Good morning. The Liberal leadership race is off to a cautious start – more on that below, along with confusion around the capital gains tax and Donald Trump’s continued push to make Canada the 51st state. But first:
Today’s headlines
- BMO CEO says that political turmoil is throwing Canadian businesses into more uncertainty than their U.S. peers
- Los Angeles wildfires are burning out of control, forcing thousands to flee
- Canadian tennis champ Gaby Dabrowski opens up about playing through her breast cancer treatment
Pretty quiet over here.Patrick Doyle/Reuters
Politics
The rules of engagement
Hours after Justin Trudeau said he’d resign as Prime Minister, former central banker Mark Carney had his own announcement to make: Upon speaking with Liberal MPs and party members all across the country, Carney had come to the determination that … he’d give the Liberal leadership a mull. “I’ll be considering this decision closely with my family over the coming few days,” he said in a short statement issued Monday evening.
As campaign kickoffs go, it’s not exactly a golden escalator ride. But what Carney lacked in conclusiveness, he made up for in speed: So far, no other contenders have thrown their hat (or officially admitted thinking about throwing their hat) into the Liberal ring. That’ll soon change – the party needs to install a new leader before Parliament’s return in late March and the expected call of a spring election. These hopefuls won’t stay on the sidelines for long.
So, what could tempt them into an announcement? And could they remain in cabinet while making a bid for the top job? And why might anyone even want the job right now? I called up Stephanie Levitz, a senior reporter in The Globe’s Ottawa bureau, to find out.
What’s the atmosphere like in Ottawa?
It’s a bit of stunned silence. There’s some relief that the “will he? won’t he? when will he?” questions have been answered. I’d say there’s relief especially among Liberal MPs who had not come out publicly to say Trudeau should go – now the decision has been made, and people can move forward.
Mark Carney moved forward, too, saying he’s considering a bid to take Trudeau’s place. Why announce that?
It sends a signal to the other candidates. I don’t think Carney’s statement shuts the door to other bids, but in the very cutthroat world of political organizing, the people who run campaigns will start looking around to decide who they’re going to align with. So, you have Chrystia Freeland calling caucus members and organizers within the party to suss out support. You have Jonathan Wilkinson, currently the Minister of Energy, presenting himself as a person of economic know-how. There are lots of other names bubbling around: François-Philippe Champagne. Anita Anand. Mélanie Joly. Dominic LeBlanc. Former B.C. premier Christy Clark is kicking the tires pretty hard.
What could tip them to run?
For a lot of these people, the next step will be the rules of the leadership race – how much money do you need for entry, what are the terms and conditions, and when is the vote going to be held? The Liberal Party constitution suggests that the race is a minimum of 90 days. But prorogation is only until March 24. That’s 75 days. The party uses a preferential ballot, so people can rank their candidates. You’re going to declare candidates, sort out the membership list, find out who can vote, mail all these people ballots, and get them back in 75 days? It doesn’t seem feasible.
Mark Carney: He's (thinking about) running.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
It also doesn’t seem feasible to campaign for leader while remaining in cabinet, which would be the case for a lot of potential candidates.
LeBlanc is not just the Finance Minister, he’s also basically in charge of the border and all the talks with the incoming Trump administration. How is he supposed to do that job and run for the Liberal leadership at the same time? Also, we have tight fundraising rules in this country, so it’s not like a border-workers union could donate $10,000 to his campaign, but there are all sorts of little things – smaller donations, quid pro quos – that just feel icky if you allow a cabinet minister to run for leadership. Right now, the constitution is silent on that issue. I think the Liberals will have to sort it out pretty fast and say to ministers: In or out?
But if they rule that you can’t be in cabinet and in the race, the country could lose its finance minister and border czar, foreign affairs minister, energy minister, transport minister, innovation minister, potentially its House leader – these are senior Liberals who have these positions for a reason. A bunch of parliamentary secretaries might get to update their resumes to say they were ministers of whatever for six weeks.
What sort of leader do the Liberals say they want?
At this moment in time, what I hear the most is: Please don’t let us get destroyed in the next election. And under Justin Trudeau, it really looked like a wipeout. It’s funny with MPs: Every single one I’ve spoken to in the last week all believe that with a new leader, they can keep their individual seats. Freeland is polling the highest right now among the possible contenders. As someone in politics said to me, we live in an attention economy, and in choosing to exit as she did, Freeland really captured the attention economy. She suddenly got people talking about her as some kind of hero. But can she sustain that?
And can she separate herself from Trudeau in a spring election? Can anyone?
It seems likely that the government will fall at the end of March, which means an election will have to be held within 36 to 50 days. The Liberals might prefer the race be 50 days, to give them more time to attack Pierre Poilievre. I think the Conservatives, though, will brand any candidate as “just like Justin.” That will be the tagline.
But to go back to the attention economy – the Conservatives had people’s attention for so long, and now they’re losing it to the Liberal Party. They’re losing it to Trump. And what Trump does with those tariffs could really be the election question. That’s different than what Poilievre hoped to run on, which was Justin Trudeau’s record and the carbon tax. It’s not clear to me that framing still holds up in the era of Donald Trump.
At this stage, it still looks like the Liberals will get clobbered in an election. So why would someone sign up now for defeat?
I mean, it’s a great question, and it depends on how people are viewing the landscape. If you’re a Chrystia Freeland or a Mark Carney and you’ve had a long, accomplished, public-facing career, do you want to be opposition leader for four or eight years? Do you want to rebuild the Liberal Party? Because unless your ambition is to be quite literally the shortest Prime Minister in all of history – unless you want that Wikipedia entry – you have to be content to play the long game. Maybe the answer is “yes.” Maybe they view that as their life’s work.
Justin Trudeau revitalized the Liberal Party, but he built it in his own image, and now it’s all wrapped up in him. So, whoever becomes the next leader of the party will have to grapple with some hard questions, like: What does it mean to be Liberal in Canada any more? How do you reinvent the party? And they may have to be prepared to work on those questions for a decade.
The Shot
‘Canada and the United States: That would really be something.’
Trump weighs in at Mar-a-Lago.Carlos Barria/Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump continues to double down on this 51st-state business, musing yesterday that he might use “economic force” to make Canada a part of the United States. (Justin Trudeau quickly clapped back that there wasn’t “a snowball’s chance in hell” of that happening.) Read more about Trump’s annexation talk here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: The confusion around the capital gains tax leaves Canadians facing two unappealing options: overpay now, or face interest and penalties later.
Abroad: Police believe the soldier who exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI to plan the attack.
Tech talk: Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will get rid of fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, relying instead on users to add context and caveats to dubious posts.
Mars rocks: The Perseverance rover has collected more than two dozen samples since its 2021 landing on Mars, but now NASA needs a cheaper way to get that rubble back to Earth.