Washington Post :

More than two months after Justin Trudeau said he intended to resign as Canada’s prime minister, the country’s Liberals on Sunday will announce his successor.
U.S. President Donald Trump has loomed large over the contest. Several top cabinet ministers declined to run, saying their focus was better placed on responding to Trump, who has imposed tariffs on Canadian goods, questioned Canada’s viability as a country and threatened to use “economic coercion” to make it the 51st state.
For Liberal voters, the central question has been who can best stand up to Trump and safeguard Canada’s economy and sovereignty. But Sunday night’s winner may not be in power for long, as a federal election could be just around the corner.
Here are the key things to know about Canada’s race for a new leader.
The candidates
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Among the candidates vying to replace Trudeau as Liberal leader — and prime minister — two favorites have emerged: Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland. The pair have been friendly. He is godfather to one of Freeland’s children.

Carney is the presumed front-runner. He grew up dreaming of being an NHL player but ascended instead to the upper echelons of finance as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in capitals around the world.
He earned acclaim for steering Canada through the 2008 financial crisis as governor of the Bank of Canada and navigating Brexit as Bank of England chief — the first non-Brit to lead the central bank since it was founded in the 17th century. He was a darling of the British press, who called him a “rock star” central banker.
Carney is pitching himself as a political outsider with the crisis-management experience needed as Canada faces a potentially crippling trade war with the United States, its largest trading partner. But he is untested as a politician and his French speaking skills have drawn criticism, which has traditionally been a liability in Quebec, a key battleground.
He has pledged to impose retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, as Trudeau has done. But he has also sought to repudiate aspects of Trudeau’s economic record, including the consumer carbon tax. He has said the government spends too much and invests too little and promised to balance part of the budget within three years.
His main opponent is Chrystia Freeland, who was Trudeau’s deputy prime minister before she resigned from his cabinet in December, citing differences with the prime minister over fiscal policy and setting off the caucus mutiny that led to his resignation.
A Ukrainian Canadian, she drew the KGB’s attention as a student traveling through Ukraine in the 1980s. Its code name for her was Frida. As a journalist, she covered the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.
When Trudeau recruited her to join politics, it was seen as a coup. She drew praise during Trump’s first term for the role that she played as foreign minister in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trudeau put Freeland in charge of so many critical files, including the pandemic response, that she was nicknamed “the Minister of Everything.”
The United States under Trump, she said during this year’s campaign, has turned into a “predator” and represents the biggest threat to Canada since World War II. Trump, for his part, has labeled her “toxic” — an insult that she is wearing as a badge of honor.
“I want to let you in on a little secret,” she said in a campaign video. “Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much.”
She has pledged to impose dollar-for-dollar tariffs on U.S. goods and 100 percent tariffs on Teslas. But analysts say the former finance minister may struggle to differentiate herself from Trudeau and his unpopular economic record.
Voting process and timeline
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Some 400,000 registered Liberals are eligible to vote in Sunday’s contest, with the final result determined in part through a ranked ballot system.
The winner is expected to be sworn in as prime minister within the next week, officially replacing Trudeau. A federal election must be held by late October but could come sooner.
Opposition parties have vowed to bring down the government after a new session of Parliament begins on March 24. The winner could also call a snap election.
The Trump effect
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Before Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he intended to resign, his Liberals were headed for a wipeout, trailing the Conservatives for more than a year, amid concerns about inflation, the high cost of living and a housing shortage.

But Trudeau’s resignation and Trump’s return have upended Canadian politics and breathed new life into the Liberal Party. In a matter of months, the Liberals have mounted a comeback and significantly narrowed a 20-point polling deficit.
The new leader’s main rival: Pierre Poilievre
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Canada’s Conservatives picked Pierre Poilievre to lead them in 2022 after three consecutive election losses. The 45-year-old is a right-wing populist who drew rare standing-room-only crowds during the Conservative leadership race and has a combative style.
Poilievre rose to the leadership by trafficking in grievance politics and railing against “wokeism,” the news media and “gatekeepers.” When the convoy demonstrators blockaded Ottawa and several border crossings in 2022, he supported them.
He planned to make this year’s election a referendum on Trudeau and the carbon tax, campaigning on the slogan “Ax the [carbon] tax, build the homes, fix the budget, stop the crime.”
But he has been forced to retool his campaign and his message. Trudeau has stepped aside, and his potential successors have said they’ll scrap the consumer carbon tax. As Trump’s attacks stir fury and flag-waving displays of patriotism here, Poilievre’s longtime message — that “Canada is broken” — does not match national sentiment.
He held a rally last month where he unveiled a new message — “Canada First” — and said that Canadians would “bear any burden and pay any price to protect the sovereignty and independence of our country.”

The Liberals in recent weeks rolled out ads linking Poilievre to Trump. One cuts between clips of Poilievre complaining that “everything is broken” and railing against a “woke censorship ideology” with clips of Trump using identical or nearly identical language.
Analysts said they’ve rarely seen the vote so volatile outside of an election, and whether the Liberal surge will continue is unknown.