Employment Steven MacKinnon says he won't run for Liberal leadership after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned this month.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The race for the Liberal Party leadership is rapidly narrowing to perceived front-runners Chrystia Freeland and former central banker Mark Carney as senior cabinet ministers decide not to enter the contest to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
On Sunday, Employment Minister Steven MacKinnon was the latest federal minister to announce that he won’t run, citing the short time frame to mount a campaign before the March 9 leadership vote.
Two sources told The Globe and Mail that Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne is expected not to contest the leadership. The sources said he didn’t have the time to organize a proper challenge. His absence would leave Quebec without a high-profile leadership candidate.
A source close to the minister said Mr. Champagne will make the official announcement on Tuesday at a Canadian Club event in Toronto. The Globe is not identifying the sources, who were not authorized to discuss Mr. Champagne’s decision.
Mr. MacKinnon, who represents a Quebec riding, said on X Sunday that the Liberal Party is at a crossroads and Liberals must come together to make an important choice on the right leader to confront Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party has led in the polls by double-digit numbers for more than a year.
“The leadership race requires diverse, experienced and pragmatic voices, both in French and in English. I believe that I could be such a voice. Unfortunately, the time available does not allow me to mount the kind of campaign I would want to run,” he said.
Already, Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, a popular figure within the Liberal caucus, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Transport Minister Anita Anand have said they will not seek the leadership.
Mr. LeBlanc and Ms. Joly said they bowed out so they could focus on dealing with the threat of massive tariffs from the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Ms. Anand said she wants to return to teaching law and public-policy analysis.
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House Leader Karina Gould and National Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson are also considering whether to join the race as well as former British Columbia premier Christy Clark. So far, only two people have stated publicly that they will try to mount a campaign: former Quebec Liberal MP and businessman Frank Baylis, and current Ontario Liberal MP Chandra Arya.
Ms. Gould, building a team of organizers and supporters, is expected to announce her decision on whether to enter within days. The MP for Burlington is 37 years old, the youngest potential candidate in the field so far. Mr. Carney is 59, Ms. Freeland, 56, and Ms. Clark, 59.
Mr. Carney, the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, is expected to declare his intention to seek the leadership as early as Wednesday. Ms. Freeland’s announcement could come by the weekend.
Ms. Freeland destabilized the government when her abrupt resignation on Dec. 16 eventually led to Mr. Trudeau’s departure. She quit after the Prime Minister told her he planned to replace her at finance with Mr. Carney and put her in charge of Canada-U.S. relations.
Ms. Freeland felt the offer was a demotion as she would not have a department, money or statutory authority to impose countertariffs on the United States should the Trump administration hit Canadian goods with 25-per-cent tariffs.
Etobicoke-Lakeshore MP James Maloney said he will support Ms. Freeland for leadership, citing her experience dealing with the first Trump administration.
Mr. Maloney called Ms. Freeland an experienced negotiator who can rise to every occasion, and clearly the U.S. knows it.
“Is there another person who, were they to resign, Donald Trump would tweet about it? That says something to me,” Mr. Maloney said in an interview, referring to Mr. Trump’s social-media post critical of Ms. Freeland after she quit as finance minister.
He said she has many MPs loyal to her, though declined to put a number on that support.
Last week, The Globe reported that Mr. Carney and Ms. Freeland are both organizing their leadership teams and recruiting Liberal MPs. That work was made easier by the many ministers who have bowed out of the race.
The rules that the Liberal Party set could also winnow down the list of qualifiers: candidates must pay a $350,000 entry fee, a sum which could be prohibitive for some would-be candidates.
Ms. Clark’s prospects of a successful bid for the federal leadership race took a hit after she falsely claimed she was never a member of the federal Conservative Party.
Despite the hiccup, Ms. Clark is still considering a run.
Ms. Clark, whose B.C. Liberal Party was a mix of Liberals and Conservatives, was asked about her past relationship with the Conservatives in an interview with CBC’s radio program The House, which aired Saturday.
She told host Catherine Cullen that she’d “never” had a membership in the Conservative Party, despite having told reporters numerous times in 2022 that she was a member and was voting in that contest to support former Quebec premier Jean Charest.
“I’m a life-long Liberal but I joined the Conservative Party so I could vote, because I felt like it was my civic duty to make sure that we were supporting candidates who care about the things we hold in common,” Ms. Clark told CTV just a week before the Conservative leadership vote in 2022.
When Ms. Cullen told Ms. Clark the Conservatives confirmed that she held a membership, Ms. Clark said she never received the card nor a ballot, and said she wouldn’t put it past the party to “manufacture” one of them.
After the Conservatives produced a copy of her membership record – also circulated online by Jenni Byrne, a senior adviser to Mr. Poilievre – Ms. Clark walked back her comments.
“I misspoke,” she said in a statement posted to social media.
“I have always been clear that I supported Jean Charest to stop Pierre Poilievre. Not backing away from that.
“I’m thinking carefully about running because he still needs to be stopped. But if we want to do that, our party has to accept change. Sticking with the status quo is a losing strategy.”
Former Liberal environment minister Catherine McKenna, who is backing Mr. Carney, criticized Ms. Clark.
“Dear Liberals: I can confirm that Christy Clark is a Conservative. Worse: She thinks politics is saying whatever is required to win,” Ms. McKenna wrote on social media.
“The worst kind of politics.”