On Sunday, the Liberal Party of Canada elected Carney as its leader in a landslide, with 85.9% of the vote, paving the way for him to succeed Justin Trudeau, who resigned in January amid cratering approval ratings.
Yet upon closer inspection, his ascension to power is unusual. Carney is, in fact, the first Canadian Prime Minister never to have been a Member of Parliament at the time of his appointment. Add to that, the fact that Carney hasn’t lived in Canada for over a decade, and has never faced a ballot box and it does start to look truly odd. His journey from Goldman Sachs to the Bank of Canada, and then to the Bank of England as its first non-British Governor, is remarkable. But it’s his leap into the PM’s office that raises eyebrows and invites comparison with our own constitutional framework here in New Zealand.
Electoral law expert, Graeme Edgeler commented on X, “I hadn’t been following the leadership election and had no idea this was possible in Canada. Leader outside Parliament? Sure. Prime Minister outside Parliament? Legitimately surprises me.”
Under Canada’s Westminster-derived system, a prime minister doesn’t technically need to be an elected MP. The Governor General appoints the leader of the party commanding the confidence of the House of Commons, and that’s that. It’s a flexibility inherited from Britain, where convention, not law, typically demands a parliamentary seat. Carney, a technocrat with three passports (Canadian, British, and Irish), has spent years abroad, steering global finance through crises like the 2008 global financial crisis and Brexit. His CV is golden: 13 years at Goldman Sachs, a stint as Deputy Governor and then Governor of the Bank of Canada, and a ground-breaking tenure at the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. But it’s the 1867 Constitution Act that has opened the door to the Premiership for Carney.
Contrast this with New Zealand, where our Constitution Act 1986 tidied up such anomalies. Section 6 requires that MPs, including the Prime Minister, must be elected; though before 1986, we had our own flirtations with unelected leaders. In those earlier days, prime ministers could take office without a seat, relying on the same Westminster flexibility Canada clings to now.
Since 1986, however, the rules have tightened: ministers must be MPs, with a 40-day grace period after an election to secure a seat if appointed beforehand. This reflects a deliberate shift toward electoral accountability, and the ironing out of ancient quirks. Carney, meanwhile, has no immediate path to a seat. He’s hinted at calling an election soon, perhaps before Parliament reconvenes on March 24, but for now he’s a PM without a constituency, and a stranger to the House of Commons.
Carney’s political leanings have peeked through before, most notably during Brexit. As Bank of England Governor, he issued stark warnings about economic collapse if Britain left the EU, dire predictions that earned him the moniker, “the high priest of Project Fear” from Brexiteers like Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
In hindsight, those warnings looked more like political salvos than dispassionate economics. The UK didn’t plunge into recession; it muddled through, and Carney’s interventions smacked of a technocrat overstepping his brief and led to serious accusations that he had politicised the independent Bank.
Interestingly, there are other similar examples of this type of parachuting act. Mario Draghi, another Goldman Sachs alum turned central banker, was appointed Italy’s PM in 2021 by President Sergio Mattarella to tackle the COVID crisis after the prior government collapsed. Like Carney, Draghi leaned on his European Central Bank pedigree, never fought an election, and governed unelected.
Now, as Canada’s PM-designate, Carney trades on that crisis-manager reputation, promising to face down Donald Trump’s trade war with the same resolve Draghi brought to Italy’s woes.
“I know how to manage crises … in a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills,” Carney said during a recent leadership debate.
“President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down. We’re united and we will retaliate”, he said in an interview last month.
But can a man who’s spent decades in boardrooms and central banks connect with voters in Moose Jaw or Moncton? That remains to be seen. Daniel Béland, the director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, described Carney as, “a boring guy who in general doesn’t have a lot of charisma”.
In broader terms, Carney’s ascent underscores a tension between elite expertise and democratic accountability. In New Zealand, pre-1986 examples of unelected PMs are a distant memory, overtaken by a system that demands a direct link to the ballot box. Canada’s system, by contrast, allows this parachuting into power, a Liberal Party-sanctioned move that almost feels like a putsch than a transition.
It highlights the flexibility of ancient constitutional conventions in the modern era. Canadians will no doubt stomach this electoral eccentricity for a brief period of time but will expect to have their voices heard at the ballot box in the not too distant future. It is widely anticipated that Carney will call an election in the coming weeks; if he doesn’t, the opposition in Parliament could force one with a no confidence vote later this month.
In any event, Canadians have bigger things to worry about as news of a full trade war between Canada and the US begins to break this morning. Prime Minister-designate Carney declaring that the Canadian response to US tariffs will be calibrated to have maximum impact south of the border and Trump responding within the last hour saying that, “They will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come!”
Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau underscored the gravity of the situation when he told Liberal supporters: “This is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given.”
Lawyer and writer Philip Crump explores political, legal and cultural issues facing New Zealand. Sometimes known as Thomas Cranmer. This article was published HERE
Electoral law expert, Graeme Edgeler commented on X, “I hadn’t been following the leadership election and had no idea this was possible in Canada. Leader outside Parliament? Sure. Prime Minister outside Parliament? Legitimately surprises me.”
Under Canada’s Westminster-derived system, a prime minister doesn’t technically need to be an elected MP. The Governor General appoints the leader of the party commanding the confidence of the House of Commons, and that’s that. It’s a flexibility inherited from Britain, where convention, not law, typically demands a parliamentary seat. Carney, a technocrat with three passports (Canadian, British, and Irish), has spent years abroad, steering global finance through crises like the 2008 global financial crisis and Brexit. His CV is golden: 13 years at Goldman Sachs, a stint as Deputy Governor and then Governor of the Bank of Canada, and a ground-breaking tenure at the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. But it’s the 1867 Constitution Act that has opened the door to the Premiership for Carney.
Contrast this with New Zealand, where our Constitution Act 1986 tidied up such anomalies. Section 6 requires that MPs, including the Prime Minister, must be elected; though before 1986, we had our own flirtations with unelected leaders. In those earlier days, prime ministers could take office without a seat, relying on the same Westminster flexibility Canada clings to now.
Since 1986, however, the rules have tightened: ministers must be MPs, with a 40-day grace period after an election to secure a seat if appointed beforehand. This reflects a deliberate shift toward electoral accountability, and the ironing out of ancient quirks. Carney, meanwhile, has no immediate path to a seat. He’s hinted at calling an election soon, perhaps before Parliament reconvenes on March 24, but for now he’s a PM without a constituency, and a stranger to the House of Commons.
Carney’s political leanings have peeked through before, most notably during Brexit. As Bank of England Governor, he issued stark warnings about economic collapse if Britain left the EU, dire predictions that earned him the moniker, “the high priest of Project Fear” from Brexiteers like Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
In hindsight, those warnings looked more like political salvos than dispassionate economics. The UK didn’t plunge into recession; it muddled through, and Carney’s interventions smacked of a technocrat overstepping his brief and led to serious accusations that he had politicised the independent Bank.
Interestingly, there are other similar examples of this type of parachuting act. Mario Draghi, another Goldman Sachs alum turned central banker, was appointed Italy’s PM in 2021 by President Sergio Mattarella to tackle the COVID crisis after the prior government collapsed. Like Carney, Draghi leaned on his European Central Bank pedigree, never fought an election, and governed unelected.
Now, as Canada’s PM-designate, Carney trades on that crisis-manager reputation, promising to face down Donald Trump’s trade war with the same resolve Draghi brought to Italy’s woes.
“I know how to manage crises … in a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills,” Carney said during a recent leadership debate.
“President Trump probably thinks Canada will cave in. But we are going to stand up to a bully, we’re not going to back down. We’re united and we will retaliate”, he said in an interview last month.
But can a man who’s spent decades in boardrooms and central banks connect with voters in Moose Jaw or Moncton? That remains to be seen. Daniel Béland, the director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University, described Carney as, “a boring guy who in general doesn’t have a lot of charisma”.
In broader terms, Carney’s ascent underscores a tension between elite expertise and democratic accountability. In New Zealand, pre-1986 examples of unelected PMs are a distant memory, overtaken by a system that demands a direct link to the ballot box. Canada’s system, by contrast, allows this parachuting into power, a Liberal Party-sanctioned move that almost feels like a putsch than a transition.
It highlights the flexibility of ancient constitutional conventions in the modern era. Canadians will no doubt stomach this electoral eccentricity for a brief period of time but will expect to have their voices heard at the ballot box in the not too distant future. It is widely anticipated that Carney will call an election in the coming weeks; if he doesn’t, the opposition in Parliament could force one with a no confidence vote later this month.
In any event, Canadians have bigger things to worry about as news of a full trade war between Canada and the US begins to break this morning. Prime Minister-designate Carney declaring that the Canadian response to US tariffs will be calibrated to have maximum impact south of the border and Trump responding within the last hour saying that, “They will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come!”
Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau underscored the gravity of the situation when he told Liberal supporters: “This is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given.”
Lawyer and writer Philip Crump explores political, legal and cultural issues facing New Zealand. Sometimes known as Thomas Cranmer. This article was published HERE
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