Mark Carney will be sworn in as Canada’s next prime minister on Friday, March 14.
In a statement in the evening of March 12, the office of Gov. General Mary Simon said she will be presiding over the swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall at 11 a.m. on March 14.
Carney won the leadership race of the governing Liberal Party with a wide margin on March 9. His win with 85.9 percent of the nearly 152,000 votes cast put him well ahead of former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, who garnered 8.0 percent of the vote, followed by former cabinet minister Karina Gould with 3.2 percent and former Liberal MP Frank Baylis with 3.0 percent.
Carney has already been meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and cabinet ministers as part of the transition.
Carney, 59, will become a prime minister who currently isn’t a sitting parliamentarian, a rare occurrence, and will be the first Canadian prime minister who has never held an elected role before.
The former Bank of Canada governor hasn’t yet declared how he intends to get a seat in the House of Commons, and whether he’ll seek it via a byelection or call an election soon.
Related Stories
Parliament was prorogued by Trudeau on Jan. 6, the same day he announced he was planning to resign, and on which a leadership race was launched to replace him.
Parliament is set to resume on March 24.
Opposition parties have indicated they intend to vote non-confidence in the government. However, the NDP recently said it won’t vote for bringing down the government until the House votes to pass an aid package for Canadians impacted by U.S. tariffs.
An election has to be held by October this year.
Carney’s swearing-in will also bring an end to the reign of Trudeau after over nine years.
Trudeau’s resignation came in the wake of Freeland announcing her resignation from cabinet in a public letter in mid-December, objecting to Trudeau shuffling her out of her role as finance minister and saying the government needed to be more responsible with spending.
The incident, along with declining support for the Liberals in the polls, led to more public calls within the Liberal caucus for Trudeau’s ouster, which he agreed to early this year.
Trudeau on March 12 thanked the people of his riding of Papineau in Montreal, which he has represented since 2008, in a social media post.
“17 years ago, the people of Papineau put their trust in me. They gave me a chance to do good by our community — and a few years later, do good by our country,” he said. “That’s a privilege I’ll be forever grateful for.”
Carney, who started his career in the private sector, worked as a public servant before becoming governor of the Bank of Canada from 2007 to 2013, and then the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.
He later joined the private sector again, serving on the board of a number of organizations. He also served as the U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. He has said he resigned from all roles before becoming a candidate in the Liberal leadership race in January.
