VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Mark Carney, the first non-Brit to run the Bank of England since it was founded in 1694 and the former head of Canada\u2019s central bank, said Thursday he is entering the race to be Canada\u2019s next prime minister following the resignation of Justin Trudeau.
\nTrudeau will remain prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.
\nCarney, 59, is a highly educated economist with Wall Street experience, widely credited with helping Canada dodge the worst of the 2008 crisis while heading the country\u2019s central bank. He also helped the UK manage Brexit during his 7-year tenure as governor of the Bank of England.
\n\u201cThe prime minister and his team let their attention on the economy wander too often,\u201d Carney said in Edmonton, Alberta, of Trudeau where he made his announcement. \u201cI won\u2019t lose focus.\u201d
\nThe front-runners for the Liberal Party leadership are Carney and ex-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose abrupt resignation last month forced Trudeau\u2019s exit.
\nThe next Liberal leader could be the shortest-tenured prime minister in the country\u2019s history. All three opposition parties have vowed to bring down the Liberals\u2019 minority government in a no-confidence vote after parliament resumes on March 24. An election is expected this spring.
\nCarney said he knows the Liberals are \u201cwell behind,\u201d but said he would win the general election.
\nTrudeau announced his resignation Jan. 6 after facing an increasing loss of support both within his party and in the country.
\nCarney quickly launched into an attack on opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who the polls show has a large lead over the Liberals.
\nHe also highlighted the threats by US President-elect Donald Trump, who has said Canada should become the 51st state and has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods.
\n\u201cThis is no time for life-long politicians such as Pierre Poilievre,\u201d he said. \u201cSending Pierre Poilievre to negotiate with Donald Trump is the worst possible idea.\u201d
\nPoilievre painted Trudeau, Carney and Freeland with the same brush during a news conference in Vancouver earlier Thursday.
\nHe blamed the Liberals for high taxes and slammed the government for suggesting it may put tariffs on energy exports to the US, saying it would hurt the oil-rich province of Alberta.
\n\u201cNot only have the Liberals weakened our economy, now they\u2019re resorting to dividing our people,\u201d said Poilievre. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to be divided; we need to be united.\u201d
\nA major plank in Poilievre\u2019s campaign has been removing the carbon tax, introduced by the Trudeau government as a fee on the amount of carbon emitted by fuels like gas.
\nCarney said if the carbon tax is removed, it should be replaced by something that is \u201cat least if not more effective\u201d in having the same impact of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while making Canadian companies more competitive and creating jobs.
\nAn official close to Freeland said she would scrap the consumer carbon tax and instead make big polluters pay. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of her announcement.
\nWhen Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, was named the first foreigner to serve as governor of the Bank of England it won bipartisan praise in Britain.
\n\u201cI have helped manage multiple crises and I have helped save two economies,\u201d Carney said. \u201cI know how business works, and I know how to make it work for you.\u201d
\nMore recently he served as the UN\u2019s special envoy for climate change and led an alliance of international financial institutions pushing for carbon-cutting measures. Carney has long championed the notion that making companies accountable for their impact on the planet is the first step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
\nWhen Carney led Canada\u2019s central bank he was credited with keeping money flowing through the Canadian economy by acting quickly in cutting interest rates to their lowest level ever of 1 percent, working with Canadian bankers to sustain lending through the crisis and, critically, letting the public know rates would remain low so they would keep borrowing. He was the first central banker to commit to keep them at a historic-low level for a definite time, a step the US Federal Reserve would follow.
\nLike other central bankers, Carney is a former Goldman Sachs executive. He worked for 13 years in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto, before being appointed deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. He has both financial industry and government credentials.
\nHe has long been interested in entering politics and becoming prime minister but lacks political experience. The Liberal Party has tried to recruit him for years.
\n\u201cBeing a politician is quite different from being a policy adviser or a central banker,\u201d said Daniel B\u00e9land, a political science professor at Montreal\u2019s McGill University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Mark Carney, the first non-Brit to run the Bank of England since it was founded in 1694 and the former head of Canada\u2019s central bank, said Thursday he is entering the race to be Canada\u2019s next prime minister following the resignation of Justin Trudeau. Trudeau will remain prime minister until a new …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75780,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75764\/revisions\/75780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}