There are six candidates who have announced that they will be running in the upcoming vote to decide who will be the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Prime Minister.
Justin Trudeau announced that he will be resigning as Prime Minister on January 7th, as well as proroguing the government until March, which prompted a new leadership race for the Liberal Party.
Since then, candidates Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould, Ruby Dhalla, Jaime Battiste and Frank Baylis have all said they’ve sent in their nomination packages to be in the running for the vote.
The nomination packages were required to contain at least 300 signatures from people registered with the Liberal Party of Canada—with at least 100 from three different provinces—as well as a $50,000 refundable deposit.
This had to be submitted to the party by 5 p.m. last Thursday.
An additional $300,000 has to be submitted in installments before the vote takes place.
The vote will be on Sunday, March 9th, in which registered Liberal Party members will vote across 343 ridings throughout the country.
The candidates
Mark Carney is a frontrunner in this race so far, having served as former governor of the Bank of Canada between 2008 and 2013.
He has never worked as a politician, but he has served the government as a trusted advisor for a long time and helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another frontrunner is Chrystia Freeland, who has served as Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister from 2019 to 2024.
She also served as the former minister of finance from 2020 to 2024. Her resignation from these posts preceded Trudeau’s resignation announcement.
Prior to that she held positions as the foreign affairs and intergovernmental affairs minister.
Freeland has been a Member of Parliament since 2015 and before that, worked as a journalist.
Karina Gould has been an MP since 2015 and she too has served in Trudeau’s cabinet in a number of positions; including the minister of democratic institutions and the minister of international development.
Ruby Dhalla has worked in Canada as a chiropractor, actress, businesswoman, philanthropist, model and politician.
She was a former MP from 2004 to 2011, having served in both minority and opposition governments.
In the 2015 federal election, she announced she would not be running for government and has been working in other fields leading up to this leadership race.
Jaime Battiste has been an MP for the Liberals since 2019 and is the first Mi’kmaw member of parliament ever voted to government in Canada.
He is the first Indigenous person to run for the Liberal Party leadership.
Frank Baylis was a Liberal MP from 2015 to 2019, when he decided not to run for re-election.
He has worked as a film producer as well as a businessman, and was the source of some controversy during the COVID-19 pandemic in the House of Commons because his company was contracted to supply medical equipment needed during the emergency by the government.
The Conservative opposition was concerned that this matter was a conflict of interest due to Baylis being a former member of parliament, but it was ultimately ruled not a conflict.
Another candidate, Chandra Arya, announced he would be running for the leadership of the party as well, but on January 26th, his candidacy nomination package was determined to be ineligible.
Going forward, the Liberal Party still has to verify the candidacy of these nominees before the vote on March 9th.
Only registered members of the Liberal Party of Canada will be able to participate in the vote, and the cutoff for signing up is at noon (PT) on Monday, January 27th.
