Mark Carney’s “Values”: The last DEI champion standing

For nearly two decades, Mark Carney has styled himself as the steady hand of global finance—a technocrat whose expertise has guided institutions like the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, and...

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Author: Cosmin Dzsurdzsa

Carney’s “Values”: A new investigative series by True North that takes the Liberal leadership hopeful’s own words as a launch pad to uncover his beliefs, background and vision for the world. Read the first part on carbon taxes here and the second part on central bank digital currencies here.

For nearly two decades, Mark Carney has styled himself as the steady hand of global finance—a technocrat whose expertise has guided institutions like the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, and the United Nations.

But as he positions himself to become the next likely prime minister of Canada, Carney is increasingly presenting himself as the last champion of diversity, equity and inclusion in an era where public and private support for such measures is waning.

“While America engages in a war on woke, Canadians will continue to value inclusiveness,” Carney said in a recent speech during his leadership campaign.

It’s a familiar refrain from a man who, during his tenure as governor of the Bank of England, turned the country’s nearly 330-year-old preeminent finance institution onto the task of implementing “unconscious bias training,” diversity quotas, and identity-based hiring.

But as the broader public grows skeptical of DEI’s excesses—where merit often takes a backseat to ideology—Carney’s insistence on maintaining this course raises serious questions about his priorities.

Carney has long blended economic policy with ideological activism. In a 2017 speech as the governor of the Bank of England, he laid out the central bank’s three-pronged approach to increasing diversity: inclusive recruitment, developing an inclusive culture, and creating inclusive communications.

The initiative included mandatory bias training for leadership, setting identity-based hiring targets, and embedding DEI principles into the assessment of employee performance.

“This training is part of our broader focus on values. Values count heavily when assessing performance and reward,” Carney emphasized at the time. “All managers—including myself—are assessed by colleagues on their values and behaviours.”

Rather than prioritizing economic stability, Carney pushed a vision where the central bank’s role was not just to regulate currency, but to purge wrongthink.

The “values” he professed in 2017 were the same ones he carried four years later with the publication of his book. Carney’s philosophy is laid out in his book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, in which he argues that markets must align with social values, particularly inclusivity and sustainability.

He insists that economic systems should reflect moral priorities–more specifically, an elite and establishmentarian morality.

“Using a values-based approach, it is possible to build a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable globalisation,” decreed Carney.

Carney’s book focuses on the future of money—a subject he has explored extensively—but according to Carney, even currency itself must be shaped into a DEI mould.

“Committing to diversity and inclusivity is essential to putting the right values behind the value of money,” writes Carney. “Money that doesn’t reflect the diversity of the society it serves will divide rather than unite.”

Carney cites placing diverse figures from history onto currency as an example, but beyond that what does it actually mean to make money “diverse”? Does it mean extending DEI principles beyond the corporate world and into the fundamental nature of currency itself? At a time when inflation is squeezing Canadians, and economic confidence is fragile, Carney’s fixation on DEI appears out of touch with the real concerns of working families.

His prescriptions for how businesses should conduct themselves are, however, very clear: “Select your teams wisely and recognise that while diversity is a reality, inclusion is a choice. Take it by recruiting widely, set targets for diversity and then exceed them by pursuing deliberate strategies to develop your teams and empower them.”

Carney’s steadfast commitment to DEI comes at a time when public opinion is shifting. Once seen as an unquestionable good, the ideology is now facing widespread scrutiny. In the U.S. large companies are abandoning heavy-handed DEI marketing strategies and even in Canada, some universities have removed DEI from their governing principles altogether.

Meanwhile, populist movements are rising across the West in direct opposition to these policies–a development Carney is very well aware of.

“The mistrust of experts and expertise is being stoked by the rise of populist politics,” he warns, before condemning what he calls the “us versus them” mentality of those who push back against elite-driven policies.

Yet for many, it is Carney’s worldview that feels divisive. His belief that financial institutions should be moral arbiters, enforcing progressive values on the masses, rings hollow in a world where working-class Canadians struggle to afford groceries while their leaders preach inclusivity from above.