Only hours before Mr. Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) launched his campaign in his Montreal riding by pledging his love for Canada and Quebec and declaring he is ready to serve the country for life, the federal Liberal Party emailed its members with news that an effort to draw voting-age Canadians who are not Liberals to take part in the leadership election attracted more than 5,000 new signups over the past month, virtually all of whom are younger voters with whom Mr. Trudeau has been identified since he arrived in Parliament four years ago. The party announced it had 30,000 supporters on Tuesday.
The September surge in what the Liberal Party calls “supporters”—who will be able to vote in the leadership election as long as they register and don’t belong to any other federal party—boosted the total number of supporters who say they want to vote for the new Liberal leader to just over 30,000 since registration in the U.S. primary-like system began last May.
Liberal MPs and insiders have said for weeks, as anticipation for Mr. Trudeau’s candidacy grew, that Mr. Trudeau, whose Twitter following increased by nearly 1,000 over Tuesday afternoon to 153,922 at 8:37 p.m., an hour after his kick-off speech, stood to gain if the party’s novel “supporter” campaign takes off.
At age 40, but appearing even younger with the shock of wavy dark hair that has become a characteristic symbol of the contrast between him and Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), and also a contrast with the bearded, officious neatness of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.), Mr. Trudeau said recently that he will try to attract younger voters, whose participation rate in elections is lowest of all age groups.
Liberals have told The Hill Times since the unofficial beginning of the race in early September that the wide-open aspect of voting eligibility may stand to benefit Mr. Trudeau the most, because of his rapidly growing public profile.
The party’s membership secretary, in charge of the voting list comprised of supporters as well as party members, declined to disclose on Tuesday to The Hill Times the number of members, and also avoided commenting on whether the recruitment of youthful voters from outside the party will primarily boost Mr. Trudeau’s chances.
Membership secretary Matt Certosimo, a Toronto lawyer with one of Canada’s largest law firms and a director on the party’s governing board, said it would be unfair to all of the candidates to forecast whom the system will benefit.
“I don’t think it’s fair to people to prejudge their voting intentions; they signed up to become voters and participants in an election and an election is just beginning,” Mr. Certosimo told The Hill Times.
“From my perspective, I think it’s really important that people have confidence in the fairness and the neutrality of people like me who are overseeing the process, and that’s important not just for the candidates who might be perceived as having a higher profile, but also important for the people who are thinking about whether or not to get into the race, because we want to have a big, open democratic process,” Mr. Certosimo said.
With more than five months to go before the party vote takes place in April, and the new leader announced at a Liberal event in Ottawa on April 14, Mr. Certosimo indicated the party is enthusiastic about the unique voter registration program, the first time a Canadian political party is allowing non-party members to take part in the party’s leadership election.
“We’re at 30,000 and change now,” Mr. Certosimo said, after telling The Hill Times last August the number of unaffiliated voter registrations had grown to 25,000.
The party has refused to reveal where the new supporters are concentrated or located, even by region or province, but Mr. Certosimo disclosed Tuesday Liberal clubs at universities across the country were the main drivers over the past month.
“There is a reasonable sense that a lot of the jump from the last time we spoke was the effort of the young Liberals across campuses from one end of the country to the other since Labour Day,” he said in an interview. “We had well over 4,000 actually, as I understand it, signed up by the young Liberals on campuses across the country.”
On Parliament Hill, as Mr. Trudeau’s launch approached Tuesday afternoon, the sense grew in interviews with Liberal MPs that there is no question the son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau will be the prohibitive favourite, reflected in the reaction from Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt, Ont.), who revealed at a Liberal caucus retreat in the first week of September that he was contemplating a bid.
“Which part of ‘Trudeau runs, it’s over,’ do you want me to tell you?” Mr. Karygiannis said. “He’s running, I wish him all the best. I’ve discussed it with my family, no interest at this time.”
Another prospective candidate, Liberal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.), appeared upbeat as he entered the Commons for Question Period on Tuesday, but declined to respond to questions about his plans when journalists tried to open him up.
In Parliament’s Centre Block cafeteria, Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, N.B.) seemed even more relaxed, eating lunch in his shirt sleeves with a friend. Mr. LeBlanc, the son of former and late governor general Roméo LeBlanc, seemed raring to go when he expressed his interest to journalists at the September caucus meeting, but a report published this week said he is not working behind the scenes on the leadership front.
Two other Liberal MPs who had been quietly scouting out chances, Geoff Regan (Halifax West, N.S.) and David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Ont.) did not surface in the Commons foyer prior to Mr. Trudeau’s announcement on Tuesday.
One Liberal MP expressed hope that Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney might yet succumb to pressure from an unidentified circle of Liberals to toss in his hat, despite Mr. Carney’s attempt to publicly state recently that he has closed the door on the possibility.
“I don’t think he’s ruled it out,” said the MP.
But Mr. Karygiannis said he has been told Mr. Carney, named by Mr. Harper and his Cabinet on Feb. 1, 2008, to a seven-year term as governor of the Bank of Canada, at a salary up to $420,800 annually, has declined the entreaties.
If Liberals continue to press Mr. Carney outside of the leadership front, though, he would be free to run as a star candidate in the federal election in 2015.
“The intelligence says he’s not going to run,” Mr. Karygiannis said. “He was pushed by an old faction of the party, and having a conversation with him, they said he wasn’t interested.”
Liberal MP Frank Valeriote (Guelph, Ont.) agreed that Mr. Trudeau stands to benefit most from the recruitment of voters in large numbers from outside the party, since his profile and public presence has soared.
“Absolutely, he’s certainly poised to do that, because of his following on Facebook and Twitter and social media, generally. There’s no doubt that he will be a formidable opponent in many ways, his tweeting, his Facebook, his celebrity, all of these count, his presence, his manner, his ability to touch people on a personal level in conversation, and he’s an appealing person, there’s no question,” said Mr. Valeriote.
The only other declared candidate so far is Deborah Coyne, who ran unsuccessfully against the former late NDP Leader Jack Layton in 2006 and, as a constitutional lawyer, was central in the Meech Lake constitutional controversies of the late 1980s. Ms. Coyne later had a daughter with former prime minister Trudeau, who sparked widespread opposition to then Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney's Meech Lake accord with the provincial premiers, primarily over its offer of special status for Quebec in the Canadian federation.
Other prospective candidates include David Bertschi, an Ottawa lawyer who ran for the Liberal party in the 2011 federal election; George Takach, a Toronto lawyer who has been scouting out leadership ground at least since a national Liberal party convention in Ottawa last January; Martha Hall Findlay, a former Liberal MP who became the only female candidate to make it all the way through the party’s 2006 leadership contest won by Liberal MP Stéphane Dion (Saint Laurent-Cartierville, Que.); former Liberal MP Martin Cauchon, a minister in Jean Chrétien’s Cabinet in the 1990s; former political aide Jonathan Mousley of Toronto; and former president of the B.C. federal Liberal party David Merner.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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