Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to join Liberal Party as special adviser

Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney will be joining the Liberal Party as a special adviser.

In an official press release on Monday, the party says Carney will serve as the chair of a leader’s task force on economic growth.

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“As chair of the leader’s task force on economic growth, Mark’s unique ideas and perspectives will play a vital role in shaping the next steps in our plan to continue to grow our economy and strengthen the middle class, and to urgently seize new opportunities for Canadian jobs and prosperity in a fast-changing world,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement.

This summer, Trudeau confirmed he held talks with Carney about the possibility of joining the Liberal government.

"I have been talking with Mark Carney for years now about getting him to join federal politics," Trudeau told reporters in July. "He would be an outstanding addition at a time when Canadians need good people to step up in politics."

Carney is scheduled to attend the Liberal Party caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C. on Tuesday to speak to MPs about the economy. Some members of the party say they are looking forward to meeting with him.

"I think it's going to be very helpful to have a perspective that's from outside of politics, that is someone that is esteemed in the space of economic leadership," Indigenous Services minister Patty Hajdu said Monday following the announcement. 

Speaking to reporters in Nanaimo on Monday, Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer responded to the news saying the appointment is "just a smoke and mirrors gimmick."

"At the end of the day, Mark 'carbon tax' Carney loves the same policies that Justin Trudeau has imposed on Canadians,” Scheer said. “They're basically the same people. Out of touch elites that believe that they know better than hardworking Canadians.”

The former central bank governor — who now works as the head of transition investing for Brookfield Asset Management, and as a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance — has fielded rumours for years that he's after Trudeau's job.

He's thrown cold water on the speculation several times, however, insisting he supports the prime minister. He told CTV's Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an interview in January that Trudeau will still be the Liberal leader going into the next federal election, currently slated for October 2025.

Kapelos also asked whether his ideas about the kinds of policies the federal government could pursue means he may be interested in a cabinet position in the Trudeau government.

"Well, look, you don't just hand out positions as cabinet ministers, but you do out hand out gratuitous advice, which is what I've been doing," he said at the time. "And look, I care. This is my country, I care deeply about it."

A former executive at Goldman Sachs, Carney was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada in 2008, amid the global financial crisis.

He remains the second-youngest Bank of Canada governor in history.

By that time, he had also done a brief stint as the central bank's deputy governor and with the federal government's finance department.

By 2009, while lauding Canada for how well it weathered the prior year's financial crisis compared to other countries, Carney pushed for others to follow suit, and called for widespread reforms to the world's financial system.

Carney would later be largely credited for helping steer Canada through the global crisis.

During his tenure as Canada's central banker, Carney also took on several high-profile appointments, including chair of the Committee on the Global Financial System, and head of the Financial Stability Board for the G20.

He was also named one of the world's 25 most influential leaders by Time magazine in 2010 — the only central banker on the list otherwise occupied by figures such as former U.S. President Barack Obama — and became well-known in central banking.

Carney's five-year term as governor of the Bank of Canada ended on June 1, 2013, and a month later, he took on the same role at the Bank of England, becoming the first foreigner to be named governor of that institution in its more than three-century-long history.

Carney — an officer of the Order of Canada since 2014 — later agreed to stay on at the helm of the Bank of England for two extra years, to help ease the Brexit transition.

Around the same time, in August 2020, Trudeau tapped Carney to serve as an "informal adviser" on the government's pandemic recovery plan.

April 2021 marked Carney's official coming out as a card-carrying Liberal, delivering a keynote speech praising many of the party's policies, and ratcheting up the speculation he was considering getting his name on a ballot.

Following the speech, Nanos Research chair Nik Nanos told CTV News Trend Line that Carney would add "a lot of credibility on the fiscal front to the Liberals," while also being "a significant target for the Conservatives."

Carney earned his bachelor's in economics from Harvard University, before pursuing his master's and doctorate from Oxford University, also in economics.

With files from CTV News' Rachel Aiello.