Good morning. For a few hours late Monday night, Mark Carney got to celebrate a comeback Liberal election win. By morning, the Prime Minister faced the challenge of delivering on campaign promises to an anxious country.
The real work of governing now begins. Here’s what to expect from the rookie PM. But first: Talking: Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke with Donald Trump about defence and commercial ties on Tuesday.
The two leaders agreed to meet in person in the near future. Trade: Trump’s auto tariff relief plans will not meaningfully reduce the negative impact of his trade policies, Canadian industry leaders say. Trump’s first 100 days: The U.
S. President unleashed chaos during his first few months in office. Here’s a day-by-day recap and a look at Wall Street’s winners and losers .
Toronto Tempo adds Canadian Silicon Valley CEO as co-owner of the city’s expansion Women’s National Basketball Association team. Prime Minister Mark Carney (R) arrives at his office on Parliament Hill on April 29. GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images Hi, I’m Andrew Willis, a business columnist who has been writing about the election campaign for the past five weeks - didn’t it feel like five months? - and covered Mark Carney since his stint at Goldman Sachs in the 1990s.
Carney, a former central banker, is more popular than the Liberals he leads. CEOs respect him as a proven crisis manager. The party, however, is perceived as being indifferent to business, at best, and hostile at worst after a decade in power.
Carney needs to reset the agenda. The message Carney is getting from Bay Street is don’t tell me, show me . Be predictable, and be consistent.
Over the course of the election campaign, it became clear that the Liberals and Conservatives agreed on major issues such as taxes – they’re too high – and investment – it’s too low. The challenge is to simply get stuff done. Don’t talk about eliminating interprovincial trade barriers.
Get rid of them, in the face of opposition from special-interest groups. The same goes for the lengthy approval process on energy and mining projects – don’t study the bottlenecks, eliminate them. Deeds, not words, would go a long way to quieting attacks from critics such as secession-threatening Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who took to social media on Tuesday to push for “meaningful action rather than hollow rhetoric.
” Taking tangible steps to strengthen the economy plays to Carney’s strongest suit. It would set the Liberal Leader up for the job Canadians hired him to handle: negotiate a new trade and security pact with Donald Trump. No one expects the Prime Minister to tame the President.
Carney is expected to earn Trump’s respect. For the foreseeable future, the Liberals, even if they form a minority government, can expect to function as a majority. With both the NDP and Conservative leaders losing their seats on Monday, the opposition will be in no hurry to call another election.
CEOs expect Carney to move boldly. Bold moves will start with a new cabinet, expected within two weeks; a throne speech that sets out achievable priorities; and a budget that wraps in both tax cuts and fiscal responsibility. Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives at the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa on April 29.
Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail Carney attracted new talent to the Liberal team , including former Hydro One chair Tim Hodgson and Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, giving him the luxury of refreshing a team that spent the past 10 years signing off on directives from Justin Trudeau’s all-powerful Office of the Prime Minister. If Carney feels he can do better on key cabinet roles than the energetic François-Philippe Champagne as Finance Minister or Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a point person on negotiations with the White House, he has the luxury of a deep bench. Being prime minister is not typically an entry-level job.
As a neophyte politician, Carney faces all the challenges that come with running a vast country while still learning the ropes in Parliament. “Events, dear boy, events,” as British prime minister Harold Macmillan said, put Carney into office. They will also be his biggest challenge.
Carney’s track record reassures the business crowd. When the global financial crisis ripped though markets like a tidal wave, he was the Bank of Canada governor who helped keep the country safe and dry. Carney played a critical role in bailing out Quebec financial institutions stuck with billions of dollars in asset-backed securities.
When Britain decided to divorce the European Union, Carney kept the relationship civil as the former partners negotiated a settlement. The President’s talk of making Canada the 51st state may be the “biggest crisis of our lifetimes,” as Carney put it on the campaign trail. However, it’s also just another Wednesday at the office for a Prime Minister who earned his stripes during the mortgage-market meltdown and Brexit.
More reading Voter turnout ended up being an improvement over the 62.6 per cent recorded in 2021. It was widely expected that more people would vote in this contest, and more than 19.
5 million did, but it’s still a far cry from the record from 1958, when 79.4 per cent of eligible Canadians voted. This is just one snapshot included in our roundup of six charts that explain the election .
Step back: The White House attacked Amazon over a report that pitched showing tariffs’ cost on the company’s Haul site, calling the idea a “hostile and political” act. Green, out: RBC blames anti-greenwashing provisions as it drops its sustainable-finance targets. Lights on: The power is back on for Spain and Portugal, but the cause behind one of Europe’s most severe blackouts remains a mystery.
Global shares were mixed this morning as promising corporate profits were offset by uncertainty over U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.
U.S. stock index futures were flat to slightly lower as investors waited on a flood of economic data and corporate results.
In Europe, the STOXX 600 index is up 0.39 per cent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei is up 0.
57 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index is up 0.51 per cent. The Canadian dollar traded at 72.
27 U.S. cents.
Business
Business Brief: Bay Street’s message to Carney
Now, the Prime Minister faces the challenge of delivering on campaign promises