Reviewer's quotes misrepresented as passage from Mark Carney's book
- Published on April 14, 2025 at 21:17
- 5 min read
- By Gwen Roley, AFP Canada
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"Mark Carney is insane!" reads the text inside an April 8, 2025 X photo shared by Tamara Lich, an organizer of the Ottawa Trucker Convoy who is currently awaiting a verdict in the criminal trial over her role in the controversial 2022 protests.
The rest of the text in the image is purportedly a quote from Carney's 2021 book, "Value(s): Building a Better World for All," (archived here) including supposed calls for "rigid controls of personal freedom" and a "world of severely constrained choice."
A variation of the image was shared by former Canadian hockey player Theo Fleury, who has previously spread misinformation, while similar posts claiming the quote came from Carney's book appeared across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Threads.
Carney became prime minister on March 14, 2025 after winning the ruling Liberal Party's leadership race. He quickly called for a snap election now scheduled for April 28.
Carney is an economist by training, with a career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before serving as governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
He has been the subject of manipulated media and false claims since entering the political scene during his campaign to head the Liberal Party, including a tenuous conspiracy theory targeting his history as a central banker.
Carney has spoken about his support for "inclusive capitalism," and the 2021 book proposes changes to how governments approach finance. However, the quotes seen in the social media posts supposedly condemning capitalism and Western society are not pulled from the book.
Searching for the exact phrases leads to a review of the book on the website for the Canadian outlet National Post.
The commentary by author and former journalist Peter Foster used almost identical word combinations to write about his opinion on Carney's book the year it came out.
Further searches for the phrases in a digital version of the book did not yield any matching results.
AFP consulted a recent edition of the physical book and did not find any appearance of the alleged quotation seen in the pictures circulating online.
Foster appears to be quoting Carney's book in part of his review, but AFP was not able to find this exact quote in either the print or digital versions of the text.
Foster's review is critical of prime minister's proposals in the book writing that Carney wants a "technocratic dictatorship justified by climate alarmism," while another summary of "Values" for The Guardian said the text "provides an original condemnation of today's economics as surrendering the quest for objective value grounded in the essence of our humanity."
Carney has been a participant in the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, which includes business and labor leaders, and calls for a free-market system allowing for "opportunity, accountability, freedom, and innovation."
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation surrounding the Canadian election here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
