Who is Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney and what’s his connection to Ireland?
2025-04-29T08:40:44Z
Carney’s journey to political life was unconventional, but certainly high-profile.
CANADA WANTS MARK Carney to stay on as prime minister after an unpredictable few months politically and economically.
Carney (60) won the country’s national election, securing another term in power.
While the Liberal Party is projected to win more of the parliament’s seats than the Conservative Party, it’s unclear whether they may need help from smaller parties to form a government, as votes are still being counted.
Carney’s journey to political life was unconventional, but certainly high-profile.
Who is Mark Carney?
Born in the Northwest Territories and raised in Alberta, Carney left Canada to earn his degrees, studying economics at Harvard in the United States and then doing a masters and doctorate at Oxford in England.
While at Oxford, he met his wife Diana Fox while they were playing hockey.
After he finished his education, he worked for Goldman Sachs for 13 years, going between their offices in major cities like New York, Tokyo and London.
He then joined the Bank of Canada in 2003 as a deputy governor, but it wasn’t long before he was recruited to the government’s Department of Finance, where he advised prime ministers.
In 2007, Carney returned to the Bank of Canada, becoming the youngest central bank governor among the G8 and G20 nations, and facing into the financial crisis of 2008.
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His leadership during the crisis is said to have helped Canada fare relatively well, and his skill was well-recognised. He made the Financial Times’s “Fifty who will frame the way forward” and was one of Time Magazine’s 2010 Time 100.
No doubt his success in the role made him attractive to the Bank of England, which he became governor of in 2013. He was the first non-UK born person to hold the position.
He led the British response to Brexit and the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since leaving the Bank of England in 2020, he has served as a United Nations envoy working to get the private sector to invest in climate-friendly technology and has held private sector roles.
He never served in parliament nor held an elected public office until he became Canada’s prime minister in March.
However, his father was the Liberal candidate for Edmonton South in the 1980 Canadian federal election, placing second.
What’s his connection to Ireland?
With a name like that, he’s bound to have a connection to Ireland.
Three of Carney’s grandparents were from Aughagower in Co Mayo.
He has three siblings – an older brother and sister, Seán and Brenda, and a younger brother Brian, who lives in the North.
He has held Irish citizenship since the 1980s. He also holds UK citizenship, but he is in the process of renouncing both as he believes that as Canadian leader, he should only hold one citizenship.
Why did people vote for him?
In January of this year, then-prime minister and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.
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Carney ran to take his place, defeating Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland by a landslide.
But he was constitutionally required to hold a general election within weeks of taking up the post.
Carney campaigned on a promise to stand up to Trump.
Trump’s trade war and annexation threats outraged Canadians and made dealing with the United States a hot button issue.
His actions infuriated Canadians and stoked a surge in nationalism that helped the Liberals flip the election narrative and win a fourth-straight term in power.
“Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” Carney said in a victory speech in Ottawa.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen,” he said.
In his speech, Carney called for unity, reminding Canadians of the challenges posed by ongoing hostilities with the US.
He reiterated his promise to make the Canadian economy less dependent on the US and to reduce barriers to interprovincial trade.
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