‘It’s almost like a mania’: How Trump won Carney the federal election

Mark Carney has done the unthinkable.

With little more than a month’s experience as a politician under his belt, the career bureaucrat brought a flatlining Liberal Party back from the brink and, on Monday night, was projected to win the most extraordinary election in Canada’s recent history.

Not that you’d know it from the crowd size at Liberal Party headquarters — Lansdowne Park’s TD Place — as votes began streaming in. At about 10.15pm on Monday night, a raucous applause erupted from a modest crowd assembled on the arena floor when the major media outlets projected a Carney win. But up until about 9.30pm, the cavernous arena was completely devoid of anyone but journalists and security; Liberal supporters were out canvassing until the minute the polls closed.

As of midnight, it is still unclear if Carney will govern with a majority or minority government; he may yet fall short of a majority.

“It’s nose to the grindstone… Liberal volunteers [were] knocking on doors until the last minute tonight in all the different time zones across this country,” says Zita Astravas, former Trudeau adviser and now vice-president at Wellington Advocacy, who arrived at TD Place alongside a steady trickle of animated Liberal supporters.

“And a lot of people did talk about Donald Trump, in the voters that I was talking to.“

Because the Liberals can’t claim credit for this win – and neither, really, can Carney. Most of the credit for the biggest Canadian election comeback in modern history goes to the mercurial leader south of the border.

Because until Donald Trump returned to the White House, this election was about the skyrocketing cost of living, housing unaffordability and ousting a tired Liberal government from office. Come November, however, and talk of tariffs and annexation completely reframed the public disposition. Votes were no longer being cast in favour of change and revolution, but for stability and security. Sovereignty, suddenly, was a very real talking point.

“During a time of trial and during a time south of our border of chaos, chaos which may be infectious, people like the idea of a steady pair of hands,” says Akaash Maharaj, a senior fellow with the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

“That doesn’t just favor incumbency, it also favors people who project themselves as being quietly competent, even boring.”

As much as his predecessor’s widespread unpopularity was tied to his party’s diminishing fortunes, Carney’s appeal as a veteran navigator of global economic turmoil has propelled the Liberals to a projected victory that as little as five months ago was inconceivable.

In December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s long-waning support was at an all-time low, after years of public dissatisfaction brought about by the cost-of-living living crisis, housing unaffordability and controversial policy decisions, and calls for him to resign were growing ever louder.

Finally, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, once Trudeau’s staunchest ally, set in motion the events that were to change the Liberals’ political fortunes – firing her final missive at her boss with a very public resignation.

Three weeks later, Trudeau was out and two months later, Carney was in – elected with a decisive 85.9 per cent of the vote on the first ballot in the Liberal leadership race.

The public’s feelings of ennui and contempt for the incumbents were gone, satisfied with the promise of fresh blood and the stability that incumbency symbolized in the face of global insecurity.

Because, as US President Donald Trump continued to broadcast his machinations to annex Canada, and hit its economy with punishing tariffs, the Canadian public’s fears were no longer just about affordability and inflation, but about sovereignty. Meanwhile, Carney positioned himself as a safe, and seasoned, steady pair of hands to steer the country through its latest crisis.

That’s despite his almost complete lack of political experience.

Unlike the man he just beat out for Canada’s top job, career politician Pierre Poilievre, Carney has never held public office and has never served as an MP. He’s flirted with politics before – serving as senior associate deputy minister for the Department of Finance in 2004, and as one of the many informal advisors to Trudeau during the COVID-19 pandemic, before becoming head of the Liberal’s economic growth taskforce in September 2024 – and rumblings of his aspirations for the top job have tailed him for decades. Trudeau was actually one of his early champions, telling reporters in 2024 that he’s been speaking to Carney “for years” about joining federal politics.

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But that’s not to underestimate Carney’s resume. By all accounts, it is stacked.

Governor of the Bank of Canada. Governor of the Bank of England. Navigating the 2008 financial crisis in his role as the former, and the British central bank’s response in the latter. United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance. An economics degree from Harvard University. A masters and a PhD in economics from Oxford.

“I know how to manage crises. I know how to build strong economies,” he said during a debate against the other Liberal leadership hopefuls last month.

But he didn’t come without criticism. His shaky command of French has come under fire. He refused to fire a candidate for a remark that seemed to support, or at the very least make light of, China’s bounty on his conservative rival. He was blamed for his involvement in Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management’s offshore tax schemes (Carney served as chairman of the board of directors for the company), was accused of plagiarizing his 1995 Oxford thesis and his financial assets came under scrutiny. His buttoned-up, polished persona lacked the charisma of his predecessor and made an easy target for the Opposition, who weaponized his high-level international experience and time rubbing shoulders with the global elite as evidence he is out-of-touch with Canadians.

Meanwhile, Carney looked to his unique background to formulate his selling point: wielding his international contacts as evidence he has ready access to important allies and positioning himself as a leader experienced in global financial crises, who is far removed from Trump in both practise and ideology.

“I have seen this movie before. I know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said on the campaign trail.

The public bought into this promise – and in record time. By late March, two weeks after Carney took office, the polls indicated the Liberals had a lead over the Conservatives. Floundering on an inability to adapt, or clinging to stubbornness, Poilievre failed to pivot in the face of Trump’s upending of the world order. And as the NDP support continued to deteriorate, the party went from strength to strength – arriving at election day with a sizeable lead.

It had all the hallmarks of a political underdog fairytale.

“Carney could probably could not have been elected in 2015 when Justin Trudeau channeled the desire for excitement and optimism, and at least the promise of dramatic change,” Maharaj says.

“But Carney’s personality as a bureaucrat, as a banker, does suit the mood of the time when people are looking for calm competence and reassurance.”

That mood was on full display at the TD Place Arena on Monday night. Periodic cheers went up from a small crowd of assembled supporters as Liberal ridings were called, and Carney’s projected win was announced — with a loud cheer reserved for the moment Poilievre’s Carleton riding turned red. The arena itself largely sat empty, however, with rows upon rows of empty seats and a few dozen loyalists partying on the arena floor. It was a calm and competent celebration befitting of its benefactor.

The most exuberant face in the crowd was likely long-time supporter Dorothy Goubault, who hoisted her glass of wine above her head and whooped as the projected win was announced.

Dressed in a red cowboy hat and maple leaf-adorned silk scarf, Goubault said she was out canvassing in Carney’s Nepean riding “all day” on Monday.

“I am here because I am a Canadian who loves this country, that cares for this country and we are in a crisis situation,” Goubault told Global News.

“Everyone I spoke to today voted and they voted for Carney. It’s almost like a mania.”

Astravas, on the other hand, was out late on Monday evening canvassing in Poilievre’s Carleton riding. She said she spoke to many people there who had voted Liberal — because of Trump.

“A lot of them said they wanted a strong party and Mark Carney as prime minister to deal with the White House and get to work really quickly because they’re worried and they want to see a strong government to be able to protect Canadian jobs and the economy,” said Astravas, who also worked as chief of staff to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair.

Mother-son duo Austin, 13, and Danielle Boyle, said they had been out canvassing four or five times per week, on evenings and weekends, for “a long time.” They were holding onto each other nervously, watching the votes trickle in, before the Liberal win was called.

“These shoes have seen a lot of kilometres,” Danielle said.

“We’ve been working really hard.”

As election night wore on, the crowd at TD Place continued to grow. By midnight, with Liberal seats numbering 162, compared to 149 for the Conservatives, the arena was about one-third full, and growing ever louder.

That Carney chose Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park for his election-night jamboree may not have been without forethought either – political ghosts roam these halls.

This was the site of six federal leadership conventions since 1919, selecting party leaders including William Lyon McKenzie-King, Louis St. Laurent, David Lewis, and Brian Mulroney. Canadian troops gathered at Lansdowne before heading to war in the Boer WAR, AS WELL AS THE FIRST AND SECOND WORLD WARS.

Carney too is somewhat poised for a battle.

Looking down the barrel of a global trade war, the whims of his capricious counterpart to the south and a housing crisis, Carney has his work cut out for him. He has proven effective on the campaign trail, but it remains to be seen how he will metamorphose from bureaucrat to prime minister. While many career politicians rise through the ranks of their party, bringing key MPs with them, Carney doesn’t have the liberty of falling back on tried-and-tested relationships and long-held political alliances. What he does have, however, is a wide pool of talent to pick from.

“The MPs who are standing for election, either for re-election or who are standing for the first time, it’s a strong group of people…. [and these] new candidates were recruited at a time when the Liberal’s fortunes were very low,” Maharaj says.

It’s no doubt that Carney has just pulled off one of the most impressive comebacks for a political party that Canada has ever seen. But it wasn’t so long ago that his predecessor, mired in the end under a cloud of malaise and disrepute, pulled off a similar feat.

When Trudeau took the Liberal reins in 2013 it was as the party faced near certain political wipeout and had sunk to third place in the House of Commons for the first time. Two years later, he propelled them to victory.

A decade later, Carney is about to be handed the mandate to lead Canada through an extraordinary moment in history. This victory, as with Trudeau’s, is his alone.

“[All political parties] have been significantly hollowed out as meaningful vehicles. It’s a sad situation where the governing political party is no longer viewed by Canadians as being a trustworthy incubator for political leadership. People are going outside of parties to choose their leaders,” Maharaj says.

Carney’s political career will likely begin in earnest on Tuesday morning. And it remains to be seen what that will look like.

“The key question is….does Carney have the humility to understand, to know that he does not know everything? He is, after all, the single most inexperienced member of his own campaign team,” Maharaj says.

“The people who are around him are by and large people who have been in politics and in the Liberal Party for quite some time. They have talents and Carney can use those talents well – but at the same time, he would not be the first neophyte Prime Minister to become a puppet of his advisors.”

More to come.