Liberal leadership candidates make final push ahead of weekend vote

OTTAWA — It’s the last day before Liberals elect their next leader and the campaigns are making their final get-out-the-vote push as they seek to rally grassroots support from across the country.

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, former government House leader Karina Gould and former MP Frank Baylis are all running to lead their party into the next election.

The party will select a successor for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday and the winner could be sworn in as prime minister within a matter of days.

An internal memo from Freeland’s campaign manager Tom Allison obtained by The Canadian Press says the campaign is taking nothing for granted at a “pivotal” moment in the race.

It says the campaign is targeting ridings not traditionally held by the Liberals as part of its strategy to maximize Freeland’s vote efficiency.

The Carney team says it’s all-hands-on-deck to get out the vote and that their candidate has spent the past few days connecting with party faithful in Calgary, Montreal and Toronto.

Gould, meanwhile, spent the week hosting a series of virtual town halls in different regions across the country.

“Karina’s been working really hard this week to engage with voters all across the country both in person and virtually,” said campaign spokesperson Emily Jackson, who added Gould is working the phone every day.

Baylis’ supporters say they’re showcasing their candidate as much as possible in the final days of the short race. He was in Surrey, B.C. meeting with the Sikh community this past week.

“The fact that the campaign has been so short has made it difficult for us because the more time passes, the more people are discovering Frank and reaching out to us and showing us their support,” said Baylis spokesperson Justine McIntyre.

The campaigns are also working around a complicated voter identity verification process that has frustrated many party members.

The various campaigns are marshaling volunteers to help voters through the process, which uses the Canada Post Identity+ app and may require multiple attempts to register.

“We still have some supporters that are telling us that they’re having difficulty voting, their validation hasn’t gone through and so on,” said McIntyre, adding the campaign is trying to help “as many people as we can.”

“Throughout the campaign, our team of 1,400 volunteers has made over 200,000 calls to support Liberals as they completed the process, with the goal of having as many Liberals as possible be eligible to participate in this weekend’s vote,” Carney spokesperson Emily Williams said in an email.

Liberal party spokesperson Parker Lund said that as of late Friday, 157,000 members have had their identities verified and 134,000 have voted.

All the visible signs point to a Carney victory, with a large swath of cabinet backing him as he leads in polls and fundraising.

The latest Elections Canada fundraising data released on March 7 — the last data dump before the Sunday vote — shows Carney blasting ahead of the pack at $3.4 million in donations from 21,000 people, with no other candidate raising seven figures.

The publicly available data puts Gould just ahead of Freeland and Baylis, but all on roughly equal footing in the ballpark of $360,000.

Freeland’s camp has maintained that the public data doesn’t include funds the party held to cover the $350,000 entrance fee, and her returns include data gaps with days where nothing was recorded.

The internal memo from the Freeland campaign says she has “travelled to nearly every province, done nearly 70 interviews, led over 20 town halls, met with thousands of energized Liberals, and raised over $750,000 from thousands of Canadians.”

Jackson said Gould has raised close to $450,000 at this point — an amount that does not include funds raised and taken for the fee.

McIntyre said Baylis’ data is accurate but out of date since the campaign has raised more funds since the reporting period ended a week ago.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2025.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press