Douglas Roche, Edmonton, AB

Mark Carney had just come to the podium at the Rogers Centre in Ottawa to make his acceptance speech after the Liberal Party of Canada elected him leader and thus Canada’s 24th Prime Minister. He began talking about a message he had received from his friend Bob Zettel, who “goes to my church.” Then he smiled, “Actually, I go to Bob’s church because he goes there a lot more frequently than I do.”

Zettel’s message, which also went to the three other leadership candidates, implored the candidates to look beyond the crisis of the Trump tariffs “to promote a united Canada, a commitment — a commitment — to common good and the respect and the rule of law throughout the world.”

Zettel’s request struck a nerve with Carney, for the common good is at the centre of the political philosophy of the new prime minister.

I was struck that Carney gave such prominence to his friend Zettel, so I phoned Zettel, who lives in Ottawa, and found out that he is a 75-year-old former high school teacher and a friend of Carney’s for some 25 years. He and Carney attend St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, where the liturgy, deeply involving the laity, attracts people from across the city.

This happens to be the church where I grew up and served as an altar boy 85 years ago. I attend St. Joseph’s whenever I visit Ottawa, and it was here, one Sunday a few years ago, where I saw Mark Carney give the homily. I was very impressed that the Governor of the Bank of Canada would play such a leading role in the Mass.

Although Carney had already achieved fame, he was treated as just another parishioner taking part in a liturgy heavily influenced by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Zettel told me about Carney’s strong commitment to the social justice call of the Church. Before we closed off our conversation, Zettel made an amusing comment that told me a lot about Carney: “They claim he’s an elitist. Well, if he really was an elitist, he wouldn’t have been hanging around me for years.”

After the Mass at which I had seen Carney give the homily, I spoke to him, for we do indeed have a relationship. In 1980, Carney’s father, Bob, was the Liberal candidate running against me in the federal election. I was then the sitting Progressive Conservative MP. I won that contest and always remembered the pleasant high school teacher who had been my opponent. Mark, who was a young teen-ager at the time, and I reminisced about that long-ago election. I tried to be diplomatic and told Mark, “That was a case where the best man did not win.” “No, no,” he rejoined gracefully, “the best man did win.”

Even in his public life, Carney has never put his strong Catholic belief in the shadows. He was on the Steering Committee of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism launched at the Vatican in 2020. Organizations with $10.5 trillion in assets under management, $2.1 trillion of market value and around 200 million workers in 163 countries are participating, “under the moral guidance of His Holiness Pope Francis,” the Council said in a statement. Carney said he joined because the Council wants to ensure “fairness across generations.”

Carney has shown the depth of his commitment to the common good in his book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, which he wrote during the pandemic and published in 2021. He described the book as a “belated response” to the challenge Pope Francis had given the Council for Inclusive Capitalism to “turn the market back into humanity.” His 507-page treatise, which won the National Business Book Award, is not bedside reading. It is a formidable examination of how market fundamentalism has corroded social values and fostered the crises of our time, such as global warming and healthcare capacity.

“Having worked at the centre of markets all my professional life,” Carney writes, “I know they are the most powerful instrument we’ve ever created. Their energy and dynamism can be harnessed and directed to service greater purposes. But markets are indifferent to human suffering and can be blind to our greatest needs.”

Then he reveals the deep conviction that has driven him into politics: “That’s why politicians who worship the market tend to deliver policies that hurt people, and those who default to laissez faire leave us unprepared for the future. Put simply, markets don’t have values, people do.”

He wants to channel the dynamism of markets to create value for all and to do this by reinforcing the core values of solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability and humility. Carney seeks to advance distributive justice, equality of opportunity and fairness across generations. These are powerful ideas to make a more livable planet.

The word sustainability runs through his book. He says we must develop a “clean economy” that draws the continued input of private investors. To do this, he sets out a 10-point plan for Canada on growth, borrowing and productivity. The seeds of the new Liberal platform, with Carney in charge, are planted in Value(s). “It’s our job to make our markets work for all Canadians,” he writes.

Social justice permeates Carney’s thinking, but he writes in the terse manner of the boardroom. It is clear he has immense knowledge of the market and banking systems and how they would be strengthened by making a more livable life for vulnerable people. There are echoes of Pope Francis’s widely-acclaimed encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’ throughout the book.

He has first to drive back Trump’s tariffs and unify the country in the process. These are huge challenges. Carney likes to describe himself as a pragmatist — he did, after all, get rid of the dreaded carbon tax and the hike in capital gains tax that the Trudeau government brought in — and he will have to devote much of the federal election campaign to beating back Pierre Poilievre’s personal attacks on him and Trump’s tariff attacks on Canada. It will be tough to show the high-mindedness that led him into politics.

But underneath the clamour is a man who sees politics as a vocation, a medium to lift up the common good. He is touching a nerve in the fabric of Canada, and that is why people are beginning to respond to him. He gives them hope that fairness in life can be achieved.

If the Canadian people elect Mark Carney, they will have a leader with an immense intellect who shows signs of operating in the tradition of Pearsonian diplomacy. Lester B. Pearson, the 14th prime minister of Canada, was also a technocrat before entering politics where he distinguished himself at home by producing Medicare and the flag, and abroad by solving the Suez crisis with a soft diplomatic touch.

Would that Carney could devote himself solely to the elevation of humanity, but today’s politics are nastier than in Pearson’s time. To succeed in the political maelstrom, Carney must show he is “tough.” Poilievre relishes cloaking himself this way, but it is not natural terrain for Carney. He has to withstand (and answer back) the derisive insults that Poilievre is hurling at him; and he has to show Trump, while at the same time not alienating a supreme egotist, that economic warfare against Canada hurts America’s interests.

This calls for diplomacy that rises above the fray. That’s what Pearson had. Carney, the thinker, is not comfortable in the lions’ den, but if he survives these dehumanizing battles, he will lift up the humanity of all Canadians.