Will Mark Carney’s early missteps cost him crucial votes?

Jagmeet Singh says Brookfield avoided paying more than $5 billion in taxes by using a tax haven during Mark Carney's tenure as chair. Judy Trinh reports.

As Mark Carney enters week three of his campaign to be prime minister, the festering issues of foreign interference and corporate tax havens have exposed vulnerabilities in the Liberal Party and its leader, as he swings through British Columbia.

Last Sunday, Carney stepped off his newly branded Liberal plane with his wife, Diana Fox Carney, at his side. She would be the face of a new strategy to show a more personal side of the former Bank of Canada governor and share his public service origin story.

At her first rally in Winnipeg, Fox told the audience the couple had met overseas in the United Kingdom, while they were both grad students. On their first date, Fox said Carney told her he was committed to moving back to Canada to work in the public service.

That, Fox said, showed her that her future husband was a man of “unusual conviction, integrity, values and deep belief,” but that his “romantic side” needed work.

The spectre of foreign interference

On March 31, day nine of the campaign, the issue of foreign interference put Carney’s values under the microscope in his handling of Markham-Unionville candidate Paul Chiang.

In a report published by Chinese-language media, Ming Pao News, Chiang suggested that people could collect a bounty from Beijing by turning a Conservative rival over to the Toronto Chinese Consulate. The article was published on January 21, 2025. Prior to running for the Conservatives, Joe Tay, a Canadian citizen born in Hong Kong, was a social media broadcaster who was critical of China’s curtailing of civil rights in the Special Administrative Region. In December, the Hong Kong police alleged he was inciting secession from abroad and put a bounty of $1 million HKD or the equivalent of $184,000 CDN for information leading to Tay’s arrest.

Video has surfaced of Chiang speaking in English to ethnic media behind a podium imprinted with the crest of the House of Commons. Sources CTV News spoke to said that Chiang’s news conference was held inside his Markham constituency office.

Chiang’s comments were made in January before Carney was chosen to lead the Liberal Party. Five days after he was sworn in as prime minister, on March 19, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly confirmed that China had executed four Canadians it had imprisoned for alleged drug offences.

Markham, as reported by CTV News, is also where two alleged illegal Chinese stations were located.

“It is heinous in my opinion,” said former national security analyst Dennis Molinaro. China does not recognize dual citizenship, and it’s well known, Molinaro says, that Beijing tries to repatriate people to face trial. “(The Chinese Communist Party) does it regularly and they do it often, which is why they (people) are scared – which is why this is troubling.”

In the summer of 2023, a community watchdog group – The Markham Coalition for Democracy – was formed out of concern the city was “ground zero” for Chinese interference, which it feared had meddled at all levels of government, from the election of school board officials to councillors to provincial and federal parliamentarians.

Despite this context, Carney called Chiang’s comments “offensive” and a “terrible lapse in judgment” but did not remove him from the party.

When asked by reporters how Chiang could represent his Markham constituents, which, according to Statistics Canada, consists of 70 percent people of colour, with more than half being ethnic Chinese, Carney continued to defend Chiang by citing his previous record of community service as an officer with York Regional Police and his apology.

“Mr. Chiang has apologized directly to me. He apologized directly to the individual. He has a long record of service,” Carney also said that Chiang continued to have his confidence.

That did not stop 40 global organizations that promote democratic rights in Hong Kong from issuing a joint demand calling on Carney to fire his candidate. Hong Kong Watch even called on the RCMP to investigate Chiang for alleged crimes under the foreign interference law, passed by the Liberal government last year.

Under pressure from pro-democracy groups, but not his leader, Chiang resigned five minutes before midnight last Monday.

For Molinaro, the Chiang incident reveals a crack in the armour of the Liberal Party.

“Once the issue of Donald Trump is dying down or moving to one side, we’re back to the same issues that we’ve had with this party and the government for the past 10 years. The issues are coming up to the surface because they haven’t been dealt with,” Molinaro said.

Trump’s tariffs divert Carney’s campaign

On April 2, Carney returned to Ottawa to step back into his government role to address President Trump’s Liberation Day. The prime minister was not given any advanced notice from the White House, but Canada was left off the list of countries which would face reciprocal tariffs that Trump displayed in a news conference. However, Trump’s auto tariffs on foreign vehicles were still meted out, and Canada retaliated with 25 percent tariffs on U.S. autos, with deductions for Canadian and Mexican parts.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Canada’s countermeasures would impact an estimated $35.6 billion worth of American vehicles and parts annually.

Carney’s campaign has now been diverted twice by Trump’s tariffs in two weeks. While that has forced organizers to rearrange his schedule, it has also given Carney a break from reporters eager to follow up on tough questions related to foreign interference and his work in the private sector.

Carney’s experience as governor of both the central banks of Canada and England has been touted as credentials which position him as the best candidate to negotiate with Donald Trump, but it’s his other previous job as chair of Brookfield Asset Management that is being put under the microscope.

Carney resigned from Brookfield’s board in January to run for the Liberal leadership. Before that, he was head of impact investment at the company and managed two green funds worth $25 billion. Most of Brookfield’s core assets were registered to a Bermuda address, which housed a bike shop on the first floor.

Unanswered questions about Brookfield

New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh, who is leading a party that is collapsing in the polls, seized on the opportunity to point out that scrutiny of public records allowed Brookfield to avoid paying more than $5.3 billion in taxes during Carney’s tenure.

“What does that mean? Well, that’s 50,000 nurses that could have been hired. That’s streetcars, that’s buses, that’s public infrastructure, not just for the federal government but also for the provincial government. This is lost revenue,” said Singh.

“If you can make a profit in Canada, you should pay your taxes in Canada.”

During a news conference in Montreal on April 4, CTV News asked Carney if he felt it was ethical for Brookfield and other companies to use tax havens to avoid paying taxes. Carney did not directly answer the questions of ethics, but reiterated that he was no longer at Brookfield and that the company followed the rules.

“This follows their arrangements. This follows the rules, including the tax rules of this country (and) other countries. And the structure is organized so that Canadian pension funds can get the most benefit for pensioners, which are teachers and retired first responders and public servants.”

Earlier in the campaign, on March 26, while standing at the base of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Carney said that he understands how the “world” and these corporate structures work. He said, surrounded by approximately two dozen unionized workers, that he would have “the ability to put in place all of the necessary rules to ensure that the appropriate taxes are paid here in Canada.”

In many of campaign speeches, Carney points out that Poilievre is a career politician. The 45-year-old politician was first elected as a member of Parliament in 2004, 21 years ago.

To fight back, Poilievre, who has seen his double-digit lead evaporate since Carney took over from Justin Trudeau, uses Carney’s own words to paint his rival as an elitist.

“He thinks that taxes are just for the little people, not for big shot bankers like him. This is exactly the wrong kind of experience we need in a prime minister…He says he knows how the world works. He knows how to make it work for him and against you,” Poilievre said at a news conference held at Maisons Laprise, a Quebec company that builds prefabricated homes on March 26.

A week later, in a room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, with the corporate skyline of Montreal as the backdrop, Carney said that it would be a priority for his government to ensure that “companies are paying their fair share of taxes” but did not provide a timeline or details as to what the Liberals would do.