Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney won the Liberal Party leadership by a landslide Sunday on the first ballot and will become Canada’s next prime minister.
He defeated second place finisher former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland with 85.9% of the vote, while Freeland received 8% and the other two candidates — former Cabinet minister Karina Gould and businessman and former MP Frank Baylis – received 3.2% and 3%, respectively.
Carney will become the first Liberal Party leader to serve as prime minister while never having served in political office.
Looking out over the convention at Liberal delegates, he said “this room is very strong” and that he will have to have help in beating back the challenges ahead.
There is no doubt that Carney was referencing US President Donald Trump and his tariffs on goods imported from Canada. The tariffs will devastate the Canadian economy, and Trump hopes that leads to an annexation of Canada as the 51st state.
In his acceptance speech, Carney pulled no punches.
Canada is looking to some “dark, dark days, brought on by a country we can no longer trust. I pledge to you and to all Canadians that I will stand up for Canada,” he said.
He vowed to keep retaliatory tariffs on American goods in place until “Americans show us some respect.”
“The stakes have never been higher,” he said. “We have made this the greatest country in the world, and now our neighbors want to take us.”
Carney said the battle with Trump will be a hard one, a new one that Canada has never faced before.
“New threats demand new ideas,” he told the Liberal delegates.
Standing up to Trump “will take extraordinary efforts. We will do things that we haven’t imagined before, at a speed we didn’t think possible.”
The convention address is Justin Trudeau’s last as prime minister, having resigned the post as Carney assumes it.
In his farewell speech, Trudeau said that freedom, democracy and Canada itself are “not a given,” noting that the threat coming from south of the border is real.
“This is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom, it’s not a given. Canada is not a given. None of those happen by accident. None of them will continue without effort,” he said.
“It takes courage, it takes sacrifice, it takes hope and hard work.”
When Trudeau resigned in January, he was deeply unpopular, and the ruling Liberal Party did not want to sink based on the leader’s coattails.
The resignation meant the Liberals had to elect a new leader, and that leader, Mark Carney, was crowned Sunday.
The next step will likely be a snap election. Parliament is not in session, but lawmakers return March 24, and opposition parties could force an election or Carney could call one.
Depending on the election date, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh will go against Carney and the Liberals.
