OTTAWA, March 9 (Reuters) - Former central banker Mark Carney won the race to become leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party and will succeed Justin Trudeau as prime minister, official results showed on Sunday.
Carney will take over at a tumultuous time in Canada, which is in the midst of a trade war with longtime ally the United States under President Donald Trump and must hold a general election soon.
Carney, 59, took 86% of votes cast to beat former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in a contest in which just under 152,000 party members voted.
What’s the feeling in Canada? This guy good enough to win the election?
He’s a pretty standard neoliberal but he’s fairly straightforward about it I suppose. He’s better than PP but that’s not a high bar at all.
At this point, people in Canada are scared of the Conservatives just bending over for Trump (myself included), so right now there’s a surge in polling for the Liberals, which I think would still be there if they ran a ham sandwich, nevermind Mark Carney.
More centrist people probably like the guy more. Whether he will beat the Conservatives? I don’t know anything anymore in North America. Canada has its fair share of right wing grifters and nutjobs.
A really good overview of the whole thing by Radhika Desai and Dimitri Lascaris
