By Daniel Béland

March 9, 2025

Sunday evening, as expected, Mark Carney easily won the Liberal leadership race. More than easily; resoundingly, with more than 86% of support from party voters.

Even as he steps into daily political life with the full-throated endorsement of his own party, the scope of Carney’s victory does not erase his most obvious Achilles’ heel: a lack of prior political experience that the exceptionally short and low-intensity leadership race did not do much to address.

This is the case because, perhaps with the exception of Karina Gould during the English-language debate, Carney faced relatively few criticisms from the other three leadership candidates who made it to the end of the race (the other two being Chrystian Freeland and Frank Baylis).

For the Liberal Party with an election approaching, this situation has the advantage of depriving Conservatives of the usual reservoir of friendly-fire criticisms that can be re-purposed as campaign-ad content in a federal election, as was done back in 2008, when they replayed attacks against Stephane Dion put forward by Michael Ignatieff during the previous Liberal leadership race. Yet, the downside of this is that Carney remains untested politically and that his relatively lacklustre performances during the two debates of the leadership race, in which Gould, as the underdog, outshone him, should give pause to both the party brass and the Liberal base alike.

The obvious point of comparison is Ignatieff, who had very little political experience when he entered his first Liberal leadership race in early April 2006, barely two and a half months after becoming the MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore in late January. During the 2006 Liberal leadership race, limited experience was an issue raised by some of his opponents, including Dion, who ended up winning the race rivals like Bob Rae and, especially, Ignatieff, who was the clear favourite from the start and received the most votes by far during the first round of voting at the Liberal convention.

After the Liberal election defeat in 2008 and Dion’s resignation, late in that year, Ignatieff finally became party leader, after winning the second Liberal race he participated in. By that time, he had served as an MP for nearly three years, a significant amount of political experience, especially if we compare it to that of Carney, who has never competed in any election at the federal, provincial or municipal level.

Less politically experienced than Ignatieff when he lost the Liberal leadership race in 2006, Carney remains an electoral neophyte, something stunning considering that many see him as a potential electoral savior for the Liberals, a sentiment that stems partly from his currently favourable polling numbers, a “honeymoon” with voters some pollsters say might already be over.

Carney’s leadership campaign team played it safe, by strictly controlling the message and limiting the number of his media interviews. This low-risk approach was understandable, as Carney became the perceived front-runner early in the race.

At the same time, there is hope for the Liberals, as the Trump effect associated with the U.S. president’s tariff war and talk of Canada becoming the 51st state has helped the party regain momentum in the polls vis-à-vis the Conservatives of Poilievre, who has struggled to shift his political rhetoric from the carbon tax and cost-of-living issues to patriotism and the ongoing response to the Trump administration’s policies and discourse.

Because of that and the similarities between Poilievre’s and Trump’s rhetoric, as well as Poilievre’s history of embracing Trump and his tactics before the volatile president became an unprecedented antagonist of Canada, the Liberals now emphasize in their attack ads that Carney is more trusted by Canadians than Poilievre do deal with Trump.

If Poilievre can somehow convince more Canadians that he can take on Trump, however, it might be hard for Carney to pull a fourth electoral victory in a row for his party, an extremely rare feat in Canadian politics. The Trump effect is strong but so is the “usure du pouvoir” facing the Liberals, who have been in power since late 2015, which seems like an eternity considering all the things that have occurred since, including the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, and Trump 1.0 and 2.0.

In the end, what Trump will do over the next few days, weeks, and months will have a strong impact on the looming federal campaign, in which the ballot question will most likely be who can best protect the country against Trump and fight for Canada.

The Trump effect is the main source of electoral hope for the Liberals and for Carney, who will now need to prove that the other qualities he brings to the table are worth more than time served in politics.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.