Trudeau’s entry squeezes out rivals
Dominic Leblanc likely to bow out of race in support of his friend
MONTREAL— Justin Trudeau’s bid for the Liberal leadership already seems to have put two prospective candidates out of the running.
On Friday, Trudeau will be in Dieppe, N.B., to appear at the side of his old friend and caucus colleague Dominic LeBlanc.
LeBlanc, the MP for Beauséjour, was seen as a serious contender for the leadership in 2008 before he stood down to allow Michael Ignatieff to take the job uncontested.
The 44-year-old bilingual son of former governor general Roméo LeBlanc is a childhood friend of the Trudeau family. This summer LeBlanc and Trudeau vacationed together in New Brunswick with their families.
It was always assumed that Trudeau, 40, and LeBlanc would not run against each other.
Now that Trudeau has officially announced his candidacy for the party leadership, it seems likely that LeBlanc will be the one to sit out this race. Neither LeBlanc nor Trudeau’s spokespersons are commenting on the expected endorsement.
In the meantime, one of the lesser-known prospective candidates, Shane Geschiere, a Manitoba paramedic, has also told the Winnipeg Free Press that he is bowing out to support Trudeau.
“With the news of Justin Trudeau becoming a candidate, I will choose to support him, as he demonstrates the youthfulness and a possible game-changer, which (is) I what I wanted to be,” Geschiere told the Free Press.
On Wednesday, Trudeau’s campaign took him to Calgary and Richmond, B.C., where his mother, Margaret, was among more than 1,000 supporters.
“I’m so proud of him. He hasn’t campaigned like this before but I know he will be great. Just like his father and his grandfather,” Margaret Trudeau said.
Trudeau paid tribute to his mother, saying she had a father (James Sinclair) and a husband and a son elected to the House of Commons.
He also paid tribute to the country’s First Nations and to youth, calling both the leaders of the present, not just the future.
But Trudeau made his strongest appeal to the middle class.
“The middle class is struggling, Canadian families have seen their incomes stagnate and debt explode . . . housing costs have put home ownership out of the reach of the middle class,” he said.
In Calgary, he tried to revive the rusty relationship between the Liberal party and voters in the heart of Conservative territory.
Without mentioning his father’s name, Trudeau distanced himself from the Liberals’ much-hated national energy program of the early 1980s, which still riles Albertans.
“It is wrong to use our natural wealth to divide Canadians against one another,” he told more than 200 people crammed into the basement of the Dashmesh Culture Senior Citizen Society in Calgary.
Trudeau indicated he is open to developing the oilsands — while focusing on the long term, improving the science and keeping the environment in mind.
But said he has “concerns” about the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would ship bitumen from Alberta to B.C., particularly about the “extraordinarily vulnerable” forests it would pass through and potential tanker congestion near Kitimat, B.C.
“For me, there are huge barriers before (Enbridge) can convincingly convince people that the science is sound around the project as it stands,” Trudeau said. “Hopefully, the science is going to be clear about it one way or another.”
In the coming days, the breadth of Trudeau’s support will become clearer. Only one current MP, Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Léonard— Saint-Michel) was at the Trudeau launch on Tuesday night, but more MPs are said to be waiting in the wings to announce their endorsements.
Several current and former MPs are still weighing whether they should run against him, notably fellow Montrealers Marc Garneau (Westmount—Ville-Marie) and Denis Coderre (Bourassa). British Columbia MP Joyce Murray (Quadra) is also laying the groundwork for entry into the contest.
Former Liberal leadership contender Martha Hall Findlay has also said she is trying to pull together a campaign. With files from Emily Jackson in Calgary and Petti Fong in Richmond