Sawt Falasteen - Mark Carney: Canada's new PM charted unusual path to power

Mark Carney's path to the top job in Canadian politics has been unusual but, as he said when he launched his campaign to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, so are the circumstances.

"Our times are anything but ordinary," Carney told supporters in the Western city of Edmonton in January.

Carney has called the threats posed by US President Donald Trump "the most serious crisis of our lifetime."

The United States wants "our resources, our water, our land, our country," he said after being elected Sunday to replace Trudeau as leader of the governing Liberal Party.

Carney says his experience leading the Bank of Canada through the 2008-2009 financial crisis and heading the Bank of England through the turbulence that followed the 2016 Brexit vote equipped him for the moment.

- Unique background -

But he may not be prime minister for long.

A Canadian election is expected in weeks and current polls show a tight race between Carney's Liberals and the opposition Conservatives.

No matter how long he serves, his tenure will be unique.

Carney, who turns 60 on Sunday, is the first Canadian prime minister with no political experience. He has never held an elected public office or served in the cabinet.

He was born in Fort Smith, a small town in the Northwest Territories, where his parents were teachers, but he was raised in Edmonton, Alberta's capital.

Like many Canadians, he played hockey in his youth. He studied at Harvard in the United States and Oxford in England, and the initial part of his career saw him make a fortune as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, working in New York, London, Tokyo and Toronto.

Carney then joined the Canadian civil service, eventually being appointed governor of the Bank of Canada by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper in 2008.

In 2013, the government of then-British prime minister David Cameron tapped him to lead the Bank of England, making Carney the first non-Briton to lead the bank in its more than 300-year history.

- 'Boring' but 'reassuring' -

Daniel Beland, director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, described Carney as a "technocrat."

"He's a boring guy who in general doesn't have a lot of charisma," Beland said.

But he noted with Canada rattled by Trump's trade chaos and attacks on its sovereignty, rigorous competence with no flash may be appealing.

Carney presents "the image of a reassuring guy who knows what he is talking about," Beland said.

Lori Turnbull of Dalhousie University cautioned that Carney's potential struggles to connect with voters could prove a liability.

"He is unusually well-equipped to deal with economic crises" but "it's very hard to see how anybody would be successful in politics if you can't bring people on board with you," she told AFP.

The Conservatives, led by 45-year-old Pierre Poilievre, are running attack ads branding Carney as "sneaky" -- an early look at how they might plan to wage the campaign against him.

Carney is personally wealthy, spent significant parts of his career outside of Canada, worked at a major investment bank, and was chairman at one of Canada's largest corporations, Brookfield.

"The Conservatives are trying to cast him as an elite who doesn't understand what regular people go through. And I think if he can't communicate well, then he runs the risk of being typecast in that way," Turnbull said.

Climate change, and Carney's plans to address it, will also feature in the upcoming campaign.

"Carbon Tax Carney" had emerged as a favorite Tory attack line, seeking to tie Carney to an unpopular Trudeau policy that saw some households face a marginal tax to offset emissions.

Climate has been central to the latter part of Carney's career, but he said as prime minister he would focus on investment-led solutions, like green technology, that create profit and jobs.

"Very much we are emphasizing the commercial aspect of it," he said recently in an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast.

"This is where the world is going."

A.AbuSaada--SF-PST