What we know about Mark Carney shows how little we know our Canadian PM
To many Canadians, Prime Minister Mark Carney remains something of an enigma.
He’s originally from the Northwest Territories. He grew up in Edmonton where he cheered for the Oilers, still his favourite hockey team. He’s Harvard- and Oxford-educated. He spent 13 years of his professional career as a banking executive for Goldman Sachs. He’s a former governor for both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. He’s married with four daughters. He cheers for Everton FC in the English Premier League. He’s a devout Catholic.
He loves British punk rock group The Clash, but he’s also fond of Toronto band Down With Webster, whose custom sweater he wore and whose music he danced to with the Liberal campaign team as they celebrated last year’s election victory.
But as for who he is and how he ticks, well, voters are still figuring that out.
Prime Minister Mark Carney dances as Down With Webster plays his election night party in Ottawa. ???? for @nytimes pic.twitter.com/cJDDdXISt9
— Cole Burston (@cburst) April 29, 2025
That’s in stark contrast to his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
Maybe it was his nearly nine years as prime minister or the celebrity status that was afforded him from birth as the son of Pierre Trudeau, or just his extroverted and performative nature, but Canadians know an awful lot about him.
And during his time as prime minister, Canadians got to know him even more through how he chose to lead the country.
One thing is for sure: Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau may govern under the same Liberal banner, but they’re very different people.
Here’s a snippet of the little we do know about Carney on the first anniversary of his ascension to power.
Don’t wear brown shoes to work around him
Before joining the Canadian political fray, Carney had spent almost his entire career in various financial sectors, public and private, where the long-standing norm, particularly at the highest echelons, is black shoes with business suits.
When he formed government last year, he instructed people to “dress as they would in a bank, with black shoes for the men,” Maclean’s reported.
“He told even the most senior public servants that their days of coming to the office in open-necked shirts and blazers were over.”
A few days later, the Hill Times’ Jamie Carroll reported “that more than one deputy minister has been called out in a room full of ministers for wearing brown shoes and the odd staffer has regretted a bold Friday sport coat choice when they unexpectedly end up meeting the boss.”
As for Carney’s own style, the former Bank of England governor prefers suits made on Savile Row, a London area renowned for bespoke tailoring and high-end menswear. Think of those donned by Colin Firth’s Harry Hart character in the jaunty British spy movie Kingsman: The Secret Service.
Carney’s, with pants without belt loops, are “a style available only to those who are rich, trim and expensively tailored.”
The average cost of a custom suit ranges from $6,300 to $12,000.
He hates it when people are late to meetings
Since taking office, the media have sometimes portrayed him as a no-nonsense kind of leader , one who operates in the Prime Minister’s Office much like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company on Wall Street.
Punctuality is expected and those asked to brief him have learned to come prepared with all the information lest they face the wrath of a reportedly short temper.
When National Post spoke to current and former PMO staffers, senior bureaucrats and caucus members last spring about their experience in Carney’s atmosphere, a common refrain was that “he does not suffer fools.”
They also described him as short on patience and highly demanding of his advisers, senior bureaucrats and cabinet members, and unafraid to call out those he deems are not meeting expectations.
One Liberal MP mused that Carney’s impatience could result in a cabinet shuffle, sooner rather than later.
“That’s why we think there will be a shuffle at some point in the next eight months, or something, not within the next eight months, but in like eight months’ time, or something like that, less than a year,” the MP said at the time.
No such shuffles have occurred, but it’s not been a full year since Carney formed his post-election cabinet in mid-May.
He’s not exactly a media darling
Carney is also firm on starting press conferences precisely on time, but assembled media have sometimes been on the receiving end of his short fuse.
On his recent trip to India and Australia, Carney offered a chippy response when asked by a National Post reporter if he agreed with an unnamed government official who downplayed India’s role in transnational repression and foreign interference in a briefing.
“Well, we can debate whether you had a discussion that was not for quotation,” Carney said after the reporter offered to read the transcript of the quote from the official in which they suggested India is no longer actively interfering in Canada’s democratic process.
“But if you want to read a quote from something that’s not for quotation… I would not use those words.”
The official made the statement during a “not-for-attribution” briefing with reporters, which are meant to let public servants convey information without being identified in the media.
That a Canadian prime minister should express annoyance at reporters’ pesky questions is nothing new, but casting doubt on whether they can refer to quotes in a not-for-attribution briefing by government officials is a break from what has been a longstanding practice.
Carney had a similarly icy exchange with CBC’s Rosemary Barton before he was even elected.
During a press conference in London about a week before he called the last year’s election, the veteran parliamentary reporter pressed Carney on his massive investment portfolio and the potential for conflicts of interest, stating she “finds it hard to believe” he’s not at risk. He offered a chilly response.
“Look inside yourself, Rosemary,” he said, pausing for a beat. “You start from a prior of conflict and ill will. I have served in the private sector, I have stood up for Canada, I have left my roles in the private sector at a time of crisis for our country. I’m complying with all the rules. Your line of questioning is trying to invent new rules.
Carney accuses the CBC's Rosemary Barton of acting with "ill will" when she says it's "very difficult to believe" he has no conflicts of interest stemming from his time in the private sector. pic.twitter.com/ptKuKsy9Xx
— Jarryd Jäger (@JarrydJaeger) March 17, 2025
He keeps a small inner circle
Canadian prime ministers, not unlike most heads of state and government, are traditionally known to keep a kitchen cabinet of advisers close at hand.
In Trudeau’s case, there were a few — Gerald Butts, whom he met at McGill University, became his principal secretary, childhood friend Marc Miller held several portfolios under the previous administration, and Katie Telford was his chief of staff for the entirety of his tenure, among others.
But unlike his predecessor, Carney is said to maintain no such cohort with historical ties, save for current Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, who was CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada before entering public office. In 2011, Carney also brought him on as his special adviser at the Bank of Canada for 18 months.
It’s been reported that Hodgson, who’s been dealing with some key files, helped convince Conservative MP Michael Ma to cross the floor in December.
Others members of a tight-knit group include chief of staff Marc-Andrew Blanchard, principal secretary Tom Pitfield and Michael Sabia, clerk of the Privy Council.
He’s a long-distance runner, not just a backup hockey goaltender
Late last summer, Canadians learned that Carney is a runner and, it turns out, not bad for his age.
Volunteers and participants at last September’s Haliburton Forest Trail Race north of Toronto were surprised to see the 60-year-old competing in the 26-kilometre event .
During the race, he told volunteer Agnes Jung that he signed up to support his wife, Diana Fox Carney, who was also competing in celebration of her 60th birthday.
“He looked like an experienced trail runner for sure,” she told The Canadian Press at the time. “These trails are really no joke.”
But fellow competitor Dianne Kapral, who also found the PM to be a “strong runner,” said he admitted to her that it was his first-ever trail race, according to Canadian Running Magazine.
Carney cleared the challenging, hilly course in just over three hours and 45 minutes, good for 59th in a field of 120 and then reportedly stuck around to meet with people for an hour after. (Fox Carney finished about eight minutes behind him in 69th.)
“Everyone thought he was super nice,” volunteer Gary Black said.
In the past, Carney has preferred street races, having competed in the 2013 Ottawa Half-Marathon , clocking a fleet-footed 1:40:01. Two years later, at the age of 50, he bested the men’s average time at the London Marathon by 33 seconds, finishing in three hours, 31 minutes and change.
According to various media reports, it’s said Carney likes to get up early for a run, as evidenced by a quick video clip of him jogging through a scenic part of Gyeongju, South Korea, while attending last October’s APEC summit.
As for other athletic endeavours, his hockey background of serving as a backup netminder on university teams during his time at Harvard and Oxford is well-documented. But he also revealed last month that he’s a decent hand at lawn bowling.
“This is what I won this year,” he says, holding up a trophy during a video call with Canadian Olympic gold-medal-winning speed skater Ivanie Blondin, Valérie Maltais, and Isabelle Weidemann. “The Hamilton Italian Centre lawn bowling.”
“We’ll go any time you want,” he says when the women ask when they can join him.
It appears Carney was presented the trophy during a visit to the club last summer.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the Hamilton Italian Centre, where he joined local seniors for a friendly game of bocce. pic.twitter.com/SA98UpfMz0
— Prime Minister of Canada (@CanadianPM) July 18, 2025
His French is improving and he speaks a little Japanese, but he prefers the Queen’s English
One of the knocks against Carney before he’d even announced his political intentions was his lack of fluency in French, which became evident to Canadian Francophones rather quickly.
To his credit, Carney quickly set about learning the language and has improved significantly over his first year. Early in the election campaign, he rated his skills at six out of 10 during a CBC interview.
“Mark Carney does speak a manner of French, but it is a type of Ottawa patois that would have waiters in Paris or Montreal indignantly deliver an English menu to the table,” Nico Johnson wrote for The Critic last fall. “Unique only to Canada’s National Capital Region, it is a French where the accent is blatantly North American, but where English loan words are discouraged.”
Around the same time, CBC found that Carney spoke in English for 83 per cent of the 59 speeches and news conferences from April 29 to Sept. 14, 2025. His total time speaking French during those events was, oddly enough, just 83 minutes.
Last week in Tokyo, Carney got to shake the rust off the little bit of Japanese he picked up while working for Goldman Sachs after graduating from Harvard in 1988.
During a press conference alongside new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Carney started in her native tongue, briefly stumbled, but continued on, drawing applause from his counterpart and others in the room.
PM Mark Carney attempts to say a few words in Japanese pic.twitter.com/EuwL71EHoa
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertsonca) March 6, 2026
But English, specifically the Queen’s version, is his preferred language and he’s insisted that staff use British spelling — organise instead of organize, for example — in all internal communication. The variation from federal government norms did show up in last year’s budget.
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