Donald Trump won’t be on the stage at the Liberal leadership debates but the four candidates are expected to focus on how they would handle the U.S. President’s “America First” economic agenda and threats to Canadian sovereignty.
The Liberals are staging separate debates in French and English on Monday and Tuesday, respectively – a chance to lay out their vision for the country, although political experts say all eyes will be on front-runner Mark Carney, who is untested in political debates. The former central banker’s entrance into the race has upended the political landscape.
“This is his coming-out party,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the non-profit Angus Reid Institute. “This is going to be very much a make or break for Carney – not only as a leadership candidate but very much a critical look at Carney versus Poilievre.”
Polls show Mr. Carney’s candidacy has narrowed the gap between the Conservatives and Liberals. One poll from Nanos Research suggested Canadians, by a 40-26 margin, believe that the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England would be more capable than Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in dealing with Mr. Trump’s threats of stiff tariffs and annexation.
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“He has to show that he is the best candidate against Donald Trump,” said pollster Jean-Marc Léger. “The debate is not between Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney – about who will be the best leader – because people take for granted that Carney will win the leadership. It is on Carney to show whether he is strong enough to battle against Trump.”
Both Mr. Carney and his closet rival, Ms. Freeland, say they are the best qualified to manage the mercurial U.S. President. The Liberals will choose a new party leader and Prime Minister on March 9.
Emily Williams, a spokesperson for Mr. Carney, said the debates come at a “pivotal moment” as the country faces “the most significant economic crisis of our lifetimes as the President of the United States threatens both our economy and way of life.”
She said Mr. Carney has the experience, plan and temperament to deal with Mr. Trump and is looking forward to taking on Mr. Poilievre in the election, expected to be called as early as mid-March.
Ms. Freeland’s campaign spokesperson, Katherine Cuplinskas, agreed that the two debates are taking place at an important moment for Canada. She underlined the former deputy prime minister’s success in renegotiating the North American free-trade agreement during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“Chrystia’s record – both before politics and in government – demonstrates that she is the only candidate who can take on Trump on Day 1 and win,” she said. “She’s done it before. No other candidate has that experience.”
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Mr. Carney and Ms. Freeland, the former finance minister, have advocated largely the same policies in dealing with Mr. Trump, such as dollar-for-dollar retaliation for tariffs, as has Mr. Poilievre. The two Liberal rivals are also on the same page in removing carbon pricing for consumers, reversing course on increases to capital-gains taxes, removing interprovincial trade barriers and getting oil and natural gas to global markets.
But Mr. Carney is not tainted by having sat at the cabinet table, allowing him more room to criticize Trudeau-government policies. He has contrasted himself with Mr. Poilievre’s lifetime in politics by playing up his experience in managing the 2008 financial crisis while Bank of Canada governor and Britain’s exit from the European Union when he ran the Bank of England.
While Ms. Freeland has highlighted her role in renegotiating NAFTA, she has also been saddled with the baggage of having been Mr. Trudeau’s top lieutenant. She was once a strong defender of the unpopular carbon pricing and as finance minister hiked capital-gains taxes in the April budget.
“Poilievre is trying to paint Carney as an insider but he has more plausible distance. He can say he wasn’t in the cabinet for decisions,” Ms. Kurl said. “How can Freeland distance herself from the government saying she represents change?”
The other challenge in the debates for Ms. Freeland is how to put Mr. Carney to the political litmus test without damaging the party’s chances against the Conservatives in a coming election.
“If Carney is a political juggernaut, what will it serve his political opponents to take him down and damage him in a debate and provide fodder to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research. “If the debate turns into something nasty with cheap shots, it won’t serve the fortunes of the Liberal Party.”
In many ways, Monday’s French debate will be pivotal for Mr. Carney. Quebec has been a traditional strong base for the Liberals, but Mr. Trudeau’s unpopularity put those votes at risk – until Mr. Carney came on the scene.
“It has never happened in history, where he has doubled his vote in Quebec in a few weeks,” Mr. Léger said. “The Liberals were at 22 per cent when Trudeau resigned. Currently, with the possibility that Carney could lead, that increased to 44 per cent on our recent survey. So people have a positive perception of Mark Carney, but they don’t know him.”
Mr. Carney, however, has the potential difficulty of debating in a language that he is not comfortable speaking and appealing to the particular aspirations of Quebeckers.
“It is on Carney to show whether he is strong enough to battle against Trump and also how well he understands Quebec expectations, Quebec attitudes, because that is where Pierre Poilievre failed. He [Poilievre] doesn’t have a specific Quebec platform,” Mr. Léger said.
Ex-House leader Karina Gould and former MP Frank Baylis, a Montreal businessman, will also participate in the two debates. On Friday, the Liberal Party disqualified former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla over what it said was campaign-finance irregularities.
Mr. Carney has garnered support from the majority of the Liberal caucus and cabinet, including the endorsement on Thursday of Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc.
He has also hauled in $3.5-million in donations as of Friday from more than 20,000 Canadians, according to the Carney campaign. On Wednesday, the Freeland campaign said they had raised about $600,000.
Deputy Conservative leader Melissa Lantsman said none of the Liberal candidates are capable of putting Canada first and protecting the country in the face of U.S. tariffs.
However, she took specific aim at Mr. Carney.
“For the last 10 years, the Liberals and Trudeau’s economic adviser Mark Carney have made Canada vulnerable with policies that have made our economy weaker and blocked opportunities to export our natural resources to the world,” she said in a statement.
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