Liberal Mark Carney won the election – so hockey player will tackle Trump

It was a relieved party leader and prime minister who met the supporters on the election early Tuesday morning Swedish time.

– Who is ready? Who is ready to stand up for Canada with me? shouted Mark Carney.

Two months ago he had never had a political assignment. He was possibly regarded as far too gray to be able to assert himself in the fight for the tops.

But politics is often about timing.

When Donald Trump Stepped up the customs threat to Canada, Mark Carney was able to step forward as the safe solution. He has handled major crises in the past – as Central Bank Manager in Canada during the financial crisis in 2008 and he led the Bank of England during the tumultuous Brexit process when the UK left the EU.

Possibly the voters had also had enough of charisma after ten years with liberal fix star Justin Trudeau as the country’s leader. Mark Carney won a landslide victory at the Liberals party leadership election in early March.

« If I had asked me five years ago, I would have said that Mark Carney was too much technocrat and for a boring economist to serve as prime minister. But in these times I think he is exactly what we need, » Liberal Belinda Dodson noted for me in Ottawa in March.

Maybe have childhood In Canada’s sparsely populated, voters convinced that Mark Carney is of a completely different wood than the representative.

Justin Trudeau was born as the son of a sitting prime minister. Carney grew up in the small town of Fort Smith in the northwestern territory in Canada.

After high school he received a scholarship to Harvard University in Boston, USA. He continued to British Oxford, to doctorate in economics, focusing on the hyperacting issue of trade and competition.

He had a side job over the years at the elite university. At Harvard he was a reserve as a hockey goalkeeper in the student team. At Oxford he became the team captain. In hockey, Canada can weigh as heavy as a dissertation. It is no coincidence that Carney has campaigns in hockey jerseys. At election meetings, the supporters with Canadian flags are waving mounted at hockey clubs.

Now the assignment will be to knock away Trump’s hard pucks in the trade war. He has promised voters to set hard against hard, without specifying exactly how. The battle applies not only to customs, but also Trump’s attempt to tackle the neighbor in the north with threats and lure to make Canada the 51st US state.

« The United States is trying to crush us to own. It will never happen, » the message from Carney read in the election final.

Sooner or later, he must also address the problems that tormented representative Trudeau – the low growth, the high housing costs, the growing drug crisis and the difficult balance in energy policy and climate initiatives.

But nothing unites a country as an outer enemy. Carney secures the grip on government power when the national community in Canada is stronger than ever.

In his victory, he praised what he calls « Canadian values »: humility, ambition and unity.

« These are values ​​that I have to do my best to maintain every day in power, » he said.

He also promised to work together with all parties in Parliament and all provinces and territories and the indigenous people in Canada.

– Let’s put the split and the anger behind us. We are all Canadians, he said.

It is the « elbows up » that apply – to now use another hockey expression from the growing Canadian resistance movement in the Customs War against Trump.