LILLEY: Trudeau’s team goes all in on Carney while Clark implodes

Internal party politics at play in decision to back Carney rather than the woman who stood with Trudeau for more than a decade

Get the latest from Brian Lilley straight to your inbox

Published Jan 11, 2025  •  Last updated 7 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

Pictured are former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, left, and former finance minister Chrystia Freeland. Postmedia files

In the leadership race to replace him, Justin Trudeau is all but laying his hands upon Mark Carney.

Article content

Article content

Former top advisor Gerald Butts is part of Carney’s campaign team while others close to Trudeau, including Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford, are making calls on Carney’s behalf.

Liberal sources say Telford has been seeking support for Carney with key supporters.

Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Navdeep Bains is also making calls to key Liberals, including a specific push to Sikh MPs and party backers.

The connections between Trudeau, Butts, Telford and Bains go back decades – including all four of them supporting Gerard Kennedy in the 2006 Liberal leadership before switching their support on the last day to eventual winner Stephane Dion.

Article content

The fact that Trudeau’s inner circle – including much of PMO – is now backing Carney is a slap in the face to Freeland. The former journalist and media executive was one of the first star candidates Trudeau recruited after he became leader in 2013. She then spent the next 10 years at Trudeau’s side helping implement his most important policies.

Sources in the party say Trudeau and his team are furious about how Freeland resigned from cabinet, blasting Trudeau in an open letter about his “costly gimmicks.” Apparently, none of them have a problem with what Trudeau did to Freeland, it’s just another example of the feminist Prime Minister not actually supporting women.

So, Trudeau and his team are throwing their support behind Carney, the man who looks like he came from central casting. While being the chosen candidate of Trudeau and his closest advisors will come with benefits, it may also be off-putting for Liberals who believe the party needs renewal and change to gain the trust of Canadians.

Article content

Article content

Beyond all of this, Carney hasn’t had a great week as he seeks to launch his campaign.

In 2021, as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, Carney announced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a global collection of bank pledging to climate action. Now that alliance is coming apart with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, while investment firm Blackrock announced this week it is leaving the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, an offshoot organization.

Carney also had to explain photos of himself with notorious convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. The photos were taken in 2013, long before Maxwell was charged or the allegations against her were made public. Maxwell has long been friends with Carney’s sister-in-law and while Carney’s campaign admitted he had met Maxwell several times, he knew nothing of her activities and said they are not friends.

Article content

The would-be candidate with the worst pre-launch, however, isn’t Mark Carney, it’s Christy Clark, the former British Columbia premier.

Clark recorded an interview for CBC Radio’s The House on Friday that went sideways quickly. When asked about her past membership in the Conservative Party, Clark denied she had ever been a member.

This is despite Clark making many public statements that she, a lifelong Liberal, was joining the Conservatives to support Jean Charest and stop Pierre Poilievre. Presented with these past statements, Clark still denied being a member and then claimed later that she had misspoke.

Nope, Clark lied, and in doing so, likely torpedoed her own campaign before it even started.

Other pretenders saying they will run, people like cabinet minister Steve McKinnon and backbencher Chandra Arya, but the only other serious contender now – unless someone else steps forward – is Chrystia Freeland.

In party leadership races, the attacks from inside are often vicious. And while Freeland has yet to face those attacks from inside the Liberal tent, she should expect them. The big knock against Freeland’s candidacy has been that she was too close to Trudeau, his right hand.

With Trudeau and his team rallying behind Carney, that becomes less of a hit for Freeland and a potential knock for Carney.

The race hasn’t officially started, but it’s already getting interesting.

[email protected]

Article content