By Anna Mehler Paperny
TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada’s ruling Liberal party is moving on from a decade dominated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by capitalizing on a wave of patriotism and adopting policies designed to appeal to conservative-leaning voters turned off by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Liberal party members will select a successor to Trudeau, who earlier this year announced his resignation facing deep unpopularity, on March 9. A national election expected soon after could be a test case for centrist parties around the world trying to navigate a wave of right-wing populism exemplified by the Trump presidency.
Trump has hit Canada, a long-time U.S. ally, with sweeping tariffs and threatened to annex the country. His unprecedented threats have united Canadians and given the governing Liberals, trailing in the polls for more than a year, a fighting chance in a general election that must be held by October and may be called much earlier.
Mark Carney, former head of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, is the frontrunner in the Liberal leadership race with the most party endorsements and the most money raised among the four major candidates.
Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who broke with Trudeau over Canada’s fiscal position and tariff preparation after Trudeau tried to replace her, is also prominent in the race.
About 400,000 Liberal party members are eligible to cast ballots in the leadership contest.
The Liberals are trying to position themselves as an anti-populist party while adopting policies that address the concerns of people drawn to populist politics, said University of British Columbia politics professor Stewart Prest.
It is unclear whether they have bridged that gap, Prest said, adding that the party is helped by Canadians watching America’s flavour of populist power play out and deciding they do not like what they see.
“We don’t see a lot of support for that kind of grassroots person … who is going to move fast and break things,” he said.
The Liberals are instead putting forward leadership candidates who present themselves as “adults in the room,” Prest added.
Trump’s repeated threats to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have helped deflect Canadians’ attention from their dissatisfaction with Trudeau’s government.
“There’s been a reawakening of kind of patriotic feeling in Canada,” said Efe Peker, a University of Ottawa associate professor and a collaborator with the Observatory of Populism in Canada, which studies populism’s role in Canadian society.
“(The 51st state threat) is resonating with people; the fears are quite real. What started as a joke has been repeated 200 times,” he added.
At the same time, Liberal leadership candidates are adopting some policies championed by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
The Liberal frontrunners have abandoned the consumer price on carbon, one of Trudeau’s landmark environmental initiatives.
The candidates and Trudeau himself support limiting immigration and have spoken of the need to strengthen Canada’s military.
A Liberal advertisement accuses Poilievre, a career politician who supported an anti-government movement during the COVID-19 pandemic, of resembling Trump. Poilievre’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Poilievre’s Conservatives still lead in most polls but by a narrower margin than late last year.
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Liberal parties globally may draw lessons from Trump’s attacks on Canada and the Liberal response, Peker said. Many saw similar post-pandemic inflation and housing crises, and are also reckoning with a world order altered by an erratic America.
Political analysts said Carney has the persona of a sober caretaker who seems to know how to keep his cool and is not too close to Trudeau.
Freeland, meanwhile, has the benefit of experience – including leading trade negotiations with Trump during his first term. But she has struggled to distance herself from Trudeau.
Recent polls have shown U.S.-Canada relations vying with the cost of living as top issues preoccupying voters.
“If we can get more aggressive at addressing some of the perceived causes of those affordability challenges … I think that would give the sense to people that things are not as broken as they may seem,” said Tyler Meredith, a management consultant and former policy advisor to Trudeau.
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Nia Williams)
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