Mark Carney

Mark Joseph Carney (born March 16, 1965) is a Canadian politician and economist serving as the 24th prime minister of Canada and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada since 2025. He previously served as the eighth governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and the 120th governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.
Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1988, then studied at the University of Oxford, where he earned a master's degree in 1993 and a doctorate in 1995. He held various roles at Goldman Sachs before joining the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor in 2003. In 2004, he was named as senior associate deputy minister for the Department of Finance Canada. In 2007, Carney was named Governor of the Bank of Canada, where he was responsible for Canadian monetary policy during the global financial crisis. He led the Canadian central bank until 2013, when he was appointed as Governor of the Bank of England, where he led the British central bank's response to Brexit and the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After leaving central banking, Carney served as chair and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management and as chair of the board of directors for Bloomberg L.P. He was also appointed the United Nations (UN) special envoy for climate action and finance. Carney also worked as one of many informal advisors to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau during the COVID-19 pandemic and was made chair of the Liberal Party's economic growth taskforce in September 2024. In January 2025, following Trudeau's announcement of his resignation, he announced his intention to seek the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, winning a landslide victory in March. Shortly after winning the Liberal Party leadership election and becoming Prime Minister, Carney advised the governor general to dissolve Parliament and trigger a snap election.
Mark Joseph Carney was born on March 16, 1965, in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He is the son of Verlie Margaret (née Kemper), a stay-at-home mother, and Robert James Martin Carney, a high school principal. Three of his four grandparents were Irish, from Aughagower in County Mayo. When Carney was six, his family moved to Edmonton, Alberta. His father was the Liberal candidate for Edmonton South in the 1980 Canadian federal election, placing second. His mother returned to university to pursue a career in education when Carney was ten. He has three siblings – an older brother and sister, Seán and Brenda, and a younger brother Brian.
Carney attended St. Francis Xavier High School, before studying at Harvard University on a partial scholarship and financial aid. During his Harvard years, he was backup goalie for the varsity ice hockey team and was a roommate of future NHL general manager Peter Chiarelli and former ice hockey player Mark Benning. He graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree with high honours in economics. He then undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford at St Peter's College and Nuffield College, where he received Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degrees in the economics in 1993 and 1995, respectively. His master's thesis was titled "Competitive advantage and the advantage of competition: a theoretical analysis of national champions, learning-by-doing and spillovers", and his doctoral thesis was titled "The dynamic advantage of competition". His doctoral advisor was Margaret Meyer. He was co-captain of the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club alongside fellow Canadian David Lametti.
Carney spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs and worked in their Boston, London, New York City, Tokyo, and Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included co-head of sovereign risk, executive director for emerging debt capital markets, and managing director for investment banking. He worked on South Africa's post-apartheid venture into international bond markets, and was involved in Goldman's work with the 1998 Russian financial crisis.
In 2003, Carney left Goldman Sachs to join the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor. One year later, he was recruited to the Department of Finance Canada as senior associate deputy minister, beginning on November 15, 2004.
From November 2004 to October 2007, Carney was the senior associate deputy minister and G7 deputy in the Department of Finance Canada. He served under two finance ministers: Ralph Goodale, a Liberal; and Jim Flaherty, a Conservative. During this time, Carney oversaw the Government of Canada's controversial plan to tax income trusts at source. Carney was also the lead on the federal government's profitable sale of its 19 per cent stake in Petro-Canada.
In October 2007, Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada. He immediately left his position at the Department of Finance to become an advisor to the outgoing governor, David Dodge, before formally assuming Dodge's position on February 1, 2008. Carney was selected over Paul Jenkins, the senior deputy governor, who had been considered the front-runner to succeed Dodge.
Carney took on this role at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis. At the time of his appointment, Carney was the youngest central bank governor among the G8 and G20 nations.
Carney's actions as Governor of the Bank of Canada are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the financial crisis.
The epoch-making feature of Carney's tenure as governor remains the decision to cut the overnight rate by 50 basis points in March 2008, one month after his appointment. While the European Central Bank delivered a rate increase in July 2008, Carney anticipated the leveraged-loan crisis would trigger global contagion. When policy rates in Canada hit the effective lower bound, the central bank combated the crisis with the non-standard monetary tool "conditional commitment" in April 2009 to hold the policy rate for at least one year, in a boost to domestic credit conditions and market confidence. Output and employment began to recover from mid-2009, in part thanks to monetary stimulus. The Canadian economy outperformed those of its G7 peers during the crisis, and Canada was the first G7 nation to have both its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment recover to pre-crisis levels.
The Bank of Canada's decision to provide substantial additional liquidity to the Canadian financial system, and its unusual step of announcing a commitment to keep interest rates at their lowest possible level for one year, appear to have been significant contributors to Canada's weathering of the crisis.
The commitment to ultra-low lending rates led to a spike in housing prices and household debt. In April 2012, Carney acknowledged there were "issues in some segments of the housing market" and some properties in Canada were "probably overvalued" but he was not overly concerned. He stated low-interest rates were not to blame but the onus was on individuals who take out the loans, the banks, and the federal government's mortgage lending rules. Before Carney left for the Bank of England, there were calls to raise rates as Canadians were holding record-level debt and the housing market was overheated.
Canada's risk-averse fiscal and regulatory environment is also cited as a factor. In 2009 a Newsweek columnist wrote, "Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize."
Carney earned various accolades for his leadership during the financial crisis: he was named one of Financial Times's "Fifty who will frame the way forward" and of Time Magazine's 2010 Time 100. In May 2011, Reader's Digest named him "Editor's Choice for Most Trusted Canadian". In October 2012, Carney was named "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012" by the editors of Euromoney magazine.
In March 2025, former prime minister Stephen Harper stated in a Conservative Party fundraising letter that Carney was not involved in the daily management of Canada's economy during the global recession, and Carney was "undermining former finance minister Jim Flaherty's legacy."
Carney was chairman of the Bank for International Settlements' Committee on the Global Financial System from July 2010 until January 2012.
Carney was a member of the Group of Thirty, an international body of leading financiers and academics, and of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum. Carney attended the annual meetings of the Bilderberg Group in 2011, 2012 and 2019.
On November 4, 2011, Carney was named chairman of the Basel-based Financial Stability Board, which coordinates international financial regulatory authorities. In a statement, Carney credited his appointment to "the strong reputation of Canada's financial system and the leading role that Canada has played in helping to develop many of the most important international reforms".
The three-year term was a part-time commitment, allowing Carney to complete his term at the Bank of Canada. While there had been no indication of his priorities as chairman, on the day of his appointment the Board published a list of 29 banks that were considered sufficiently large as to pose a risk to the global economy should they fail. At his first press conference as Chairman of the FSB in January 2012, Carney laid out his key priorities for the board. Carney's term ended in 2018, while he was in his next post at the Bank of England.
On November 26, 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced the appointment of Carney as Governor of the Bank of England. He succeeded Sir Mervyn King on July 1, 2013. He was the first non-Briton to be appointed to the role since the Bank of England was established in 1694. The Bank of England was given additional powers from 2013, such as the ability to set bank capital requirements.
Before taking up the post, Carney had already indicated disagreement with the Bank of England's Executive Director of Financial Stability Andy Haldane, specifically on leverage ratios and bank break-ups. He has been quoted as saying that Haldane does not have a "proper understanding of the facts" on bank regulation. He was thought to have been offered a total pay package of about £624,000 ($844,000 USD) per year, approximately £100,000 ($135,000 USD) more per year than his predecessor.
Shortly before Carney took up the post, the Bank of England took up the financial regulation duties after Financial Services Authority. Carney's changes to the Bank's operating procedures helped modernize the institution by making much more media appearances than predecessors, including controversial announcements during two referendums. Carney implemented a policy called "forward guidance" in which the Bank would not raise interest rates if unemployment was above 7% to try and encourage business lending. This policy, which contained many conditions, or, "caveats", would later be considered confusing and complicated.
In May 2014, Carney warned the UK's heated housing market was the biggest risk to financial stability, and he was considering providing advice on the Help to Buy mortgage scheme, which some believed was contributing to housing inflation. He stated UK housing prices and the lack of affordability of housing in the United Kingdom was due to limited supply, and noted twice as many homes were built in Canada than in the UK, although Canada had half the population. (In 2013, 140,000 homes were built in the UK and 185,000 in Canada). Carney stated foreign cash buyers in the London market were beyond his control but he believed they did not pose a significant risk to the rest of the country. Carney assured the public the Bank was monitoring rising property prices and large-value mortgages to avoid debt overhang, destabilizing the economy.
In 2014, Carney warned that if the Scottish independence referendum was successful, the new country would likely not be able to continue using the pound sterling without ceding some powers to the UK.
In 2015, Carney changed the number of yearly interest rate meetings from 12 to eight and ordered minutes to be published during the announcements.
Before the 2016 Brexit referendum, Carney warned that leaving the European Union could cause a recession. After the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, he made another public announcement shortly after the result supporting a departure, he announced that the financial system would operate normally to assuage public concerns. Afterwards, the bank cut interest rates in half from 0.5% to 0.25% and restarted quantitative easing. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, as Carney was set to leave the governorship in March 2020, the bank cut interest rates by 0.5% to protect against the pandemic's expected economic shocks.
In 2020, Carney served as one of many informal advisors to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, advising him on the government's COVID-19 economic response. Carney reportedly advised Trudeau on Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Trudeau looking to Carney to help Canada get out of its recession. Due to this, Carney was speculated to potentially become Minister of Finance, and later, Canadian prime minister if Trudeau resigned.
In October 2020, Carney was vice chairman at Brookfield Asset Management, where he led the firm's environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact fund investment strategy. In February 2021, Carney retracted an earlier claim that the $600 billion Brookfield Asset Management portfolio was carbon neutral. He had based his claim on the fact that Brookfield has a large renewable energy portfolio and "all the avoided emissions that come with that". The claim was criticized as accounting tricks because avoided emissions do not counteract the emissions from investments in coal and other fossil fuels responsible for Brookfield's carbon footprint of about 5,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
In 2020, Carney launched the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets—an initiative to increase trading of voluntary carbon offsets— with Bill Winters as Group Chief Executive. The TSVCM is sponsored by the Institute of International Finance. Taskforce members include more than "40 leaders from six continents with backgrounds across the carbon market value chain", including representatives from the Bank of America, BlackRock, Bloomberg's New Energy Finance, BNP Paribas, BP, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Tata Steel, Total, IHS Markit, and LSE. In a December 3, 2020 Financial Times article, Carney said that the voluntary global carbon offset market was an "imperative" to help reduce emissions. The Times article cited Carney saying London would likely host the "new pilot market for voluntary carbon offsets" that could be "set up" by December 2021.
In February 2021, Carney joined the board of fintech company Stripe. Carney helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. He acts as the group's Co-Chair. Since 2022, Carney has also been an advisor to Watershed, a climate tech company founded by Stripe alumni that proposes to be "the platform companies need to succeed in the climate economy". In August 2023, Carney was named by Michael Bloomberg as chair of the new board of directors for Bloomberg L.P. as part of a broader reshuffle of the company's leadership.
In September 2024, Carney became a special adviser and chair of the Liberal task force on economic growth. Shortly after the appointment, it was revealed Brookfield Asset Management had solicited the federal government for $10 billion in funds as part of $50 billion Canada-only asset fund. Carney did not need to follow standard ethical disclosures mandatory for prime ministerial advisors because he was employed by the Liberal Party rather than the Prime Minister's Office.
In December 2024, Carney advised shareholders in Brookfield to approve moving the companies headquarters to the US.
According to Carney, in 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Carney—who was then governor of the Bank of Canada—if he would join the Conservative government as minister of finance. Carney declined, stating in a February 2025 interview with the CBC that he felt it "wasn't appropriate" for him to proceed with the offer because he felt it was not right to "go directly from being governor into elective politics."
Carney was approached by the Liberal Party to run for leader in their 2013 leadership election. He ultimately declined to do so.
As he prepared to step down as governor of the Bank of England, Carney was appointed as United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance in March 2020. In January 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Carney to the position of finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow. At that time the conference was scheduled for November 2020, but it was later postponed to November 2021.
In 2021, Carney spoke at the Liberal Party policy convention, declaring his support of the party but stopping short of pledging to run under its banner. Later that year, he ruled himself out as a candidate in the then-speculated 2021 Canadian federal election, owing to his COP26 commitments.
Carney endorsed Catherine McKenney's candidacy for mayor of Ottawa in the 2022 mayoral election.
In October 2023, he endorsed the UK Labour Party's Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to be the next chancellor of the exchequer in a video following Reeves' speech at the Labour Party conference that year. Following Labour victory the 2024 election, Carney was part of a taskforce which saw the creation of a British National Wealth Fund.
On September 9, 2024, Carney was named by Justin Trudeau to chair the Liberal Party of Canada's leader's Task Force on Economic Growth. His name was briefly mentioned upon the resignation of Chrystia Freeland as a possible candidate for finance minister in Trudeau's ministry.
On January 16, 2025, Carney officially announced that he was running in the 2025 Liberal Party of Canada leadership election. Carney also announced that he stepped down from all executive, board and advisory positions that he was part of in order to focus on his leadership campaign. By February 9, his campaign had raised more than $1.9 million in donations from over 11,000 people and received endorsements from 66 Liberal caucus members. Carney won on the first ballot with over 85.9% of the vote, making him the leader of the Liberal Party. His margin of victory surpassed Justin Trudeau's 2013 margin, winning all 343 electoral districts.
On March 14, 2025, five days after winning the leadership election, Carney was sworn in as the 24th prime minister of Canada, along with the 30th Canadian Ministry. Upon taking the oath of office, he became the first Canadian prime minister born in any of the territories and the third born west of Ontario (after Joe Clark and Kim Campbell). He is the second prime minister to have earned a PhD, after William Lyon Mackenzie King. Additionally, he is the first to have never served in prior elected office, and the first since John Turner not to be sitting in the House of Commons at time of appointment.
In his first act as prime minister, Carney signed a prime ministerial directive to end the consumer carbon tax by April 1, while ensuring that April's carbon rebate continues. The directive was affirmed by an order in council signed by Governor General Mary Simon.
Carney's first foreign visits were to France and the United Kingdom on March 17 to strengthen mutual security and sovereignty.
Carney was widely expected to call a federal parliamentary election for late April or early May 2025, ahead of the required election date in October. On March 22, The Liberal Party announced that Carney would contest the riding of Nepean, located within Ottawa, in the election; ridings in Alberta had been floated given his personal connection to the province, particularly Edmonton, as were safe Liberal seats in Toronto and Ottawa. On March 23, Carney visited Governor General Mary Simon and asked to dissolve parliament and call an election for April 28.
During the 2023 Global Progress Action Summit, Carney advocated for progressives to build "health care, infrastructure, schools, opportunity, sustainability and prosperity". Carney was noted for using "masters of our own house"—in French, maîtres chez nous—a phrase associated with the Quiet Revolution.
In 2011, Carney referred to the Occupy Wall Street protests as "entirely constructive", citing frustrations being felt "particularly in the United States" over inequality and increasing CEO–worker pay gaps. In December 2016, Carney warned of the societal risk of "staggering wealth inequalities" in a Roscoe Lecture at Liverpool John Moores University: "The proportion of the wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans increased from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2012 ... Globally, the share of wealth held by the richest 1% in the world rose from one-third in 2000 to one-half in 2010."
On August 23, 2019, Carney delivered a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 2019 annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium entitled "The Growing Challenges for Monetary Policy in the current International Monetary and Financial System". Carney said that the "widespread use of the US dollar"—the dominant currency pricing—"in trade invoicing, in place of the currency of either the producer or the importer", has had a "destablilizing" effect on the global economy. About 50 per cent of international trade relies on the US dollar as the "currency of choice". This represents "five times greater than the US's share in world goods imports, and three times its share in world exports". Dominant currency pricing is not problematic when there is "synchronized growth" globally, Carney said. When "the tide is rising in America while receding elsewhere", the system needs to be revamped. Carney cited an article by Markus Brunnermeier, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau on the potential role of digital currency area (DCA) in redefining the international monetary system.
Speaking just hours after US President Donald Trump posted a tweet blaming Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's policies for creating fears of an economic recession and threatening China with more retaliatory tariffs, Carney urged central banks to collaborate in replacing the US dollar as reserve currency. He cautioned against choosing another new hegemonic reserve currency like the renminbi and suggested instead, a "new Synthetic Hegemonic Currency" (SHC), such as Libra, which could potentially be provided "through a network of central bank digital currencies", that would decrease the US dollar's "domineering influence" on trade worldwide.
On December 2, 2020, Carney delivered the first of four Reith Lectures—the BBC's flagship annual series. In "How We Get What We Value – From Moral to Market Sentiments", he said society had come to esteem financial value over human value and moved from market economies to market societies. The series covers a trio of crises: credit, Covid and climate.
Carney also proposed scrapping the capital gains tax increase if elected Liberal leader and appointed prime minister, run a fiscal deficit, and balance the federal government's operational spending.
Carney warned many times that Brexit was expected to negatively influence the UK economy. Consequently, Brexit activists accused him of making statements favouring the UK's continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the British EU-membership referendum. He replied that he felt it was his duty to speak up on such issues.
In September 2018, Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the Exchequer, confirmed speculation that Carney would remain as Governor until January 2020, in order to ensure a "smooth" transition after the UK was set to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, a departure deadline that was missed.
In November 2018, Carney warned that large parts of the British economy were not ready for a no-deal Brexit. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today program, Carney explained that fewer than half of businesses had initiated contingency plans.
In February 2019, speaking about the global economy, Carney provided a less negative perspective on Brexit, stating that globalization has resulted in "imbalances of democracy and sovereignty", and that Brexit "is the first test of a new global order and could prove the acid test of whether a way can be found to broaden the benefits of openness while enhancing democratic accountability".
Carney also said that the increase in the perception that a no-deal Brexit is likely is "evidenced by betting odds and financial market asset pricing", resulting in the UK now having "the highest FX (foreign exchange) implied volatility, the highest equity risk premium and lowest real yields of any advanced economy."
In 2025, Carney promised to spend 2% of Canada's GDP on defence (the NATO target) by the end of 2030.
During the 2025 Liberal Party Leadership Race, and in light of aggressive actions taken by the United States under the second presidency of Donald Trump, Carney said that he supported deepening relationships with fellow Commonwealth countries Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.
Carney has often advocated for environmental sustainability. He was appointed as a United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change in 2019. In March 2021, Carney stated that in Canada there is a "huge economic opportunity" in the transition to a sustainable economy with reduced carbon emissions. He says that it is time to listen to scientists that have long been warning about the risks posed by climate change. Carney had initially supported the consumer carbon tax as implemented in 2019, but stated in a May 2024 Senate committee hearing that the tax had "served a purpose up until now."
In a January 2025 interview with Jon Stewart, Carney attributed much of Canada's emissions to the oil industry, which he argued must become cleaner rather than ordinary Canadians changing their lifestyles. During his Liberal leadership campaign, Carney proposed replacing the existing consumer carbon tax with an incentive program to reward green choices, while keeping tax on large industrial emitters. He also promised to introduce a "carbon border-adjustment" to penalize high-polluting foreign imports.
In a March 2024 op-ed in The Globe and Mail, Carney advocated for a low-carbon housing policy favouring densification over sprawl. He argued that it should be easier for a homebuilder to densify by eliminating unit maximums, abolishing parking minimums and allowing taller buildings and more density near transit lines.
The title of Carney's DPhil thesis is The Dynamic Advantage of Competition.
Carney published the book Value(s) Building a Better World for All in 2021. It was positively reviewed by John Ivison for the National Post and by Will Hutton for The Guardian but panned by Philip Aldrick for The Times. Carney's next book, The Hinge: Time to Build an Even Better Canada, is expected to be released on May 13, 2025.
Carney met British economist Diana Fox, who is also active in various environmental and social justice causes, while studying at the University of Oxford. They were married in July 1994 while he was finishing his doctoral thesis. They have four children and lived in Toronto before moving to the Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood of Ottawa and then moving to London in 2013. They moved back to Ottawa when Carney left his role at the Bank of England in 2020.
Carney's younger brother Brian lives in Northern Ireland. His brother-in-law is Robin Cayzer, 3rd Baron Rotherwick, to whom his wife's sister is married. He is also godfather to the son of fellow politician Chrystia Freeland, who nevertheless ran against him in the 2025 Liberal Party leadership election.
Carney is a Catholic, and was named the most influential Catholic in Britain by The Tablet in 2015. He speaks French but has described his proficiency as "far from perfect." He is a triple Canadian, British, and Irish citizen, however shortly before becoming Canadian Prime Minister in March 2025, he revealed that he had started the process of formally renouncing his British and Irish citizenships to signify his commitment to Canada.
Carney has distant relatives in Liverpool and is a supporter of the city's football team Everton FC, though his wife supports Arsenal FC. He is also a supporter of the Edmonton Oilers and the Edmonton Elks. He completed the 2015 London Marathon in 3 hours, 31 minutes, and 22 seconds, marking a 17-minute improvement on his time at the 2011 Ottawa Marathon.