Carney, Freeland and Cabinet ministers among contenders to succeed Trudeau
Justin Trudeau said Monday that he will leave as Canada’s prime minister in the coming months, ending a political run that included three consecutive election victories and nine years in the country’s highest political office.
His announcement starts the contest for the leadership of the governing Liberal Party, with the winner set to become the 24th prime minister in Canada’s history. The party’s national board will meet this week to begin a countrywide, democratic process of selecting a new leader, its president said in a statement.
Here’s who some of the likely contenders are.
Chrystia Freeland
No member of the Cabinet was as tightly connected to Trudeau as Freeland, who spent his entire term in high-profile posts - trade minister, foreign affairs minister and finance minister. She was the first woman in Canada to hold the latter role, and for five years, she was also deputy prime minister.
Freeland, 56, nonetheless detonated the most serious challenge to Trudeau’s leadership when she published a stinging resignation letter on Dec. 16, suggesting the prime minister was focused on “costly political gimmicks” instead of preparing for a possible trade war with the Trump administration.
Born to a Ukrainian mother in the province of Alberta, Freeland studied Russian history and literature at Harvard, where she became friends with Larry Summers, who went on to become U.S. Treasury secretary. She then was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. She speaks five languages, according to her website: English, French, Ukrainian, Russian and Italian.
Freeland became a journalist, rising quickly to senior roles at the Financial Times and Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper before age 35. She has also authored books on the end of communism in Russia and wealth inequality. The latter, titled “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else,” proved to be her launching pad into politics.
She was recruited by Trudeau and won a seat in parliament in 2013, two years before he led the Liberals to power. She spearheaded Canada’s side in the renegotiation of the North American trade agreement during Donald Trump’s first term and largely succeeded: Afterward, a Canadian magazine ran a portrait of her on the cover with the words, “You’re welcome, Canada.” After she stepped down in December, Trump attacked her on social media, calling her a “toxic” negotiator.
Her close ties with Trudeau, and to some of the government’s more unpopular policies, is a potential political liability for Freeland. Her abrupt resignation is now seen by many Liberals as a sign she wanted to create distance from the prime minister to pave the way for her own run at the leadership. She enjoys higher name recognition among voters than most other potential candidates.
Mark Carney
Born in the remote Northwest Territories, Mark Carney grew up in Alberta and was educated at Harvard and Oxford - just like Freeland. In fact, he’s the godfather of her son.
Carney, 59, has never run for political office. But he has become a player in Liberal Party politics all the same. Trudeau courted him to run for a House of Commons seat or take a government post, and the prime minister believed they had an agreement in mid-December that Carney would join the Cabinet.
That led Trudeau to tell Freeland on Dec. 13 that he wanted to move her out of the finance minister’s role - resulting in her resignation three days later.
In a Liberal leadership contest, Carney’s resume on the economy would stand out. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto. He worked as an analyst, then in sovereign risk, debt capital markets, corporate finance and investment banking.
In February 2008, at the age of 42, he became governor of the Bank of Canada. Within months, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global financial system was in crisis. Carney had a seat at the table of key policymakers who helped steer the response.
He later served as chair of the Group of 20’s Financial Stability Board, which led to an even bigger stage. In 2013, he became the first foreigner to become governor of the Bank of England - joining in time for the Brexit debate and leaving as COVID-19 began spreading globally. He’s now chair of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and Bloomberg Inc.
Appointed to both central bank roles under Conservative administrations, Carney warned of the impacts of Brexit before the UK’s divisive referendum, and has sketched out a liberal worldview since leaving the BOE in 2020.
Carney was hired by Trudeau in September as a special adviser to the Liberal Party on economic growth. Then came the rupture between Trudeau and Freeland in December - and in the end, Carney didn’t join the Cabinet.
He’s special envoy on climate action and finance for the United Nations and is set to publish a book this year titled “The Hinge: Time to Build an Even Better Canada.”
Dominic LeBlanc
With deep roots in the east coast province of New Brunswick, LeBlanc is a parliamentary veteran first elected in 2000. His ties to the Trudeau family go back to childhood: In the 1970s, LeBlanc’s father was a minister in the Cabinet of Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father.
LeBlanc babysat Justin Trudeau as a child - a fact that once prompted Ontario Premier Doug Ford to joke that he’s still performing that role.
He has become Trudeau’s closest remaining ally in the Cabinet, a fact underscored by his sudden promotion to finance minister after Freeland’s resignation. He was previously responsible for public safety, which meant leaping to address Trump’s complaints over border security. LeBlanc joined Trudeau for a surprise dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, while Freeland didn’t.
LeBlanc, 57, ran to be Liberal leader in 2008 but withdrew from the race, held onto his seat amid an electoral rout that pushed the party into third place in 2011, and then endorsed Trudeau for leader in 2012. He revealed a leukemia diagnosis in 2017 and announced he was in complete remission the following year.
Melanie Joly
After starting her career as a lawyer and a stint in public relations, Joly plunged into the crucible of Quebec politics, running for mayor of Montreal in 2013. She finished second, an impressive result for a newcomer, and soon Trudeau was coaxing her into federal politics.
He appointed her to the Cabinet as heritage minister, responsible for overseeing media regulation and tourism. She sparked controversy by striking a deal with Netflix Inc. to invest in Canadian entertainment that included no commitments for French-language programming. After stints in other minor Cabinet posts, she was promoted to foreign minister in October 2021 after Trudeau’s third election win.
That’s made the 45-year-old Canada’s top diplomat for a turbulent three years of foreign relations. The government pursued sanctions against Russia while supporting Ukraine and feuded with China on an assortment of issues including human rights and foreign interference.
She’s also been front and center on the Israel-Hamas conflict - a divisive subject in Montreal and other major Canadian cities - and over Canada’s fractious relationship with India. The Trudeau government in 2023 said it had intelligence that Indian government agents were behind the murder of a Sikh activist in British Columbia; in October, Canada expelled Indian diplomats who wouldn’t waive immunity to cooperate in police investigations.
On a lighter side, Joly can take credit for an agreement to end the 49-year “whiskey war” between Canada and Denmark over the ownership of a barren Arctic island. “Twenty-six foreign ministers have worked on this file. Yes, you can laugh,” Joly said at the time.
In December, she drew jibes from opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who accused her of launching her leadership bid by appearing in a New York Times profile.
Francois-Philippe Champagne
Champagne set out his hopes to become prime minister in a 2009 interview, long before he was elected to parliament. Around that time, he won a World Economic Forum prize for young leaders. His father drew a parallel to Jean Chretien, a former Canadian prime minister who was from the same region of Quebec.
Champagne, now 54, trained as a lawyer and moved into executive roles at engineering firms ABB Group and Amec Plc in his thirties before returning to Canada and running for office.
Elected with the Liberal wave in 2015, he became trade minister in 2017 and joined Freeland in tangling with the first Trump administration on tariffs. That earned him a stint as foreign minister from 2019 to 2021, a period in which diplomatic relations with China were in a deep freeze.
He’s now minister of innovation, science and industry, overseeing much of the government’s approach to business and technology, including rules around mining deals, telecommunications and artificial intelligence.
The energetic, silver-haired Champagne has been parrying and blocking China from its moves to invest in Canada: He banned Huawei from the 5G communications network, forced Chinese investors to divest from ownership of certain mines, and recently ordered the closing of TikTok’s Canadian unit. He also approved the biggest telecom deal in Canadian history.
Champagne has been the front man for wooing foreign investors to set up shop in Canada, in particular by offering large subsidies and incentives to manufacturers like Honda Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG to build parts of their electric vehicle supply chains in the country.
Anita Anand
Anita Anand taught law at the University of Toronto, specializing in investor rights, capital markets and corporate governance. She provided Canadian officials with advice on financial policy and researched modernizing securities legislation.
She jumped into politics in 2019 and represents the wealthy Toronto suburb of Oakville. Trudeau appointed her minister of public services and procurement, becoming the first Hindu Cabinet minister in Canadian history.
Normally a low-profile Cabinet post, Anand was thrust into the spotlight during the coronavirus pandemic as the government scrambled to get masks, protective equipment and vaccines.
Her next job also put her in the hot seat mere weeks before a global crisis. In October 2021 she was made defense minister; four months later, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Canada joined allies in sending military aid to Kyiv.
In 2023, Anand was made president of the Treasury Board, responsible for Canada’s fiscal accounting and other government functions. Last year she revived a panel on U.S.-Canada regulatory issues, to try to smooth trade. In the last few months of Trudeau’s premiership, she was given a new assignment to handle transportation and internal trade matters.
With assistance from Wendy Benjaminson, Melissa Shin and Brian Platt.
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This story was originally published January 6, 2025 at 10:32 PM