Mark Carney

Biography

Mark Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, on 16 March 1965 and grew up in Edmonton, where his father was a high school principal and a professor at the University of Alberta. He studied economics at Harvard, graduating in 1987, and earned a master's degree and a doctorate in economics at Oxford in 1993 and 1995.

He spent thirteen years at Goldman Sachs, working in Boston, London, New York, Tokyo and Toronto, before joining the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor in 2003. From late 2004 he was a senior associate deputy minister in the federal Department of Finance, and in February 2008 he became Governor of the Bank of Canada, steering monetary policy through the global financial crisis. From 2011 to 2018 he also chaired the international Financial Stability Board.

In July 2013 he became Governor of the Bank of England, the first non-Briton in the post, and led its response to the Brexit vote and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic before leaving in March 2020. He then served as the UN Secretary-General's special envoy on climate action and finance, vice-chair of Brookfield Asset Management and chair of Bloomberg L.P.

After Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, Carney won the Liberal leadership in March 2025 and became prime minister on 14 March without having held elected office. He called an election for April 2025, in which the Liberals came from behind in the polls to win a minority and he won the seat of Nepean; floor crossings and by-elections later gave them a majority. His government has dropped the consumer carbon tax, responded to a trade war with the United States and sharply raised defence spending.