Mark Carney – The Right Leader For These Very Challenging Times

An Election Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper

Posted April 25^th, 2025 on Niagara At Large

Mark Carney’s cool-headed, commanding demeanor brings back memories of ‘Sully’ landing that huge, disabled jet safely in the Hudson River.

When I hear and watch Mark Carney speak, I can’t help but think of Chesley Sullenberger.

Chesley Sullenberger- more famously known as ‘Sully’ – was the commercial airline pilot who in 2009, when the engines on his jet suddenly cut out, did not panic, but was able to remain cool-headed while using all of the skills he had to glide that huge plane to a landing on the choppy waters of the Hudson River and assist all 155 passengers and crew members aboard out of the sinking plane and onto waiting rescue boats alive.

With all of the economic and other challenges our Canada faces today, including – front and centre – the continued threats to our way of life and sovereignty coming from the crazy man in the White House, we need a Sully right now.

The last thing we need is someone who uses our flag as a prop to wrap himself in while spewing out one bumper sticker slogan after another with little or no substance behind them – slogans that are more designed to anger and divide us as a country than to bring us together at a time when standing together against the challenges we face is more important than ever.

Mark Carney is the right leader for these challenging times

That someone we need now is Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney who may not be a firebrand of a speaker but who, like Sully, is able to come on the  intercom with a calm, yet commanding voice and inform all of the people under his wing to buckle up for an emergency landing.

The choices we have in elections are never perfect. That’s the way it always is.

But in this election, Mark Carney, by almost every measure that counts, has the economic and leadership experience as a former head of the Bank of Canada, then of the Bank of England, of working with other world leaders to address such calamities as the 2008 financial crash that jarred so many lives and businesses in our country, in the United States and other countries around the world, the COVID pandemic and later, as Canada’s United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action, the climate crisis.

Mark Carney recently greets supporters during a campaign stop in the Niagara municipality of Port Colborne, part of a Niagara South Riding currently held by Liberal Vance Badawey.

By contrast, we have a federal Conservative leader in Pierre Poilievre, whose stock and trade has been ranting in a Trump-like manner and using Trump-like slogans about how broken our country is, and whose answer to almost everything from the climate crisis to health care and housing is to “axe the tax.”

In the final days of this election, Poilievre has declared that he would defy all the warnings of environmental scientists and bring back single-use plastics, including plastic straws, and would criminalize encampments for the homeless and empower the police and courts to have encampments across the country torn down.

As for Poilievre’s  responses to Trump’s threats against Canada, they were, earlier on, milk toast, if not non-existent compared to those of Carney and other political leaders at the federal and provincial level, possibly because he knows that, according to numerous surveys on voters’ preferences, a significant percentage of the people who make up his base of supporters like Trump and would not even mind if Canada became –  as Trump has threatened to make it – a “51^st state.”

It’s only more recently, as Poilievre desperately tries to reach out to a broader cross-section of voters to save his faltering campaign, that he has wrapped his rhetoric in a veneer of toughness when he talks about the threats coming from south of the border.

The same made her of Poilievre and his Conservatives are certainly not true of the federal New Democrats and the Green Party, whose leaders have put forward thoughtful and well-defined platforms to address the issues facing our country. It is a shame that their parties are likely going to be collateral damage in this election as voters who would normally support them them move to Carney’s Liberals to make sure Poilievre and his Conservatives don’t squeak through with a win because of split votes.

So at the end of the day, of the two leaders – Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievere – most positioned to win this election, Carney is the one with the temperament, the intelligence and the depth of knowledge and experience we need to bring us together and overcome the challenges and threats we now face as a nation.

That is my take on it and whether you agree with me on not, please feel free to use the comment box below to share your thoughts.

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

To watch an interview with Mark Carney from 2022, click on –

Mark Carney’s call to action on climate – YouTube

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