[1] Carr has a certificate in Business Administration from Ryerson University, and was a businessman and sales manager in the transportation industry before entering public life.

Carr also played professional ice hockey for five years in the farm teams of the Boston Bruins and Quebec Nordiques.

The Progressive Conservatives won a majority government under Mike Harris in the provincial election of 1995, and Carr was easily re-elected.

Carr was again re-elected in the provincial election of 1999, defeating Liberal Kevin Flynn by over 13,000 votes.

In 2003, he alienated several members of the Progressive Conservative Party by ruling that the government of Ernie Eves had committed a prima facie act of contempt against the legislature by holding its budget announcement at the headquarters of Magna International, rather than in the legislature itself.