The race to lead Canada’s Liberal Party hinges on handling Trump

The sprint to succeed Justin Trudeau as the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party has begun. Eight candidates have put their names forward ahead of the January 23rd deadline, but the race will almost certainly be won by either the former central-bank governor, Mark Carney, or Mr Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland. Another former minister in Mr Trudeau’s cabinet, 37-year-old Karina Gould, is running with the aim of bringing back to the Liberal Party the younger voters who have deserted it for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Liberal Party members will choose their new leader on March 9th.

The likely successors are already abandoning Mr Trudeau’s policies and economic record. A signature Liberal achievement was winning three straight elections while campaigning to introduce a carbon tax. Now, Mr Carney, Ms Freeland and Ms Gould all say they are prepared to pull back from the unpopular levy. Mr Trudeau’s tax-and-spend budgeting? They say Canadians are still smarting from the Liberals’ largesse, and they want it to stop.

The winner will become prime minister immediately, but probably only briefly. Opposition parties have said that they will force a vote of no confidence in the government as soon as Parliament returns on March 24th. The new leader may well call an election rather than face losing that vote. Mr Trudeau’s departure has done nothing to help his party in the polls. If the election were held tomorrow, the Conservatives would thump them.

Mr Carney’s advantage is his relative distance from the departing prime minister. After running the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, Mr Carney then ran the Bank of England until 2020. That makes him an outsider in Canadian politics. After returning in 2020 he refused several entreaties from Mr Trudeau to join his government. Mr Carney’s rejection of Ms Freeland’s finance portfolio, which Mr Trudeau offered to him in December, was the trigger for the latter’s resignation.

The former central banker is running on his economic credentials. “The prime minister and his team let their attention wander from the economy too often,” Mr Carney said during the rather punchless launch of his candidacy in Edmonton on January 16th. “I won’t lose focus.” That was a shot at Ms Freeland. Mr Carney told Jon Stewart, a television host, in a much more effervescent appearance on January 13th, that he was running as an outsider.

But many Liberals resent him for leaping late into the fray that has consumed their party over the past three years, and which has seen them slide from first place in the polls to 26 points behind the Conservatives. “The Liberal Party of Canada is not a hobby for me,” said Ms Gould. The implication was clear: Mr Carney might not stick around as leader if he loses the general election.

No one can accuse Ms Freeland of dabbling in politics; her time at Mr Trudeau’s side is the weak spot in her leadership bid. Casting herself as a candidate of renewal will be tricky. Hours of video show a vigorously nodding Ms Freeland standing beside Mr Trudeau; she publicly approved of all he said for almost a decade.

Ms Freeland tells it differently. “For quite some time I was in disagreement with the prime minister, particularly in regards to spending,” she said at her campaign launch in Toronto on January 19th. Their spat intensified after Donald Trump’s election and his threat to wage “economic war” on Canada. “When you face an existential threat, you cannot afford to make electioneering expenditures.”

A big question for Liberal members is which candidate will best handle Mr Trump. Ms Freeland points to her experience dealing with his administration during free-trade negotiations in 2018. Mr Carney says guiding big central banks through financial crisis (2008) and populist upheaval (Brexit) means he is best placed to handle what may be a staggering blow to Canada’s economy.

Mr Trump never hid his contempt for Mr Trudeau. He may well be enjoying the irony of his outsized role in determining Mr Trudeau’s successor. ■