justin trudeau Archives - Page 7 of 9

McKenna or LeBlanc?

The word late tonight is that either Frank McKenna or Dominic Leblanc will be entering the race to replace Stephane Dion as leader of the federal Liberal party. McKenna has stated to friends that he’s not particularly interested at this time, and I’ve learned that McKenna feels that with the economy in its current shape, he doesn’t want to challenge Harper in the current economic climate (in other words, he doesn’t want to strike at the confidence of Canadians by challenging the PM’s direction on the economy as the head of TD Bank). A partner at McInnes Cooper, McKenna’s former law firm has confidence that McKenna will enter the race, however, others have told me that the former New Brunswick premier will not be leaving the corporate sector to rebuild a party’s finances and ideology from the ground up.

This is good news for Dominic LeBlanc, who covets the top job of Trudeau’s party. LeBlanc would have likely deferred to McKenna if the elder New Brunswicker wanted to throw his hat into the ring. However, with McKenna not interested in the top job, this clears the way for Leblanc. If Leblanc enters the fray, I’m hearing that he’ll have the support of Justin Trudeau and the organizational muscle of Paul Martin’s team. Martin’s braintrust includes Liberal Party heavyweight Steve MacKinnon, who is close to McKenna. An alternative theory is that Leblanc is entering the race on McKenna’s behalf as a stalking horse to build the organization and team for a late entry by the former Premier.

Trudeau and Kennedy to be blocked by Dion?

I’m hearing that Justin Trudeau may face an interesting challenge partially originating from the Liberal leader Dion if the son of the late Liberal PM seeks nomination in Jean Lapierre’s riding of Outremont. Apparently, at least eight people have expressed interest in the nomination and among the eight is Brigette Legault (VP on Liberal Party Executive). Rumour is that Stephane Dion may end up trumping the young Trudeau’s bid by enforcing a policy ensuring that the Liberal party slates 33% female candidates for the next federal election. Outremont may be selected by Dion as a riding to be contested by a female candidate.

Legault is said to be actively campaigning, emailing Outremont Liberals for their support. As a member of the national executive, she brings significant Liberal support to the nomination race and may try and use Dion’s promise to leverage a win over Trudeau.

Speculation is also swirling around the riding of Parkdale High Park where Gerard Kennedy is reported to be interested in running. Again, a female executive member of the Liberal Party is eying that riding and may also receive Dion’s go ahead for that nomination. Elaine Flis is the VP for communications for the Liberal Party of Canada and is looking to secure the nomination from Kennedy.

Will Dion stick to his word by securing 1/3 of the candidate positions for women even if this comes at the expense of Trudeau and Kennedy? Or will Dion break his word and make these high profile female candidates select other ridings to contest?

UPDATE: Some commenters have pointed out the awkward nature of the last paragraph. It’s a false dichotomy. So let’s simply frame it this way: Will Dion stick to his word by securing 1/3 of the candidate positions for women even if this comes at the expense of Trudeau and Kennedy?

Convention leftovers

I’ve a few convention leftovers that I want to share.

Convention buttons were a big hit on the floor among Liberals. (See my previous post for the other buttons)

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Speaking of Justin vs. Belinda in Smackdown 2008, check out Macleans top story about the race to replace Stephane Dion, the Liberals’ interim leader.

I mentioned in one of Greg Staples earlier hotstove podcasts that if Bob Rae had won, the Conservatives would have spun the new Liberal leader as “potentially Canada’s first NDP Prime Minister”. I think that this button captures that spirit.

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Staying on Bob Rae, and mocking him on his record instead of resorting to vicious ad hominem attacks we have this amusing button handed out on the convention floor:

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This button was critical of the lack of french spoken at the Liberal convention in Montreal. I heard that a full 80% of delegates could not speak french (or were unilingual, I forget which).

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Finally, on the last ballot between Iggy and Dion, these buttons made their first appearance on the convention floor. These are obviously funny for a few reasons.

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Moving on from the buttons, this piece came from the Conservative war room to help Liberals feel especially good about themselves at their party.

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And… the best piece from the convention, in my opinion, was produced by the NDP war room who were kind enough to email me the PDF of their “map to the scars”, an Adscam tour of Montreal. Print it out, fold it up and hand it out to your friends (but tell them to vote Conservative!)

Download the Adscam map (PDF)