Joe Oliver: Two questions Mark Carney needs to answer

The media has paid scant attention to two narratives that raise uncomfortable questions about Prime Minister Mark Carney. One concerns what role he may have played in ending Justin Trudeau’s leadership of the Liberal party and the other relates to the sudden reversal of his long-standing concern about man-made climate change.

In her new book, Unreliable Boyfriend, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland describes the December 2024 Zoom call with Trudeau that resulted in her removal as minister of finance and subsequent resignation. She claims Trudeau indicated, with a “half-proud, half-defiant smile,” that she would be replaced by Mark Carney.

To my knowledge, Trudeau has not disputed her account. That raises an interesting question going to Carney’s character: Had he in fact agreed to accept the appointment as finance minister? With Carney waiting in the wings, Trudeau could sell firing Freeland as both an upgrade and a sign of confidence in his leadership from a highly credentialed former governor of the Banks of Canada and England. On the other hand, if Carney was not lined up, firing Freeland would be seen as reckless and would make Trudeau look exceptionally weak and vulnerable to the very forces that in fact would force his resignation a few weeks later.

So it seems very unlikely that Trudeau would have acted without a firm commitment from Carney, rather than just an indication of interest. And even if he had been willing to roll the dice, would his closest advisers, including Katie Telford, who had guided so many of his political decisions, have countenanced such a risk?

Whether or not Carney cynically reneged on a promise, his refusal to join Trudeau’s cabinet sealed the prime minister’s fate. Carney was then able to exploit the resulting political vacuum and make a long-planned run for leadership, leading to his coronation as Liberal leader and prime minister. If it was all planned, it was a double-cross for the ages and a masterstroke of devious political scheming.

Why haven’t Canadian journalists asked for the details of Carney and Trudeau’s understanding about the finance job from the only two people who know what was said between them? Instead? Nothing — probably because Carney is a Liberal engaged in a patriotic battle, posing as David against the orange Goliath.

By the way, Freeland revealed that Kleenex boxes were usually available at Trudeau’s cabinet, because “Crying was routine at cabinet meetings,” although it is not clear whether the weeping was due to woke empathy or Trudeau’s bullying. Mind you, had I attended his kumbaya hand-holding sessions, I might have been reduced to tears at the direction the country was taking under his leadership.

The second question Carney needs to answer concerns his renunciation of climate alarmism. Over many decades, he built his career around an oft-repeated belief in the “settled science” that man-made greenhouse gas emissions were dooming humanity to disaster. For more than a decade he aired his climate catastrophism publicly, latterly as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, when he established the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which worked to restrict financing fossil fuels until it came unravelled in October 2025.

After Carney became prime minister, however, his approach changed dramatically. Now he trumpets the urgency of developing Canada’s natural resources and building pipelines to sell oil and gas to overseas markets.

Trudeau’s green policies cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in lost economic opportunities and undermined our productivity, prosperity and national security, so a change was urgently needed, especially given new geopolitical challenges. Change had also become a political imperative.

But Carney has never said the science of climate change has changed or he’s now skeptical about the jeremiads of green doomsayers. If he still believes in the existential threat posed by global warming, what he is now pursuing is grossly irresponsible. But if he no longer believes it, what scientific revelation caused him to change his mind?

Or did he never believe it in the first place and only went along for personal advancement? I am personally curious because, as minister of natural resources in the Harper government, I was excoriated for pursuing resource development and “gutting” regulation by introducing legislation mandating “one project, one review in a limited timeframe,” precisely the approach Carney is currently advocating and for which he is receiving lavish praise.

In light of the trade war with the U.S. and President Trump’s threats and insults, it may feel almost unpatriotic for the legacy media to raise uncomfortable questions about the prime minister. In a democracy, however, no political leader should be beyond public scrutiny.

Joe Oliver was minister of natural resources and finance in the Harper government.