Carney on Potentially Running for Public Office: ‘Opportunity May Present Itself’

Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor and now adviser to the Liberal Party, says he may consider running for public office at some point.
“And look, the opportunity may present itself,” he said. “This is what I can do right now, and I’m doing it to the best of my ability.”
“Success in sustainable finance will be when we can drop the adjective, when this just becomes mainstream,” he said.
Erskine-Smith asked Carney about companies moving away from ESG, or environmental, social, and governance, commitments, if it impacts their “bottom line.”
ESG commitments include abiding by a set of standards in the investment decision-making process to measure sustainable and ethical impacts. In some cases, this has translated to companies staying away from providing capital to oil and gas projects.
Carney said in response to Erskine-Smith’s question that his work is focused on the environment part of the ESG. More specifically, he said, he works on a subset of the environment part which is focused on the “transition towards a low-carbon economy or net zero.”
He added that it is the “law of the land” in Canada to reach net-zero emissions.
“How we do that requires certain policies from government, and a number are being put in place. More will be required without question, but financial institutions and companies in Canada and elsewhere around the world react to those policies, and they react to the values of people,” he said.
Carney said that during previous industrial revolutions, many workers lost jobs and were slow to benefit from the introduction of new technologies and industries. While workers were eventually retrained and supported by new welfare systems, this happened “decades after the fact,” he said.
“I think we should benefit from that knowledge, that history, and do this in real time. And it therefore has to be part and parcel of the growth strategy,” he said.