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It was perhaps Mark Carney's last moment of anonymity.

Just before a parliamentary hearing yesterday — one billed as a job interview — Canada's next central bank governor was a veritable nobody on Parliament Hill as camera crews scrambled in search of the 42-year-old, whose signature will soon be on Canadian money.

But not for long. Soon after the cameras and microphones found him, soon after a brief moment of discomfort, Mr. Carney revealed his characteristic confidence as he opened himself up to a public grilling.

The Bank of Canada's governor-designate presented himself as a keen inflation fighter who wants to modernize the institution's approach to globalization and sophisticated financial markets, someone who believes strongly in explaining the bank's decisions to the public, and someone who sticks to his script, deftly dodging uncomfortable questions.

In a 90-minute session with the House of Commons finance committee meant to make sure the federal government had chosen the right man for the job, Mr. Carney also passionately rejected the case for monetary union with the United States.

Since the dollar has been so volatile lately, "it is not surprising that some have called for Canada to fix its currency to the U.S. dollar," he said in an opening statement. "In my opinion, it would be a mistake to do so."

At 42, Mr. Carney will be the youngest central banker in the Group of Seven countries, and the second-youngest in Canada's history. He has a doctorate in economics from Oxford and spent more than a decade working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs.

He joined the central bank in 2003 as the deputy governor for international affairs.

He was only there a year before being whisked away by the Department of Finance to be the senior official for the G7, and to steer the budget-making process. He was designated the next governor, for a seven-year term, by a selection committee and the Minister of Finance in October.

Mr. Carney stressed that the best thing the central bank can do in the face of an unjustifiably strong currency is to stay focused on consistently controlling inflation. But he also underlined the central bank's ability to intervene in currency markets in dire circumstances.

On market turmoil, he vowed to steer a balanced course between the need to protect the Canadian economy from the fallout of the credit crunch, on the one hand, and to ensure financial institutions were held responsible for their recklessness, on the other.

"It is extremely important that financial participants bear the consequences of their decisions," he told the committee. "What we have to make sure of is that the consequences of the difficult event don't fall on the shoulders of all Canadians as we try to teach a really … harsh lesson to those participants."

His testimony started out haltingly, with a commitment to say little about monetary policy or the economic outlook so as not to compromise future decisions. But by the end of the session, Mr. Carney was in full flight, making precise points at rapid-fire speed, mainly in English but with some hesitant French.

While MPs didn't question his inflation-fighting credentials, he issued a concise five-point argument about why keeping inflation low is so important. "It's the poorest people in society who are least well positioned to hedge against inflation, least well positioned to use sophisticated financial products to hedge themselves," he said.

Economic booms that push up inflation "always end badly, and they require Herculean effort to put us back on the path where we were."

He recognized that the central bank is re-examining its inflation-targeting regime, but said he would need to see "compelling evidence" before entertaining any changes. The current system sees the central bank try to keep the annual inflation rate at 2 per cent.

Much of Mr. Carney's testimony purposely echoed comments made previously by Governor David Dodge, who retires Jan. 31. But Mr. Carney did shine some light on the central bank's ruminations about whether it should be more active in ensuring liquidity to short-term money markets. The Bank of Canada has set up a work plan to look at the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, among others, to see if Canada can emulate some of their liquidity facilities, he said.