A look at a race that’s hardly started

Opinion

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This article was published 16/01/2025 (235 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While it would hardly be fair to say the race for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada is heating up — indeed, the leadership contest and the short-term prospects for the post-Trudeau version of the party currently seem as cold as a fish-market mackerel — the past few days have provided a level of clarity regarding how the Liberals’ timeline-compressed pursuit of a new leader is likely to unfold.

It isn’t completely clear what the full field of leadership hopefuls will look like — for a race whose outcome will be declared on March 9, less than eight weeks from now — but each passing day has given Canadians a better understanding of who isn’t going to take a run at the job.

Several high-profile cabinet ministers — including Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Transport and Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand and Employment, Workforce Development and Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon — have recently declared they will not seek the leadership.

Each has cited the need to focus on the looming threat of tariffs imposed by incoming U.S. president Donald Trump as the reason for opting out, but one can’t help thinking the grim prospect of leading a party that stands a good chance of being wiped off the political map in the next federal election also factored into the decision-making process.

It is, after all, a race for a job that no one in politics ever really wants.

Also not seeking the leadership is former B.C. premier Christy Clark, who was briefly considered an intriguing “outsider” but ran into a spot of Liberal-loyalty bother when she was forced to explain having briefly taken out a Conservative Party membership to support Jean Charest in his unsuccessful 2022 leadership bid against Pierre Poilievre.

After conceding she “misspoke” when she denied ever being a card-carrying Conservative, Clark bowed out, citing her lack of French fluency.

As of Wednesday, the list of declared Liberals included Sidney-Victoria MP and Indigenous caucus chair Jaime Battiste, Nepean MP Chandra Arya and former MP and current medical tech executive Frank Baylis. None would be considered to have a realistic chance of succeeding Justin Trudeau as party leader.

What remains, then, are the declarations of the contenders who actually have a shot at winning the job.

Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the noteworthy outsider who on Monday all but confirmed his leadership run during a spirited exchange with Jon Stewart on U.S. television’s satirical The Daily Show, is expected to formally announce his candidacy today at an event in Edmonton.

Meanwhile, former finance minister and deputy PM Chrystia Freeland — Trudeau’s most crucial cabinet colleague right up until the moment she wasn’t — is expected to confirm her leadership bid before Trump is sworn back into office on Monday.

Also still considered potential candidates are Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and current Liberal House Leader Karina Gould; each would likely be viewed as a long shot in what’s shaping up to be a two-horse race.

While Liberals ultimately grapple with the choice between a former deep insider and a self-styled outsider with undeniable close ties to the current PM, Poilievre will undoubtedly welcome an election-trail showdown with a new Liberal leader he will summarily dismiss as just more of the Trudeau same.

And if currently trendlines hold, after bravely mounting a campaign aimed at convincing voters of the Liberal Party’s continuing relevance, the “winner” of this leadership may soon dutifully take a seat, alongside what’s left of a trounced and tattered caucus, somewhere in the Opposition benches.