Federal Liberal leadership candidates are squaring off at Tuesday night’s English-language debate. Follow the Star’s live coverage with Ryan Tumilty and Alex Ballingall beginning at 8 p.m.
What time and where will the debate take place?
The English Liberal leadership debate will take place Tuesday in Montreal from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and it will be livestreamed on YouTube.
It’s the only English-language debate in the race to become Canada’s next prime minister.
Four candidates remain in the race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould, and Frank Baylis.
The Liberal Party will choose its next leader on March 9.
Here are the contenders vying to replace Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in January that he will step down as leader of the Liberal Party, setting off speculation about who might replace him.
Liberal Party members will select their next leader March 9.
In the meantime, we’re tracking the potential contenders. This graphic will update as candidates confirm they are in — or out — of the running.
Read our candidate tracker
Donald Trump and his threats are the dominant topic at federal Liberal leadership candidates’ debate
The federal government must not deal with Donald Trump the way it did before, agreed Liberal candidates vying to replace Justin Trudeau, as they sparred over who is best suited to deal with the biggest threat to Canada’s economic security.
The U.S. president was not on stage, but he was front and centre throughout the two-hour, French-language confrontation between the four remaining Liberal candidates, as they took occasional aim at the Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre but directed most of their barbs at Trump and his aggression towards Canada.
The first direct faceoff of the leadership race also included discussions that ranged from how to beef up Canada’s military, to whether to build east-west pipelines, to whether candidates support a planned high-speed rail super-project.
Read the full story from Tonda MacCharles and Alex Ballingall
3 key things to watch for during Monday and Tuesday’s showdowns
Less than two weeks before federal Liberals choose Canada’s next prime minister, four candidates to replace Justin Trudeau are set to square off in a pair of debates that could help decide who leads the governing party into a coming federal election.
It’s widely seen as a key moment in a condensed race, 49 days after Trudeau suspended Parliament and announced he will resign on March 9 when his party chooses its next leader.
First, on Monday at 8 p.m. EST, the candidates will gather in a Montreal film studio for a French debate that will test how perceived anglophone frontrunners handle themselves in the language of a province crucial to the party’s hopes to remain in power.
Read the full story from the Star’s Alex Ballingall
When will the Liberals choose a new leader?
The Liberals will pick a new leader to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 9 under tighter new rules meant to address concerns about potential foreign interference.
Trudeau’s successor will take the reigns of the party just weeks before parliament is set to resume on Mar. 24. The government is almost certain to face a non-confidence vote which would trigger a spring election.
The Liberal Party board decided it will restrict voting rights in the leadership race to permanent residents and Canadian citizens in contrast to its wide-open approach which previously allowed non-Canadians to vote.
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty and Tonda MacCharles
Here’s what the candidates say they’ll actually support
Defence spending is hot. The consumer carbon price is not. And at least two “czars” are on offer to help solve the nation’s problems.
With little over a month left before Liberals choose Canada’s next prime minister, the candidates to replace Justin Trudeau are starting to fill out their policy visions. There is broad agreement on issues like the desire to preserve Trudeau government social programs, including dental care, child care and public coverage of diabetes medication and contraception.
But gaps are starting to appear between their positions, too, with at least one contender — former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla — ready to break with current Liberal orthodoxy by calling for lower greenhouse gas emission targets and an examination of whether we should keep pouring aid into war-torn Ukraine.
Read the full story from the Star’s Alex Ballingall
Mark Carney reveals his plan to balance the government’s budget in three years
Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said the Liberal government he now seeks to lead hasn’t shown enough fiscal discipline over the last decade and he would balance the budget in three years.
“It’s clear that the federal government is spending too much. Spending growth has been nine per cent on average over the course of the last decade, and the federal workforce has grown by over 40 per cent since 2015, and the government has missed many of its spending targets,” Carney said at an event in Scarborough on Wednesday.
But Carney’s balanced budget pledge comes with one big condition: he would change the way Ottawa looks at spending by breaking the budget in two. One part would be operating spending which includes items such as salaries, transfers to provinces and debt financing. The other piece would be capital spending, which would be for purchases. Carney is only pledging to balance the operational budget. While he didn’t offer specifics, he said balancing that would allow his government to offer a middle-class tax cut.
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty
Karina Gould pledges to raise taxes on big-profit firms while cutting the sales tax
Pitching herself as “laser-focused” on economic fairness and affordability, Liberal leadership candidate Karina Gould says she wants to hike taxes on big-profit corporations to help pay for a one-year decrease in the federal sales tax.
Gould, who resigned as Government House Leader to run in the race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said Thursday that she would increase federal corporate taxes from 15 to 17 per cent for corporations that earn more than $500 million in profit per year. This increase, which she envisions as a permanent tax hike, would bring in roughly $6 billion per year, Gould said.
At the same time, Gould said she would decrease the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) from the current five per cent to four per cent, a change that she said would cost about $11 billion.
Read the full story from the Star’s Alex Ballingall
Opinion: Chrystia Freeland anticipated the troubled times we’re living in years ago
Say this for Chrystia Freeland, she was early in anticipating the middle-class discontent that is widespread in the world’s advanced economies.
She saw the threat it poses to the social stability of Western liberal democracies, including Canada and the U.S.
“Authoritarianism is on the march, and it is time for liberal democracy to fight back,” Freeland told a Washington, D.C., audience in 2018 on being named “Foreign Policy” magazine’s diplomat of the year.
Read the column by David Olive
