{"id":14953,"date":"2025-01-31T01:06:46","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T01:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/then-there-were-five-liberal-race-narrows-with-carney-the-choice-of-caucus-national\/"},"modified":"2025-01-31T01:06:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T01:06:46","slug":"then-there-were-five-liberal-race-narrows-with-carney-the-choice-of-caucus-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/then-there-were-five-liberal-race-narrows-with-carney-the-choice-of-caucus-national\/","title":{"rendered":"Then there were five: Liberal race narrows with Carney the choice of caucus – National"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By day\u2019s end on Thursday, the race to become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada<\/a> \u2014 and the country\u2019s 24th prime minister<\/a> \u2014 had narrowed to five candidates.<\/p>\n

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One of those remaining candidates vows to deport 500,000 \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d; another would halve the size of cabinet; another would cut the GST while raising corporate taxes; just about all seemed prepared to bail on the consumer carbon tax while one \u2014 the perceived leader in the race \u2014 has been noticeably silent and media-shy.<\/p>\n

That perceived leader \u2014 the former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney \u2014 will de-cloak in Halifax Friday morning where he will make an announcement and take questions from reporters, the first time he will answer journalists\u2019 questions in more than a week. Carney will face the press with two of of the more than 50 members of the Liberal caucus that have endorsed him standing behind him.<\/p>\n

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Carney got what, by my count, is his 53rd caucus endorsement late Thursday when Jaime Battiste, the Mi\u2019kmaw MP who represents the Cape Breton riding of Sydney\u2013Victoria, announced he was out of the race and that he was throwing his support behind the 59-year-old central banker.<\/p>\n

Caucus endorsements didn\u2019t much seem to bother the former Government House Leader and leadership candidate Karina Gould, who, at 37, is the youngest in the race by more than a decade. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa Thursday afternoon, she shrugged off the fact that just two of her caucus colleagues have endorsed her while most have endorsed either Carney or the 56-year-old former finance minister Chrystia Freeland.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>When I hear from one of those MPs who said, \u2018I\u2019m really sorry, I\u2019m endorsing someone else\u2019, then they always say, \u2018But don\u2019t worry, you\u2019ve got my dad\u2019s support, or you\u2019ve got my hairdresser\u2019s support, or you\u2019ve got my [riding association\u2019s] board support\u2019. And guess what? Those votes are equal to the votes of cabinet ministers and MPs,\u201d Gould said.<\/p>\n

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Indeed, the Liberal leadership race is, like the Conservative races won by Pierre Poilievre, Erin O\u2019Toole or Andrew Scheer, a modified one-member\/one-vote system. This race will operate under the new electoral map which will be in place for the next general election. So instead of 338 ridings, there are 343 ridings. Each one is apportioned 100 points and a leadership candidate is allotted points in each riding based on the percentage of votes each wins in that riding.<\/p>\n

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If, in one riding, candidate A gets 600 votes and candidate B gets 400 votes, then A gets 60 points and B gets 40 votes. But if just 100 people vote in another riding and it\u2019s 60 for B and 40 for A,\u00a0 then both would be tied with 100 points.<\/p>\n

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As a result, the system overweights voters in ridings with fewer Liberals \u2014 say in Alberta or Saskatchewan \u2014 than in Liberal stronghold ridings in Toronto or Montreal. It was the reverse in the Conservative leadership races, where voters in the country\u2019s two biggest cities were more valuable than all those Conservatives in rural Alberta or Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n

In any event, whoever gets 50 per cent plus one of the 34,300 points available, wins the race.<\/p>\n

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