OTTAWA – Even though he insists the race is not over, Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau is for the first time signalling his support for front-runner Justin Trudeau.
“If Justin wins he will have my 100 per cent loyal support,” Garneau said in an interview with Global News, the day after Trudeau’s camp claimed to have signed up 150,000 new party supporters.
“I think we have a good team and I’m a good and loyal soldier, and I intend to be around for a long time.”
When asked what role he would like to play in the party if he does not win the leadership on April 14, Garneau replied: “I will do whatever I’m asked to do.”
“It’s up to the leader to make that decision if I’m not the leader,” he said.
It’s a stunning reversal from Garneau’s previous treatment of Trudeau, whom he recently challenged to a one-on-one debate.
Garneau told reporters on Parliament Hill last week that Trudeau was speaking in “vague generalities” about his platform and said the Liberal party leadership is too important a position to be handed to an untested candidate.
While he still maintains the new leader must draw people to the party but also have proven leadership skills and substantial ideas, Garneau held back from openly criticizing Trudeau.
The two-term Montreal MP and former astronaut will not reveal his supporter numbers, but he has a “pretty good feeling” he is in second place, based on robocalling, past polls and submissions from his website.
He added he has no reason to doubt Trudeau’s figures.
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“There’s no question he has signed up a lot of people,” said Garneau.
Non-paying supporters, as well as party members, have until March 14 to sign up to vote for the next leader, who will be crowned on April 14 in Ottawa.
But Garneau said there is a month of work to do and he will be travelling the country to garner more support.
“I’ve still got more policy to bring out,” he said. “So it’s not over.”
Garneau said he has run his campaign the way he wanted to, by proposing substantive policy – such as deferring student debt and tax cuts for small- and medium-sized businesses – and being accessible at town halls across the country.
“Ultimately we’ll find out in April how that works, whether that was successful or not,” he said, adding that he will also reserve his judgment until the end on whether the race has been little more than a popularity contest.
Garneau said he has also been trying to convey the Liberal brand to Canadians, which he defines as fiscally responsible yet socially progressive, with an interest in science-based policy, crime prevention and universal health care.
“You put all those things together and that defines a Liberal. Some of them are shared by the NDP, some of them are shared by the Conservatives. But only we have that sort of total package,” he said.
With one debate remaining on March 23 in Montreal, Garneau said he would have preferred more one-on-one time between the candidates.
There are currently eight people vying for leadership, after lawyer George Takach dropped out to support Trudeau.
“I would have loved to have had more fulsome debate with some of my fellow front-runners,” said Garneau, citing Trudeau, former MP Martha Hall Findlay and Vancouver MP Joyce Murray as the lead candidates.
“But the reality is that everybody who’s in the race followed the rules.”
Garneau disagreed with the characterization that he has been attacking Trudeau throughout the campaign, but rather said he was “being constructive.”
“It is in the interest of the party to have a fulsome and a vigorous leadership campaign and I’m contributing to making it that…so that it’s not a coronation or perceived to be a coronation,” he said.
“I’m doing the party a service by doing this.” He cited Trudeau’s adoption of his student debt policy as one of the successes.
The new leader has two-and-a-half years before the next election and will have to face “the Conservative attack machine” as well as the media on a regular basis, said Garneau.
“There is a tendency for a leadership race to become almost sort of a closed bubble entity, an end in itself. But it isn’t,” he said.
“The real work starts on the 15th of April.”
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