy when he was doing commercials with Mike Myers and just completely occupying this space of being Captain Canada

although in a different way than Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And we've seen that kind of trajectory has just continued and solidified over the year. There was a lot of thinking early on that Carney was sort of succeeding on borrowed time and that eventually the set of issues that Canadians cared about the most would kind of revert to that focus on cost of living, you know, fatigue with the liberals. And that Pollyev and the Conservatives would rise up the polls again. And it just hasn't happened.

And the way politics goes, it's kind of like a rock rolling down a hill and it just rolls faster and faster. So as we've seen defections from the conservatives to the liberals, as we've seen Pollyev having to answer more and more questions about his leadership and his approach rather than the message he wants to be talking about, there's a sense of

the ground crumbling away under him while Carney just sort of solidifies his position. Okay, the last one is U.S. President Donald Trump. How much has Carney's relationship to Trump to find him politically in the last year? Oh, entirely. Like entirely. And I'm not saying that to be glib, that is the answer.

Like, I would argue really, really strongly that if there is no second coming of President Donald Trump, there is no Prime Minister Mark Carney in this moment. It was such a unique confluence of events. So Carney sort of swept into office on this wave of nationalism, this wave of anxiety and rage toward the U.S. But since then, he's managed to occupy that untrump role in deeper and different ways. the most obvious example of this is that speech he gave in Davos at the World Economic Forum. That thing was everywhere. That was a solid week of international coverage on the strength of the

fact that someone sort of said the thing. Someone called out, look, nothing is normal anymore. We all know that. So let's stop pretending. But it asked a lot of questions that it didn't answer. Because if the idea, you know, the central image he used in his speech was Vaclav Havel's shopkeeper. and the idea was that what propped up the communist regime was people like an individual shopkeeper who keeps putting a propaganda poster in his window every day even though he doesn't believe in it. And Carney quoted the phrase from Havel,

living within a lie. And he said it's time for us to stop living within a lie. Let's stop putting the sign in the window. Let's stop pretending that the rules-based international order still works, that things are fair, that things are sane. Let's stop doing that. But what he hasn't answered yet is what does that mean? How do you manifest that in real life?

And what happens? How much power do countries other than the U.S. really have to resist this, to call things out? And what does that look like? But nevertheless, I think that Davos moment elevated Carney or sort of allowed him to position himself as a global untrump, not just the untrump for a domestic Canadian audience, which is a very different and much larger thing. We'll be right back. So, Shannon, we've talked about Mark Carney having this persona of being. being apolitical. Have there been any moments in the last year where he seemed to drop that persona?

Yeah, I found his use of emotion or the way emotion occurs in him really, really, really fascinating. In fact, this was a section of my story. I had to cut back because I was just like having a great time and it was too much. I find him so interesting because in a lot of ways, he comes across as quite unemotional. I think that's one of the things that has worked for him in the public mind is that he seems quite calm, quite cool. But the other thing that is also, I think, true about Mark Carney that I have to say, as a feature writer, I find quite delightful and quite useful to me, is that the man has no poker face. Like, I find a lot of what he's thinking is very legible, very readable on his face. He also, to be clear, is sometimes hamming it up. He's quite witty. And he likes having these sort of asides. Like, it almost reminds me of like Jim and Pam to the camera in the office, sort of having a moment rolling their eyes and mugging for the camera. There's that quality to him over and over and over. where he sort of will break the fourth wall. One of the people I talked to for my story, historian J.D.M. Stewart said one of the moments that stood out for him

was in one of Carney's earlier political speeches. Early on, you know, he said something, and the crowd started applauding, and he stopped and said, that wasn't an applause line. I have much to be humble about. That's true. Over my long... That's not an applause line.

It's just a statement of fact. Over my long... So there's often this sort of winky quality to him, which I think is interesting and really works for him is really advantageous for him on a couple of levels because Witt buys you a lot of goodwill, right? People generally like funny people. Like it sands the edges off things.

It's friendly. It's fun. But it's also conspiratorial, right? It's also a sense of, okay, and I think this fits hand in glove with the apolitical identity that has been so powerful for him over the last year. It's this sense of, okay, I'm up here doing politics. You know, I'm giving a speech

or I'm pitching a policy. But like you and I, Canadians, we know this is all like a bit of a play. And we can roll our eyes about it together. So sort of, you know, we're in cahoots on this. So it allows him again do the politics while pretending he's not doing the politics and elbowing you in the ribs about all this greasy politics going on. It is like that is a remarkable thing to have in your back pocket. So on the flip side of that, Carney may not have the same veneer that other politicians do.

So where have we seen that working? against him. Yeah, we've definitely seen that. He has this very kind of brittle, chippy gear he kicks into, we see in press conferences when he doesn't like the questions. And again, because he's quite translucent, you see it. The most famous example of this was very early on, his first international trip after he was sworn in when Rosemary Barton of the CBC was pushing him quite reasonably about potential financial conflicts of interest with him making policy and what he was doing with his own assets. And he reacted really bad at least. And he reacted really badly to the question of what he said to her was...

Look inside yourself, Rosemary. I mean, you start from a... You start from a prior of conflict and ill will. And I think that is a tell, because it's easy to forget. Carney has displayed sort of a remarkable facility for doing politics, for someone who's brand new at this, and it's easy to forget that,

because he's a smart dude who has a lot of confidence. And so when these moments leap out that remind you, oh, he is still brand new at this. He still has training wheels on, even if we can't see them. It's quite remarkable. And he did really quell that tendency to be quite brittle, but it still crops up again and again, just very recently on his trip to Sydney reporters.

And again, it's when people are pushing him on things that I think he thinks are unfair or sort of asinine, it's got this kind of like, come on, give me a break quality. I think what he's failing to realize is that public life means accountability. It means answering questions that might seem repetitive or unfair or asinine to you, but that is just the price of admission. It does not mean people are impugning your personal ethics. It does not mean they're trying to annoy you.

That is the way this works. And he's still new to it. So you see that brittleness. It happened, I mentioned in Sydney. Reporters were pushing him on a federal official had given a background briefing where they said they no longer believed India was engaging in foreign interference in Canada or they wouldn't have planned that trip where they were working on trade deals.

And a reporter was pushing and pushing Carney on, do you agree with that assertion? It seems like a heck of a thing to say. And he got really pedantic and sort of questioned why she was quoting something she wasn't allowed to quote. In murders and extortions within Canada. Yes or no? Well, I'm not sure that's an exact quote.

That is what he suggested. That's not a quote. I can read the quote. I think, well, we can debate whether you had a discussion that was not for quotation, but if you want to read a quote from something that's not for quotation, these are the words I would use. It's another tell from him.

When he gets really pedantic, it means the question is making him uncomfortable and he sort of doesn't have a ready way to parry it. And then the other place where I think we've seen the weakness of being a newbie or the ways in which it's been more challenging for him to learn to do this is with caucus management and consultation. There's been several times over the last year

that he's ticked off some of his caucus mates and we've seen little burglings of resentment where he's come out with a position or made a decision that other liberals didn't feel like there was enough consultation on. This happened around the loosening of climate policies around the time Stephen Gibo quit cabinet. It happened around the recognition of Palestinian state

and then quite recently happened when Carney made this initially very unqualified statement of support about the U.S. attacks in Iran. And it's upset a lot in his caucus who said like they didn't understand the positioning and what's more he didn't talk to them about it before. And that makes sense to me. That is a part of electoral politics that wouldn't have existed in the same way when he worked in the private sector or in central banks where you have to engage in listening exercises.

You have to either bring people along or at least let them feel heard or that comes back to bite you. And as soon as you're having a tough time, if you've made your teammates angry and they felt alienated and disaffected, that will cause big, big problems for. you down the road. And I think he's going to have to really have a learning curve there to kind of engage in in like the care and feeding and tending of his caucus mates so that they feel a bit more heard and more consultant on things. To end, Shannon, I'd like to come back to this idea of Carney as a crisis manager for Canada. That was, as you've described, that was sort of the job that he's been hired to do. And I'm curious, you know, one of those issues is, of course, Trump and the chaos coming out of the U.S., but there's also diversifying the Canadian economy.

and helping make life more affordable, what happens to his narrative, his persona as a crisis manager if he isn't able to deliver on those in a substantial way? You mentioned borrowed time. How long does that borrowed time last? So I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out answer, but my honest answer is, I have no idea, and it's going to be so interesting to find out. Because you're right, we hired him as a crisis manager. I mean, the uncomfortable truth is these crises are probably not really manageable or at least not on the type of timeline where you typically get a political lift, right? Like Trump is a perpetual motion machine of chaos and malevolence. No one is going to fix that. We don't have a lot of leverage there. Whatever will happen with

Kuzma will happen with the free trade deal. And it will almost certainly be driven by Trump's own self-interest and what he sees as necessary to, you know, stanch the bleeding in his popularity as costs go up and up in the U.S. But also the domestic project. Carney has said he'll take on. They're really tall orders, right? There's a reason we've leaned heavily on trading with the U.S. and not other partners because they're right next door and they'll gobble up anything we send over there. Issues like very internal to Canada, like, you know, shoring up our economy, developing resources, getting things built faster, building more houses. Those are all things we really, really need to do. But the reality is that of the things he's been sort of hired to do,

They're really, really difficult things to do. And they're difficult things to do on a fast enough timeline for people to really feel like their faith in you is playing out. But at the same time, like politics doesn't occur in the vacuum. And Pierre Pollyev is not right now posing a very effective foil to Carney. There is not, he's not well-liked and he doesn't seem to be any more able to trade advantageously on the issues where he is most successful. So Carney doesn't sort of have someone kind of nipping at him from that direction. But as I said, the story of the last year to me has been over and over thinking, okay, now the honeymoon's going to come to an end. You know, Carney didn't, he didn't land a trade deal with Trump.

He didn't get the tariffs lifted. He didn't return to the negotiating table. You know, it's really hard to build houses fast enough to make them more affordable. But every time you sort of thought the confidence that people placed in him, this faith, this sense of you, smart banker men, you handle this thing for us because we're scared. And every time I thought that would run into the fact that he just couldn't do it that fast. And that's not necessarily a failing on his part. It's that these are not fast solvable problems. Every time you thought that the one would sort of run into the other, he didn't seem to pay for it.

It hasn't seemed to be a problem. So I think that is still ahead of us. And it's really, like what I've learned over the last year is that I never know what's going to happen next. Like I just never do even if I think I do. And so I hate to do something as weasily as only. time we'll tell, but truly this is one of those cases where we have to wait and see because so much of what has occurred so far kind of makes no sense in some ways and was wildly unpredictable and should never have happened.

Shannon was such a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. That was Shannon Proudfoot, a future writer and columnist with the Globe's Ottawa Bureau. That's it for today. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin. The Dicebel is hosted by Cheryl Sutherland. I produce the show along with Madeline White and Mikhailstein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor.

Thanks for listening.