The Liberal leadership vote takes place on Sunday. Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould and Frank Baylis are in the race to replace Justin Trudeau. Follow the Star’s live updates on Sunday.
Liberal party members need more time to vote in leadership race, Karina Gould says
Liberal leadership hopeful Karina Gould is worried the party’s voter verification system isn’t keeping up with demand and wants to give party members another 24 hours to cast ballots.
The party is using a two-step process for supporters wanting to cast a ballot in the leadership race to replace Justin Trudeau. Supporters first have to sign up for a ballot and verify their identity by either using a Canada Post app or by visiting a Canada Post outlet with their identification. Once they are verified, they will receive their ballot and they can vote.
Gould’s campaign commended the party’s efforts to avoid any problems, but said there should be more time given the number of people trying to vote.
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty
Mark Carney vows to put his financial assets into a blind trust if he becomes prime minister. Here’s what we know about what he made as a corporate leader
Liberal leadership hopeful Mark Carney is working with Canada’s conflict of interest and ethics commissioner and is pledging to put his considerable assets into a blind trust immediately, if he should become prime minister.
Carney’s campaign made the commitment in a statement to the Star on Wednesday.
“If Mark Carney has the privilege of becoming prime minister, he would not merely comply with all applicable ethics rules and guidelines, but surpass them,” said the statement. “The office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has already been contacted ahead of time to help ensure all appropriate steps can be initiated right away, and assets would be immediately placed in a blind trust.”
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty
The future Chrystia Freeland has long feared is here. Now she thinks she’s the best person to confront it
Even as she attempts to become Liberal leader and prime minister, Chrystia Freeland is still surprised she chose to run for office at all.
“Sometimes when I look back on that decision, I’m astonished that I made that decision,” she said in a recent interview with the Star.
“At a human level, it was really hard. The kids really didn’t want to do it. And actually, they still reproach me because we bribed them with an offer to get a pet, which we never actually did.”
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty
She says she ‘outsmarted’ Pierre Poilievre. Now Karina Gould believes she has what it takes to be Canada’s next prime minister
Talk of who would be Justin Trudeau’s successor was happening in Ottawa well before he walked out of Rideau Cottage in early January and told the nation he was bowing out.
There were short lists and long lists, cabinet ministers who were quietly organizing and many who were expected to be serious leadership contenders, but Karina Gould’s was not a name that often came up in those conversations.
But however official Ottawa may have felt, when Gould decided she wanted to be the next Liberal leader, her family was not surprised.
Read the full story from the Star’s Ryan Tumilty
He’s campaigning as an “outsider” far from the unpopular Justin Trudeau brand. He believes he’s the candidate with the economic savviness necessary for Canada to prosper.
And he’s in the race because he wants to overhaul the way Canadian politics work. No, it’s not Mark Carney.
His name is Frank Baylis.
Read the full story from the Star’s Mark Ramzy
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
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
Who is Frank Baylis? Liberal leadership candidate Baylis says PM, premiers made ‘mistakes’ with Trump
The Montreal businessman said Thursday the leaders have made “mistake after mistake,” starting with Trudeau’s decision to rush to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida resort in November soon after he threatened Canada with tariffs.
Baylis said he would deal with Trump better than his opponents have, due to his strong business background and experience in negotiating contracts with Americans.
Read the full story from the Canadian Press
