By Daniel Béland

January 29, 2025

Earlier this week, the Liberal Party of Canada allowed six candidates seeking to replace Justin Trudeau to formally enter its leadership race. This means that the party only excluded one leadership hopeful: Liberal MP Chandra Arya, who was the first to announce he would like to run for the leadership after Prime Minister Trudeau announced he would step down.

Criticized in the past for his close ties to India’s Modi government and, more recently, for his claim that the next Liberal leader would not have to speak French to prove successful with the francophone electorate, Arya lamented the Liberal decision to exclude him from the race on social media but the party has yet to explain its decision to ban him.

Among the six people still in the race, Mark Carney has rapidly emerged as the front runner. For instance, according to a recent Léger poll, he is the top choice of 57% of Liberal supporters, compared to only 17% for Chrystia Freeland and 4% for Karina Gould. Among the general public (i.e., regardless of the party they support), his lead vis-à-vis his two closest leadership rivals is also strong: 34% of support, compared to 14% for Freeland, and 4% for Gould.

At the same time, Carney, who controversially told The Daily Show host Jon Stewart that he was an “outsider” just before officially launching his campaign, has received twice as many endorsements from Liberal MPs and cabinet ministers than Freeland, who until mid-December was the second-in-command of the Liberal government. Having received as much support as Carney has from current elected Liberal officials, it may be harder for him to run as an “outsider,” especially as the former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England bearing degrees from both Harvard and Oxford, among many other elements of his impressive resumé that scream “elite”.

Ironically, facing an uphill battle against Carney, Freeland is also claiming to be the outsider in this race. As she stated in a CBC radio interview: “It’s central to my campaign to see this is not about Liberal elites deciding. This is about the grassroots”. Claiming that Carney “is the PMO’s candidate,” she now frames herself as the underdog, fighting for the support of the party’s base. As she stated during the same interview: “I am really happy to be running against the Ottawa establishment. I think we need a change”.

Carney and Feeland are not the only Liberal leadership hopefuls who have embraced some sort of outsider identity to position themselves within this short race.

Considering how unpopular Justin Trudeau is, running as an outsider seeking to take on the establishment makes sense in the current context, even if Freeland, just like Carney, is widely perceived as an insider. Like him, she has degrees from Harvard and Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar), a large national and international network, and a high-profile and distinguished record as a public official. Unlike him, however, she served for more than nine years in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, including as finance minister and deputy prime minister, meaning that she was the Liberal government’s most senior woman for years.

This is hardly a “grassroots” pedigree, which makes her claim to run as an outsider problematic to say the least, if not as a matter of false advertising, certainly as a matter of strategic nous. Even if she resigned on December 16 and has criticized Liberal policies ever since, it is particularly hard for her to detach herself symbolically from Justin Trudeau and his legacy.

Carney and Feeland are not the only Liberal leadership hopefuls who have embraced some sort of outsider identity to position themselves within this short race. A few days ago, former Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla posted this message on social media: “I am the outsider candidate. I do not have the establishment backing me. If you are endorsed by 16 members of Trudeau’s Cabinet, you are not an outsider but an insider. It’s Trudeau 2.0. Vote Ruby Dhalla for real change.”

Because she served as an MP between 2004 and 2011, before Trudeau became leader, it is much easier for Dhalla than for Freeland to distance herself from his legacy. Ideologically, her views about immigration, including the pledge to process the mass deportation of “illegal immigrants,” also at odds with what is considered mainstream and, possibly, ideologically acceptable within the Liberal Party of Canada. From that standpoint, Dhalla is an ideological outsider. Like Liberal MP Frank Baylis and current Liberal MP Jaime Battiste, however, she has virtually no chance of winning the race.

As for Karina Gould, she has a higher public profile than these three more marginal leadership candidates, but she is trailing far behind Carney and, to a lesser extent, Freeland in terms of polling numbers and Liberal endorsements. To distinguish herself from these two, Gould points to her age (she is 37) and portrays herself as the voice of younger Liberals who seek generational change. Her status as millennial allows Gould, who served for years under Justin Trudeau as an MP and a cabinet member, to distinguish herself from the Prime Minister and the two front runners, who are all in their 50s.          

The fact that, after more than nine years of Liberal governance, most Liberal leadership hopefuls seek to appear as outsiders is not surprising. As Cambell Clark noted in The Globe and Mail recently, “in the Liberal leadership race, distance from Mr. Trudeau is already a big issue.” This is even more the case today, so get ready for more outsider rhetoric from Liberal leadership candidates between now and March 9th, when the name of Trudeau’s successor will be announced.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.