Conservative organizer says Liberal leadership contest rules ensure a Freeland-Carney race

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves after a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Former central banker Mark Carney will launch his highly anticipated bid to lead the Liberal party at an event in Edmonton on Thursday, a week ahead of a fast-approaching deadline to enter the race.

Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland and government House leader Karina Gould are also expected to launch their bids to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as party leader in the coming days, and must declare by Jan. 23.

Under the rules set by the party, candidates must pay the $350,000 entrance fee in four instalments between Jan. 23 and Feb. 17, starting with a refundable payment of $50,000. The other three payments are not refundable.

Fred DeLorey of NorthStar Public Affairs, who ran Erin O’Toole’s 2020 Conservative party leadership bid and managed the national party campaign in 2021, said the tight timeline all but ensures Carney and Freeland will have the field to themselves.

“I think there are going to be two candidates on the ballot. I don’t see other people raising that much, especially when you’re brand new at this,” the longtime professional party organizer said. “I would bet money.”

Martha Hall Findlay, who ran for Liberal leadership in 2013 against Trudeau but left the party long ago, said lower-profile candidates will struggle to raise such a large sum in such a short time.

She added it’s not “inappropriate for the party to require a steep entry fee” since it will whittle down the field to only the most serious candidates.

“It’s pretty clear the race is between Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney and both of them are very, very well connected,” said Findlay, who now heads the school of public policy at University of Calgary. “I don’t think they’ll have any problem raising the money, especially for a shorter campaign.”

Candidates will be kept to a $5 million spending cap during the race, which ends with the vote on March 9.

A Liberal party source familiar with the creation of the rules, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the spending ceiling was set high in anticipation of unexpected candidate costs due to the short campaign, such as surcharges for last-minute bookings.

DeLorey said he would be “stunned” if any of the candidates came anywhere near to spending $5 million, which he called an “incredible amount of money” for such a short campaign.

“Carney and Freeland are Bay St. elitists, so maybe,” he added.

When Justin Trudeau ran for leader in 2013, in a contest which lasted nearly a year, candidates were limited to spending $950,000.

The Canada Elections Act says that leadership candidates can only donate $25,000 to their own campaigns. They have to find the rest through fundraising and individuals can donate up to $1,750 to a candidate.

The Liberal party as a whole only raised $3.3 million in the last quarterly financial result posted on the Elections Canada website, which covers the period ending in September. The party typically reaches the $5 million mark in about one quarter out of every year.

The Conservative party’s 2022 leadership race set a $7 million spending limit for a race that lasted about seven months.

The Liberal party has also set a debt limit for candidates of $200,000 at any point during the race. The debt limit in the party’s 2013 race was $75,000. The party is still hammering out rules related to voting.

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc have all ruled out entering the race to replace Trudeau.

Calgary Liberal MP George Chahal announced Carney’s Edmonton event in a news release Wednesday and is asking his supporters to attend to support Carney’s bid.

Liberal MP Patrick Weiler, who called on Trudeau to resign last year, also endorsed Carney on Wednesday. Other caucus members, such as Immigration Minister Marc Miller, have declined to weigh in. Miller said he plans to keep his decision private.

Carney made a high-profile appearance on “The Daily Show” with comedian Jon Stewart earlier this week. The video has clocked over 1.6 million views on YouTube.

The next Liberal leader will need to turn their attention quickly to ensuring the party is ready for an early election once the short leadership race ends in March.

The Liberals say they have 129 candidates nominated out of 343 federal ridings, while the Conservatives say they have close to 221 and the New Democrats say they have 93.

The Liberals currently have 153 MPs in the House of Commons but many high-profile caucus members have said they will not seek re-election — including Anita Anand, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Seamus O’Regan and Dan Vandal.

University of Toronto political science professor Randy Besco said the next Liberal leader will need to quickly sort out their campaign machinery, since senior members of Trudeau’s office may be unwilling to stick it out under a new leader.

“There’s not that many people who are qualified to run a national campaign. There’s like 10 or 20 in the whole country. It’s really quite small, actually, compared to say the United States or elsewhere,” he said.

“Putting all that infrastructure together and the people and the organization, if it’s true that we’re going to have a new leader and then immediately an election, that’s going be a big challenge (for the party).”

He said the Liberals won’t have a hard time finding candidates but likely will struggle to attract star talent, given the Conservatives' solid double-digit lead in the polls.

Candidates who are nominated late in the game won’t have spent much time knocking on doors and fundraising before the election campaign begins, Besco said.

“That’s also going be a problem for them.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 15, 2025.