By William Crooks
Local Journalism Initative
Mark Carney’s decisive win in the Liberal leadership race has reshaped the political landscape, according to Bishop’s University Political Studies Professor Jacob Robbins-Kanter. Carney, a former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, won with 85 per cent of the vote, making him the first Canadian prime minister without previous elected experience.
“It’s the first time we have a prime minister who has never held any other elected office,” Robbins-Kanter noted. “But he has a lot of other experience that you could say is relevant.”
Carney’s victory has already tightened the race between the Liberals and the Conservatives, with recent polling showing his party regaining ground by drawing support from the Bloc Québécois and the NDP rather than significantly weakening Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative base. “The Conservative support is pretty flat, maybe a few points down,” Robbins-Kanter observed. “But the Bloc and the NDP have really suffered.”
One of Carney’s early moves has been to distance himself from unpopular policies of the Trudeau government, including a major shift on the carbon tax. “He’s going to drop the consumer carbon pricing scheme,” Robbins-Kanter explained, though corporate emissions pricing will remain. The policy shift puts Poilievre in a difficult position after years of attacking the tax as a central campaign issue. “The Conservatives are now trying to claim Carney has a hidden carbon tax,” Robbins-Kanter said. “I don’t know if voters will buy that.”
The election strategy for both major parties is also being shaped by the looming presence of Donald Trump in the U.S. “The Trump issue really dominated the leadership race,” Robbins-Kanter said, with Carney presenting himself as the strongest leader to stand up to the U.S. president’s policies. That contrasts with Poilievre, who has been publicly praised by figures in Trump’s orbit, including Elon Musk and J.D. Vance. “If the ballot box question is about handling Trump, I would be pretty nervous if I were the Conservatives,” he added.
