Multiple outlets report that former Goldman Sachs executive Mark Carney has emerged as the frontrunner to replace Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Carney could potentially become the nation’s next prime minister when the governing Liberal Party votes on new leadership on Sunday.

From the New York Post:

Mark Carney, credited with helping Canada dodge the worst of the 2008 financial crisis when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, is viewed by his countryman as the politician most trusted to handle Trump, polls show.

“When you think about what’s at stake in these ridiculous, insulting comments of the president, of what we could be, I view this as the sort of Voldemort of comments,” Carney, 59, referring to Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st US state.

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“Like I will not even repeat it, but you know what I’m talking about,” he told a crowd of hundreds of supporters at a Winnipeg pub last month.

Carney, who was a backup goalie for the Crimson’s hockey team during his undergrad years at Harvard before attending Oxford for postgrad, is from a small town in Canada’s Northwest Territory.

If he wins Sunday, Carney will not only become the new leader of the Liberal Party but also replace Trudeau as the country’s Prime Minister. The former banker — who was managing director of investment banking at Goldman in the early 2000s — will then face the tough decision of when to call a federal election.

Canadian elections are usually held every four years – with one currently set for October – but the Prime Minister can choose to dissolve Parliament and call a snap election any time before then.

POLITICO reports:

Carney spent the early part of his career at Goldman Sachs, where he worked for 13 years before serving a five-year term as Canada’s central bank governor. But his profile rose to prominence on the continent after he became the Bank of England’s first non-British governor in 2013.

Jean-Claude Trichet, the former head of the European Central Bank, told POLITICO that having a foreigner helm a major central bank was “in no way an obvious decision,” but that Carney’s “remarkable” reputation in central banking helped the appointment go through.

The man who appointed him then, the U.K.’s former conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, said Carney’s experience on the international stage will serve as an asset both to Canada and leaders in Western Europe as they confront the challenges posed by U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump has threatened to annex Canada and hit the country with massive tariffs.

 

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