OTTAWA—Mark Carney — who is not yet a marquee name in Canada — took to the stage of Jon Stewart’s U.S. satirical news and comedy show to reveal a side of himself to Americans that he has yet to show Canadians.
But hey, it’ll go viral won’t it?
Carney has not yet pronounced his intention to run to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister of Canada. Haha. Joke’s on us.
So the surprise New York late-night talk show appearance was intended to serve as a kinda funny, kinda nerdy introduction to a former central banker and would-be contender who is expected to declare his love for Canada — er, his candidacy — this week.
It was also a low-risk soft-launch, whether or not Carney ever has to count a flight or New York hotel as a campaign expense.
It was a performance that let Carney spool out his rural Canadian roots, showcase he has potential star appeal (at least for lefty American entertainers) — look he’s on the Daily Show — and let Carney play the smart, straight man role.
It may have done some of the work schooling Canadians that Carney’s team hoped it would.
You didn’t know that he saved the day in the 2008-09 financial crisis, or navigated Britain through the painful Brexit breakup with the European Union?
Host Jon Stewart, who said he read Carney’s Wikipedia page, did, portraying Carney with a superhero cape.
Carney demurely thanked Stewart for the praise, and self-deprecatingly joked that we Canadians just “didn’t understand” derivatives and mortgage bundling the way the Americans did so that’s why we didn’t have the same banking meltdown.
Throughout the interview, Canadians also got a clear picture of what a Carney candidacy would look like.
Carney cast himself as an outsider to politics even as he took deft political shots.
He targeted “lifelong” right-wing politicians like Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, greedy insurance companies and American banks, and the Liberal government’s handling of the twin crises of the high cost of living and housing crunch.
“In a situation like this, you need change. You need to address the economy,” he intoned.
Carney said the Liberal race gives the party an opportunity to do just that.
And at a sensitive time with Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs and the U.S. president-elect suggesting he’ll use economic force to erase the border, Carney staked out patriotic nationalist boundaries.
He framed the Canada-U.S. relationship not as family, not as neighbours, not as a love-hate entanglement, but one with a more modern twist — “we can be friends with benefits.”
Carney flattered his erstwhile leadership rivals who quit before the race really got started (hello ministers Mélanie Joly, Dominic LeBlanc and Steve MacKinnon), while skillfully ghosting those most likely to compete against him for the top job (Chrystia Freeland and Christy Clark) .
Scripted or not, Carney parried with Stewart and delivered his lines easily.
Even Stewart groaned yet ran with the “friends with benefits” metaphor throughout the nearly 20-minute segment:
“I feel like you’re breaking up with me the entire interview.”
“I’m just getting swiped left hard as hell here.”
“Did you just get out of therapy?”
Through it all, Carney remained coy.
“I am ‘of’ the Liberal Party, yes,” he said, playing the outsider card harder than he deserved to.
Carney neglected the bit about how he’s been writing the Liberal Party’s economic growth platform for its re-election since September.
He also neglected to mention he’s been toying with running for the Liberals for years.
The Trudeau team had urged him to run in Toronto Centre after former finance minister Bill Morneau quit in August 2020, and then to run in the 2021 federal election. Last year, after Carolyn Bennett vacated her Toronto—St. Paul’s seat, they suggested Carney run in that one-time Liberal stronghold. He demurred. The Liberals lost the seat.
So yes, he was an outsider.
But for Carney’s immediate goal — to win the Liberal leadership race — that may or may not serve his purposes.
It left some Liberals unimpressed, with one senior Liberal telling the Star last week Carney is a “serial fence-sitter.”
Carney is, however, someone who has impressed many who know him and dealt with him one-on-one, and in the words of another, he is “affable in small groups.”
Many Liberals want Carney’s skills and economic intelligence, and his potential drawing power.
Others wonder whether he can perform better on a stage bigger than a New York television set after watching speeches he delivers to conferences in big ballrooms fall flat.
Since Trudeau announced last week he would resign, Carney has been talking to Liberals but not a broader audience of Canadians, addressed no questions from media in this country, and let his name float unanchored in any firm declaration.
Stewart’s audience won’t vote in a Canadian election unless the Trump-suggested merger-marriage Carney wittily rejected happens.
But that didn’t matter.
Stewart did what Carney and his campaign team hoped he would. He told Carney and anyone who cared to be influenced by an American comic’s endorsement that he would “recommend to you with your charm and debonair wit yet strong financial backbone that you offer yourself as … Have you offered yourself as leader?”
“I just started thinking about it when you brought it up,” replied Carney with a wry smile.
“Just now?”
“Yeah, just now.”
