It might sound hard to believe, but a London-based bookie had a hand in sparking Canadian media’s early fascination with Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The year was 2011, and the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had just resigned after being charged with attempted rape in the United States.
The London bookie, William Hill, took bets on his successor and included Carney on the list of possible candidates.
The odds were long, ten to one. It was improbable that Carney would ever be chosen because of a “gentleman’s agreement” that ensures the job always goes to a European.
But the bookie’s choice inspired a flurry of articles in Canadian publications about Carney being “taken seriously” as a “possible replacement.” Reporters asked the country’s top politicians to comment on the unlikely scenario, fuelling additional coverage of the “speculation” that Carney could be chosen.
Fast forward 14 years, and Carney, the new prime minister and Liberal Party leader, has received enormous attention and praise in Canada’s newspapers and television broadcasts.
In the build up to his leadership bid and well before, he’s been celebrated for his looks and equated with the strengths of the Canadian banking system. Meanwhile, details of his record have been left largely unexplored.
One columnist called him the natural next prime minister way back in 2011 —though Carney, asked if he would jump into politics just a year later, said: “Why don’t I become a circus clown?”
The IMF Job
When the IMF job became available, Carney was the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
He had already received more attention than other governors because of his different experience — he came from private finance instead of public service — and because Canada fared better than the United States during the 2008 financial crisis. One early profile highlighted his “great smile” and “twinkle in his eye.”
In 2010, Time Magazine named him one of the world’s most influential people. A short profile included two sentences on Carney’s work, yet managed to pay him seven compliments, introducing him as “young, good-looking and charming.”
As soon as IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in 2011, Canadian reporters named Carney as a possible replacement.
The Globe and Mail and National Post both reported that Carney could get the job, without citing any sources.
The Globe listed several contenders, including Carney, based on “educated guesses, circulated by people removed from the decision-making process,” while the Post simply stated that Carney’s name “has been raised.” The Economist, a British magazine, mentioned him briefly.
About two days into the media frenzy surrounding Strauss-Kahn, the London bookie set its odds.
Canadian coverage of Carney ballooned, with the bookie story appearing once on CTV National News, multiple times in the Globe and in a syndicated article published by newspapers across the country.
The Canadian Press ran a profile conceding Carney probably wouldn’t get the job, but celebrated his rising star nonetheless.
The profile credited Carney’s success partly to Canada’s existing banking regulations and partly to his “easy charm” and “probing intelligence.”
By the time experts weighed in to say Carney was a long shot receiving little thought outside of Canada, the Canadian public had already been inundated with Carney’s name for days.
Former prime minister Paul Martin, then-prime minister Stephen Harper and then-finance minister Jim Flaherty had all been called upon to sing his praises.
Carney didn’t get the job. He may never have been under serious consideration. But the mere mention of a Canadian by a British bookie and Economist journalist had set off an entire domestic news cycle about his budding celebrity.
Recruiting A Prime Minister
It didn’t take long for the IMF rumour to snowball into speculation that Carney could one day become prime minister. Just six months later, a newspaper columnist first floated the idea.
In a Nov. 15, 2011 article, Globe writer Lawrence Martin predicted that Bob Rae would take over the Liberal Party from Michael Ignatieff and eventually be succeeded by Carney.
“Benefiting from the most starlit international reputation since Lester Pearson, Mr. Carney, who recently ruffled Tory feathers in declaring the Occupy movement as being ‘entirely constructive,’ will be elected prime minister in 2019,” Martin wrote.
Martin’s colleague, Tim Powers, then wrote a rebuttal, arguing that Carney deserved better than to lead Canada’s Liberals. The column heaped extensive praise on the central banker:
“For fear of having to issue a man-crush disclaimer, let me say this about Mark Carney: He has many of the heroic traits that lead to fawning. He is the good looking Canadian boy who communicates well (in both official languages, I believe), who worked hard, played a bit of hockey, had a family, was a star in the private sector, came back and went into the public service. He can still be found, when not donning his Super Man cape fighting financial instability, wandering around fields and arenas in Ottawa cheering on his kids.”
After that column came out, speculation around Carney died down for a few years while Justin Trudeau took over the Liberals and won his first election.
At the first sign of trouble for Trudeau, however, the Carney bug spread from Canada’s media to its political establishment.
In 2019, Trudeau was to face voters for the first time since his initial election. His first term had been spotted with scandals, from his vacation with the Aga Khan to the SNC-Lavalin affair.
A group of Liberals held a conference call during which someone suggested replacing Trudeau with Carney. He was working as the Bank of England’s governor at the time.
Such attempts to draft superstars aren’t unusual among Liberals.
In 2019, after voters had firmly rejected Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberals, a group of party activists launched a campaign to recruit astronaut Chris Hadfield as leader. The partisans said they’d thought up the idea themselves and took it to the media — despite not having made any contact with Hadfield himself.
A similar phenomenon took place after Carney’s name was floated on the conference call in 2019. The call was relayed to Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hébert, who reported it.
Once again, the rumour spread quickly. Hébert’s reporting was discussed on CTV’s Power Play, in Maclean’s and in a National Post column that was syndicated nationwide.
The Post writer reached out to a source close to Carney, and was told the story was “bizarre” and that Carney was “up to his gills” in his role as governor.
The IMF speculation also repeated itself in 2019. In July of that year, again relying on a bookie as the main source, the Globe and Bloomberg ran stories identifying Carney as a favourite for the job.
This time, the bookie angle was followed up by reporting that European governments were actively discussing him as a candidate.
Once again, though, he didn’t end up getting the title.
Trudeau Gave A Hand
The media’s fascination with Carney was revived once again in late 2024 after the Globe reported that then-prime minister Justin Trudeau was trying to court him to join the Liberal government.
It wasn’t the first time Trudeau had reportedly done so — but this occasion was unique because Carney’s hiring would have meant a demotion for cabinet member Chrystia Freeland.
The Globe story snowballed into daily coverage both in that newspaper and on TV news broadcasts. For days, the press talked about the negotiations with Carney, tensions between Trudeau and Freeland, and the Conservatives’ take that replacing a female minister made Trudeau a “fake feminist.”
Carney’s name was once again fresh in the minds of the Ottawa establishment. That worked out well for Carney: The same day Freeland resigned, pollsters started asking Canadians about their views on a Liberal Party with him as leader.
In the lead up to announcing his run, Carney didn’t give any interviews to Canadian reporters. But he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Canada’s mainstream press took the bait. They ran articles about his appearance on the show, and few outlets gave detailed attention to his record. With a comedian asking the questions, the content was unsurprisingly light.
It’s clear that for many in Canada’s dominant media, Carney had won the Liberal leadership contest before he entered. Martin, the Globe columnist who first suggested that Carney could one day be prime minister back in 2011, even wrote as much.
Independent media, meanwhile, have applied more critical examinations of Carney’s record and vision for Canada.
As summarized by writer David Moscrop, Canada’s new prime minister is offering Canada “a course in business as usual.”
“His approach to governing will be grounded in a devotion to the free market as the single greatest hope for an unmoored civilization.”
Emma Paling is a journalist and writer in Toronto. Her award-winning reporting has been published widely by CBC News, The Breach, HuffPost and Vice.
