The Decibel - How Prime Minister Mark Carney is preparing for the federal election

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to call a federal election by Sunday, after being sworn into office last week.And he’s had a busy week. Between announcing that he’ll be cutting the consumer price on carbon and introducing a leaner cabinet, he took his first trip as prime minister, travelling to Paris, London, and Iqaluit.But why hasn’t Carney’s tour included a trip south of the border, when trade tensions with the U.S. look to define Canada’s upcoming election?The Globe’s senior reporter Stephanie Levitz has been trailing the new prime minister. Today, she joins the show to talk about his meetings with international leaders, and what we’ve learned about the former central banker since he stepped foot into the prime minister’s office a week ago.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail].

Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to call a federal election this weekend. He's only been prime minister since last week, but he's had a busy few days. Since taking office, Carney committed to getting rid of the consumer carbon price and introduced a much leaner cabinet. And then he took his first trip as prime minister, traveling to Paris, London, and Iqaluit. But during a time of historic tension with the U.S., Carney has yet to meet with the American president. And with election day likely weeks away,

he faces the challenge of campaigning for the first time while also steering the country through this difficult period. So today I'm talking to senior Globe reporter Stephanie Levitz. She'll explain what we learned about Carney from his first trip as Prime Minister and what it could tell us about how he might navigate the days ahead. I'm Maynika Raman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Stephanie, thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure. At the beginning of this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney took his first trip, just days after being sworn in as Prime Minister in Ottawa. So he went to Paris, he went to London, and then he callow it. And Stephanie, you know this very well because you were one of the journalists

who was traveling with him on that plane Can you tell me why were those three places selected for this trip? When mr. Carney was sworn in as prime minister he alluded in his sort of inaugural remarks before the media to Canada's history and he cast back to sort of what he Described as the founding cultures or peoples of this country So the French, the British and indigenous communities. And so you could look at the trip very much through this lens, him going

out and touching base to sort of reintroduce himself as Prime Minister. As Mr. Carney seeks to shore up Canadian allies abroad in this Donald Trump era, where we need to make some closer and better friends out of our pre existing friends. The indigenous touch point is really a reframing maybe of how the Trudeau liberals approached the indigenous relationship, which was always seen through the lens of reconciliation. Mr. Carney seems to be positioning it more as an alliance-based relationship and ensuring that indigenous peoples, what they need to succeed and be an engaged partnership with the federal government, are seen as almost like an ally. So we need you to have the buy-in as we want to grow the economy. We want you

on side to be developing your communities, having more homes, having access to social services. And so that's like a three parter for him to really send that message as the first signals of what a Mark Carney government could look like. Hmm. Okay, so let's break down different parts of this trip then and see what what happened at each stage. He started in France. So let's start there as well.

Stephanie, he met with President Emmanuel Macron for a work luncheon. What came out of that meeting? So you know, a couple of things. It's interesting because right ahead of him going to that lunch, he did a little tour of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which is the landmark French church that burned down in 2019 and then was spectacularly rebuilt in a very short order of time. And that was a project of pride for Emmanuel Macron. And the rebuilding was really reframed as a moment to signal that it is possible to do new, big and better things. And so Mr. Carney sort of used that visit as a jumping point, right, into his meeting with

Macron, which is to say, let's reassert our partnership. Let's put a face to the world. Macron's really emerging as a European leader, both in driving more support for Ukraine, to some degree standing against Donald Trump. So to show Mr. Macron, Mr. Carney standing side by side, forging that alliance, it's symbolic. What, of course, tactically came out of it is they announced a new security partnership

between the two countries about intelligence sharing, about cyber intelligence, cyber security, something that Mr. Carney is very seized with, how to find allies that can help protect Canada and be a partnership with Canada, again, as we can no longer count on the United States like we used to. Okay, so a little bit of symbolism, a little bit of practical work happening

there as well and then from Paris he flew to London he met with both King Charles and Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Of course Carney is already well known in the UK because he did serve as the governor of the Bank of England. How did those two meetings go Stephanie? The one with the King there's somebody close to Carney on his team said to me that they thought they had not seen Mr. Carney that Sort of energetically happy in all time like to see him with the king obviously was a moment of pride a moment of significance for him You know even going into it with a little bit of a mishap, his Order of Canada pin that

he wears, Mr. Carney, it broke as he was getting off the plane and he goes in to see the King and the first words out of his mouth are, a bit of a disaster here today, sir, I lost my Order of Canada pin and then the King very jovially says, would you like mine? And for those who are, who view Canada's relationship with England is really, really formative and very important, and especially at a time when lots of folks are looking to the King and saying, hey, there's another guy. He wants to annex us and you're our King. Shouldn't you be saying something about that?

It's moments like this where you see that touch point, that closeness that are meant to be symbolic. Again, everything the monarchy does is often very symbolic. And for the King to sort of even metaphorically be willing to lend something to Mark Carney, I think says a lot. So we have that symbolism of a meeting. And then he meets with the British Prime Minister. There's again more discussions about trade and security partnerships between the two countries. We're at loggerheads right now with Britain over this trade agreement. We've been trying to sign one bits Bits of it are falling apart.

It wasn't the central point of this meeting. But anytime you can get two world leaders together face to face, even if they've known each other for years, I mean, Mr. Carney advised Mr. Stammer in politics, it's always good. And again, it just puts a new stamp on an old relationship. I mean, from what you're saying here, Stephanie, it sounds like these were relatively positive meetings with these international leaders and also big names to meet your first week in office, right? As prime minister, he seems to kind of, can I say, like be in his element here? Is that the kind of vibe you got? Yeah, this isn't foreign to him, right? So, you know,

in a different way, when Justin Trudeau became liberal leader, and then he became prime minister, it was noted repeatedly that Justin Trudeau grew up in this environment. It was not unusual to have foreign heads of state at dinner. But that was unique. Most political leaders, when they come into politics, they're domestically homegrown. And the moments in which they have to suddenly take on the mantle of like the head of a G7 nation engaging with other leaders, that can be intimidating, that can be challenging, that can be scary. For Mr. Carney, it's very obvious that it is neither intimidating nor challenging nor scary. Navigating these relationships though, as the head of government, as opposed to like a central banker or as opposed to a quasi-diplomat with the United Nations, that part of it is

different for him. Also different are the things like the photo op at Notre Dame or when we went to a callow and we'll talk about that trip a little later, you know, trying to watch him engage with the Rangers, the guys who help patrol the North, and some of those off-the-cuff retail politics moments. Clearly he is not used to that, and it is trying to figure out, you know, when somebody hands me like, oh, look, Prime Minister, we wanted to give you this gift, this mug, and he's, what do I do with this mug?

I don't know what to do with this mug. And he's, what do I do with this mug? I don't know what to do with this mug. So it's interesting. A little bit of politicking, maybe, that he needs to kind of learn then. He doesn't know how to do that stuff. And he's admitted it. He said it throughout the, I'm not a politician.

I'm not a politician. And that might be refreshing for a lot of people, but it comes with a very sharp learning curve. You alluded to something a little bit earlier earlier Stephanie, when talking about King Charles, about this idea of Canada's in this trade war with the US, the president has been threatening to annex us, and our friends haven't really seemed to be there to stand up for us. Was that addressed at all during these meetings? So Mr. Macron and Mr. Carney did a joint public statement before they had lunch.

Mr. Macron had some very nice things to say about Mr. Carney, and then he talked about the long-standing relationship with Canada. He talked about how we're better together, that we can better reinforce our own sovereignty together. Mr. Macron didn't really take on Trump publicly and say, hey, back off Canada, they're a sovereign nation, but diplomacy and political diplomacy is such that you need to read between the lines, right? That's the subtext of Mr. Macron's comments. Mr. Starmor

had similar comments about, you know, valuing the sovereignty of the two countries and really stressing that Canada is a sovereign nation. So I think there are lots of people who would like to see our allies be way stronger than that to actively say the words, something to the effect of, President Donald Trump, you cannot annex Canada, it is its own country. Mr. Carney has said that's not what he's looking for. We don't need another country to validate our sovereignty. We are sovereign. We don't need praise from another country.

We are proud in and of ourselves. His messaging is always in Canada, can stand on its own two feet. And the way it can do that is by demonstrating having these meetings, forging these partnerships and showing that it is sovereign. It doesn't need the United States to help make decisions or sign security agreements or buy military technology with any other country. How effectively true that is. You know, when the United States is woven through every element of geopolitics

I don't know, but that's the messaging for mr. Carney that you may want this but it's not what I want While we're talking about the states, of course We should point out prime minister Carney has not visited the US in this role And that's usually one of the first trips abroad for our leaders. What is Mark Carney said about that? He keeps using the words, I will speak to the US president when it is an appropriate time to do so. And so it begs the question, what would be the appropriate time to do so?

Should it have been the first call he made? Should it be when there's more something substantive that they can come away with? They need to really have an introductory call. Again, this is part of I think, Carney traveling in these circles for a very long time. So some of the diplomatic niceties that may be expected, it's clear that Donald Trump may also expect them, but Mr. Carney is not interested. He doesn't see the value in it. If there's no win in this conversation for Canada, why does he need to have it?

That's a very interesting point of view. It certainly backs away from the vibe that's been running through international relations since Donald Trump's victory, which is go kiss the ring. But I can imagine a world in which Mr. Carney, to use a verb that's become sort of politically relevant as a way, he does not want to get Zelensky'd. He does not want to go into the Oval Office for a photo op

and be publicly dressed down by the US president. Because let us recall, we are on the cusp. We are seconds away from a federal election. And so it becomes more difficult. It becomes because it becomes politically weaponized. We saw Mr. Trump say the other day, I'd rather deal with a liberal and the conservative guy doesn't like me. Well, yeah, he made those comments on Fox News.

Yeah, the conservative that's running is stupidly no friend of mine. I don't know. But he said negative things. So when he says negative things, I couldn't care less. I think it's easier to do actually with a liberal. So is that politically good or bad for Mr. Carney? hard to know. So why set yourself up for that happening in real time? And when Carney was elected just earlier this month with the Liberal leadership race,

he took quite a harsh tone against Trump's tariffs and annexation threats in his acceptance speech. The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country. Think about it. If they succeeded, they would destroy our way of life. Now that he's been prime minister for a week though, Stephanie, I guess how would you describe his current tone towards Trump?

He's reined it in some. He's dropped some of the political edge to it. He seems to be embracing this narrative now that is coming. Trump is a businessman. You have to deal with him like a businessman. He's not, you know, he has said things. Mr. Carney has been asked about certain things that Trump has said. He was asked about them and is swearing.

These are crazy. He's being crazy. And now, especially as he's trying to forge these new alliances with other countries, he seems to just be almost dismissive of the president. Like it's not being critical, it's not being strong, it's just being like this isn't real and I've got to deal with what I can deal with, which is trying to build these new relationships and forge alliances and sign partnerships and rebuild the Canadian economy looking inward. It's also worth noting, frankly, that when Mr. Carney was running for liberal leadership, he definitely

had access to the people like Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie, like former Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who had been engaged with Trump officials, but he hadn't been briefed in, right? He wouldn't have been read in at that point with what the government actually knows and what the government is actually doing. Those briefings didn't come until he won. And maybe it's, you know, once you get a broader picture of the information, what you understand the nitty gritty of the

trade talks, once you are a bit more connected to a flow of information, maybe that changes how publicly you're willing to respond because you don't want to derail something, you don't want to disclose too much. And so maybe you had a little bit more in public. We'll be back in a minute. So Stephanie, after Carney visited Paris and London earlier this week, he then flew to Iqaluit in Nunavut. He was there talking about Arctic sovereignty. He announced a new partnership with Australia related to this as well. I guess what stood out to you, Stephanie, about this last leg of that trip?

There were three spending announcements made on this trip. Six billion dollars for a new over the horizon radar program, 420 million I believe it was for new military operations in the north, and then 253 million dollars for more community infrastructure, effectively housing and other things in Iqaluit and none of it. All of those things would have been in the pipeline before he became prime minister. One does not become prime minister on Friday and by Monday or Tuesday have a six billion dollar deal on the table with Australia. But he got to announce them and so what stood out to me and I'll juxtapose it so he gets to announce them, no credit being given, of course, to the previous Trudeau administration there. That's fine. But then he was asked in the

media Q&A portion by a local reporter, a version of the classic sort of grassroots local question. Everybody comes up here, everybody promises us stuff, nobody ever follows through what's going to be different about you considering the Liberal government's record. And so in this moment, you have him announcing things that the previous government did, clearly, and then saying to this local reporter, it's not going to be like it used to be. This starts now. My role as prime minister is how do I allocate my time. So I allocate my time on my first official, if you will, trip within the country to come right here to Nunavut because I know the importance of the economic challenges, the scale of those challenges, as well as

the strategic importance. He's trying to make the pitch about how he's going to be a different kind of prime minister while basking in the glow of all this money he just announced. And I thought that was funny because it speaks to a funny tension for him on the election trail. Because one of the challenges for Mr. Kearney is will voters hold him at all responsible for anything they didn't like or liked during the nine, ten years of the Trudeau Liberal government? Or is he, for those inclined to vote Liberal or those who were dissatisfied with the Liberals previously, does he represent enough of a break? It's an interesting tension for him.

You talked a little earlier about how you can kind of see Carney, you know, learning to be a politician, kind of getting his feet wet when it comes to this. Were there any moments, I guess, from that part of the trip that stood out to you where you realized, oh yes, he is still learning how to do this a bit? So when we arrived in a Cali,et, we'd been arriving directly from London after a day in both Paris and London that seemed like it was a year's worth of time packed into a day.

And so by midday at Caliwet time, everyone was exhausted, and it was clearly starting to show. I'm sure is used to overnight flights between country X and country Y and flying, getting up first thing in the morning. Somebody referred to the flight we were on as the banker flight, the international banker flight where you leave late in the night Ottawa time and you arrive in European market first thing in the morning.

So he's used to that. But to be used to doing that at the punishing schedule that those trips are, which is physically you are moving from location to location to location. Every interaction is a different meeting. Every interaction is a different briefing. Every interaction is a different briefing. You are doing this on basically no sleep. You are doing this with a team around you who are all good people who are very committed to the cause and they're all very new.

By the time you get to a callowit, he was exhausted and it was obvious. He was stumbling. You know, his French is a bit of a sore spot. He was being asked questions in French, his French is a bit of a sore spot. He was, you know, being asked questions in French, completely misunderstanding what they were. He mispronounced the Premier's name. He was just, it was a lot. And you could just tell.

You could tell by the look on his face. So, you know, his team is going to have to get to know him. He's going to have to get to know himself and figure out a pace that works for him. Justin Trudeau was energized by this stuff. He loved it. He was an energizer bunny. Go, go, go, go, go. Perhaps Mr. Carney is not that. We don't know. And it's not meant to be a negative. Like, I really want to stress that. It's not a criticism that he was so tired. It's that this is a very different beast. And even, and I can just even speak personally, I've traveled, I've been on these kinds of trips for a very long time.

The pace of this one was exceptional. You know, perhaps the takeaway for his team will be, okay, maybe, you know, we need to slow it down a little bit to make sure by the end of it, he's still got the energy, he's still able to communicate and he's operating at his best. And this will be very interesting to watch as we go into an election, because the pace of an election is quite intense too, right? So we'll see how they deal with that. Carney did speak to reporters a lot this week, Stephanie, and I do want to ask you about one specific moment because this seemed to catch a lot of attention. This is when he was asked about his financial assets, which he just put into a blind

trust. You asked him a question and then CBC's Rosie Barton also followed up on that. Tell me what happened there. Sure, so I asked him a question, basically seeking more disclosure about what his assets were. And Mr. Carney clearly did not like that question. As soon as I started asking it, he rolled his eyes and his body posture changed, a little bit defensive. He starts off his answer to me saying,

look, Stephanie, and just the tone of it was, I don't like what you just asked me and I'm going to tell you, you know, I'm going to make my points and I really don't like this. And so the tone was very much there. I ask a follow-up question, seeking a little bit more information, trying to go back at him again, keeping my tone very even. And again, you get back this sort of look, you know, how dare you challenge me kind of vibe.

And then Rosie Barton comes in and she sort of challenges him again. He answered her by this odd turn of phrase he chose, which was look inside yourself. Look inside yourself, Rosemary. And the dismissiveness of it and then accusing her of asking the question to create conflict and coming at a place of it of ill will. coming at a place of it, of ill will. Your line of questioning is trying to invent new rules. I'm complying with the rules that the parliament has laid out and the responsibility of the ethics commissioner. That was a moment where it really made you wonder instantly, is this what happens when he gets challenged?

When you push him on something he doesn't want to hear, when it's a subject matter he doesn't want to talk about, can he handle that? Part of being the Prime Minister is being held accountable. That is very different than being the central banker, being the UN climate change envoy, even being like the chair of a board of a multi-billion dollar investment firm where the accountability piece generally happens more quietly or you've screwed up an investment and everybody knows you just lost a billion dollars and you know that's public. Political accountability parliamentary accountability is very different and if that's his response one wonders what's that gonna look like when he's challenged by president Donald Trump or in the house of commons by an opposition leader or on the debate stage in the federal elections because if he takes that how dare you tone.

Because if he takes that how dare you tone, well sir, you are the prime minister, you are seeking to be the prime minister, accountability for your decisions is a pillar of our democracy. Let me ask you about, I guess, the issue as a whole here, Stephanie, because we mentioned this, his financial assets, the fact that he's just put them into a blind trust. Can we unpack that a little bit? Why has this been an issue that we're talking about? The short answer really is that there exists in this country an ethics regime and rules for elected officials That are designed to have maximum transparency around their financial holdings so that everyone can be reassured That when there is a decision that they need to take that could influence those holdings

We know what the holdings are so that then the politician can recuse themselves from that decision. Or you can scrutinize it and say, hey, they just made an announcement on this thing, but they also happen to own a ton of stock in this company and look, the stock price just jumped. What's the deal with that? There is an additional level of that that is required for prime ministers and other senior public office holders where they actually can't even have those assets. They have to get rid of them, divest them, put them in a blind trust. The challenge with Mr. Carney is that he is making the leap from private sector to prime

minister. He is jumping over the middle part, which happens with most political leaders when they become leaders of political party, where they've already been a member of parliament. So the disclosure has already happened. You know what their asset holdings are. As they're making policy announcements, as they're signing deals, as they're doing whatever, you can sort of check against those and say, well, you can't really be signing that deal because you know, it's going to affect your stock or it's going to affect your real estate portfolio. With Mr. Carney, you have him running

throughout the liberal leadership to be prime minister, to be liberal leader and prime minister. You have him making policy announcements, and now you have him as prime minister signing things without anybody knowing what those conflicts are. So there's no way to know, is he in a conflict of interest? And that's the issue. And it is true, he has not broken any rules. He has not done anything wrong because the rules don't provide for this.

It is factually true that he got ahead of the process by, you know, he started the disclosure paperwork before he even won. He immediately put his assets into a blind trust upon, you know, becoming prime minister. But that's what the law tells him to do. He frames it like he did something extraordinary. No, he is now a public office holder. Your assets are into a blind trust. but he is still the public disclosure part. He's still tracking the same timeline.

So he will run through this and unless something changes, he will run through this entire election campaign as prime minister, as liberal leader, making platform and policy commitments to Canadians without any scrutiny over whether any of those also benefit him, his family, his holdings personally. So Stephanie, Carney is expected to call a snap election by this Sunday. So we are going to be in an election imminently. What has Carney been focused on since returning from his trip in order to get ready essentially

for this? I mean, again, he's got these two hats on, right? So he's still governing as prime minister. He's had a meeting with the Canada-U.S. business council, he's going to meet with the Canadian premiers, he'll have a meeting with Daniel Smith, the premier of Alberta, a unilateral one, he's going to make a housing announcement. So sort of laying some of the groundwork for his election again thematically you can almost see it's like Canada-U.S., domestic, premiers, housing, local community. So you know doing those things and then there's the business of getting ready for an election.

The liberals have to nominate a lot more candidates than they currently have, you know, get a platform ready, figure out a messaging strategy, figure out an attack strategy against Poliev, against the new Democrats. Mr. Carney has not spoken a lot about the NDP or the Bloc Québécois or the Green Party for that matter. So it'll be interesting to see how he,

where he sees them in the political orbit. I mean, they are factors in this election. And then figuring out I to some extent, what kind of direction will he be giving to cabinet ministers and to the government itself in terms of negotiating with Trump, because we do have, you know, tariffs are going into place, they're rolling out the April 2 deadline for the new round of tariffs from Trump is still very live. So I think trying to get some of those ducks in a row in terms of a strategy for Canada would be good

because he cannot be seen to be doing any of that or very limited amounts of that during an election. There is lots to watch for here. I'm sure we will talk to you very soon again, Stephanie. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. My pleasure. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms.

Our intern is Amber Ranssen. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. You can subscribe to The Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Thanks so much for listening.