1 day Ago By [email protected] (Ryan Tumilty)
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wants a “a robust, nationwide, competitive process” to select his replacement, but other Liberals favour a quick race with only weeks between now and a near certain spring election. Trudeau ended weeks of speculation Monday by announcing his resignation as Liberal leader , but pledged to stay on until the Liberals select his successor. Liberal party president Sachit Mehra posted a brief statement on social media Monday saying the party would start the process of a leadership race soon.
“I will call a meeting of the national board to be held this week, to begin the nation-wide democratic process of selecting a new leader of the party,” he said. The party’s constitution has a detailed process for selecting a leader that under ordinary circumstances envisions a months-long nomination contest. At a minimum, candidates would have to deliver signed nomination papers 90 days before the vote, but there are only 77 days between Tuesday morning and March 24, the day Parliament is now set to resume.
MPs had been scheduled to return to the House of Commons in late January. However, in addition to announcing his resignation, Trudeau sought and received permission from Gov. Gen.
Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until March 24. Opposition parties have all pledged to bring the Liberal government down at their first opportunity . The Liberal party’s constitution allows its board to change timelines and rules in response to “political circumstances,” with a supermajority vote.
Eddie Goldenberg, who served as chief of staff to prime minister Jean Chrétien, is calling for the party to adopt a quick process that would install a new leader before the end of January. In a post on National Newswatch , Goldenberg proposed a series of town halls for the candidates, followed by a leadership vote held among only the members of the current Liberal caucus. Such a fast process, he wrote, would allow the next leader the best opportunity.
“The faster there’s a new prime minister in place, the more runaway that prime minister or that person will have to show Canadians who he or she is,” he said. Goldenberg said he personally supports former finance minister Chrystia Freeland. He pointed out that caucus members in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries frequently select their next leader, and said the current Liberal caucus is entirely up to the task.
“It has members from across the country, except Saskatchewan, and it has members who got elected so they know a little something about elections,” he said. No one has formally entered the race to replace Trudeau, but Freeland and current cabinet ministers Anita Anand, Melanie Joly, François-Philippe Champagne, Jonathan Wilkinson and Dominic LeBlanc are all considered possible contenders, along with former bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former B.C.
premier Christy Clark. Last week, Trudeau’s former principal secretary argued for a broad leadership contest. Gerald Butts argued in a Substack post that appointing someone from caucus would be the wrong choice.
“Competitions create better competitors. In politics, leadership campaigns make for better general election campaign teams. They train people, test ideas, build resilience,” Butts wrote.
Butts said a caucus vote would send the wrong message about how the Liberals view democracy. “Canadians are wise people who will not take kindly to watching a handful of apparatchiks choose their prime minister. If Liberals arrogate that right to a few hundred people in Ottawa, I hope they’re alert to the risk that they could be selecting the party’s last leader.
” Immigration Minister Marc Miller, speaking on CBC, said he believes the party can easily run a quick and democratic leadership race. “It’s unfathomable to me that we can’t choose a leader of the Liberal party in a 30- to 60-day period, whereas we can choose the prime minister of Canada or the leader of the country according to the Elections Act in a 30- to 60-day period,” he said. The Liberals will also have to face questions about who is eligible to vote in the coming contest.
In the 2015 leadership race that Trudeau won, the party allowed people who had not paid for memberships to vote, setting a low barrier for participation. The Hogue Commission, which is looking into foreign interference in Canadian politics, raised concerns about party nominations after taking a close look at the Liberal race in Don Valley North. The Liberals allow anyone over the age of 14 who lives in a riding and signs up as a supporter to vote in nomination races.
Those rules also currently apply to leadership contests. “The eligibility criteria for voting in nomination contests do not seem very stringent, and the control measures in place do not seem very robust,” Justice Marie-Josée Hogue wrote in her preliminary report. Hogue’s final report is expected on Jan.
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