What to make of Carney’s first press conference? He comes into the room with a sheaf of paper and proceeds to read. Occasionally he smiles affably at the reporters in the room. Then he looks back at his notes and continues to read.
He just won an election, a total upset. He is declaring a national emergency. He’s calling for a new international order free of US hegemony. He is readjusting Canadian federal-provincial relations. He wants to build half a billion houses a year.
And he sits there, turning the pages, glancing up every now and then. What gives? No teleprompter? No rhetoric? No sound bites? Didn’t anyone tell him how it’s supposed to go? You’re not a technocrat any more! You’re a politician! So start behaving like one!
But he knows better than to behave like a politician. It’s time for Carney the banker to come out. With policies, objectives, timelines. He’s not talking to you and me. He’s talking to the EU, the World Bank, the G7, the WTO, the IMF. He’s talking to corporate boards and CEOs. To the provincial finance ministers. You and me, we’re bystanders.
So he takes on the manner of a board chairman delivering a report to the AGM. Sober, assured, determined. “No games”, he says. Pragmatic. Results tracked against a timeline.
This is his job. This is why he was elected. Because he knew these people, these organizations, their world. And they knew him. Now he has to reassure them that he is still the man they knew: the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
It doesn’t make good YouTube. But that’s okay. He’s frying bigger fish.
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