When Mr. Trudeau announces his retirement, he will leave office secure in the knowledge that he substantially reduced child poverty in Canada, introduced  a historic $10 a day childcare program, established publicly-accessible dental care for low income Canadians, managed the pandemic better than almost any other country with a death rate per capita less than half what it was in the United States, made major progress towards indigenous reconciliation, and put climate change front and centre on his agenda. He can leave the leadership of the Liberal Party after more than twelve years holding his head high, having led the party from a distant third place to a majority government and then winning the next two general elections. 

Going forward, the immediate debate in the Liberal Party is over whether the Liberal Caucus should quickly choose a new leader to become Prime Minister within weeks from now to lead the party into an eventual election, or whether there should be a full leadership convention with a membership vote to be held around the end of March just before an election is presumably called.

The decision by the National Board of Directors of the Liberal Party as to which process to follow needs to be a very practical one. It must be made not in terms of what is best in theory, but rather solely in the context of what timeframe will best position a new Liberal leader to run a meaningful election campaign. 

Assuming that Parliament is prorogued until the end of March, the government will likely fall soon afterwards on a confidence vote in the House of Commons unless a new Prime Minister simply calls an election before the vote. That election will be between Pierre Poilievre and a new Liberal Prime Minister who is not Justin Trudeau. It would give Canadians who want neither Trudeau nor Poilievre a choice.

In deciding how to choose a new leader capable of giving Canadians that choice, the Liberal Party’s National Board of Directors needs to work back from the end of March to today. It means understanding, first, that a new leader must have the time to demonstrate to Canadians that he or she, while proud of a record of achievement and a firm believer in Liberal values, is not Trudeau 2.0 and will run a different type of government.

Second, a new Liberal leader must be able to demonstrate to Canadians that he or she is best suited to confront Donald Trump and preserve Canadian interests not only in regard to tariffs but also in terms of an anticipated renegotiation of CUSMA in 2026.

Third, a new Liberal leader must be able to articulate creative ideas for the AI economy of tomorrow that is already different from the economic challenges of the Trudeau period.

Fourth, a new Liberal leader will need to recruit candidates in ridings where there is no candidate today. That takes time. 

Fifth, a new Liberal leader will have to put together a real election campaign team. That too takes time.

There is nothing in the Liberal Party’s constitution that allows for a quick expedited full membership leadership convention. This means in reality that a membership convention cannot be held before late March at the earliest. And March is less than three months away from now. 

In these circumstances, the fundamental question the Liberal Party’s board must answer is whether a new leader would have the time in just a couple of weeks before an election is called to be able to introduce himself or herself to Canadians.  That means being able to convey the sense of being capable of offering a different type of government from that of the current Prime Minister, being capable of taking on Trump, being a repository of new ideas for a different economy, being able to recruit new candidates, and being able to put together a campaign team.

The answer to this question is that it would be extremely difficult for a new leader to do all that in such a short amount of time. It is essential that the Liberal Party’s board not put itself in the position of the doctor who proclaims that the operation was a complete success, except that the patient died.

Furthermore, a full three-month leadership campaign will require candidates to raise considerable amounts of money.  Before deciding on process, another very practical consideration the National Board of Directors will have to take into account is whether fundraising by candidates for a leadership campaign will limit the amount of money the party will be able to raise for a general election campaign.

The other process option is for the National Board of the Liberal Party to use a provision in the party’s Constitution that allows it, in consultation with Caucus, to choose a new leader quickly. Nothing in the constitution would require a full leadership convention to be held before the next election. There is nothing undemocratic about a party caucus choosing its leader. In Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, party leaders are chosen by caucus. In fact, in Great Britain, the disastrous experience of the Labour Party with a membership vote that chose Jeremy Corbyn as its leader drove the party back to having caucus choose his successor, who then went on to win the next election.

The current Liberal Caucus in Canada is not an elite clique as some have suggested. It is actually a highly representative group of women and men from all across Canada who have all been elected to Parliament by their constituents. It is highly capable of choosing the next Liberal leader. But it should only do so with as much prior public participation as possible in a necessarily constrained timeframe.

The National Board of Directors of the Liberal Party can and should maximize public participation in the choice of the next leader while still adhering to time constraints. It should announce a short two-part process to choose a new leader and Prime Minister, all to take place before the end of January. As a first step, the party should schedule two national online townhall meetings, one a week, in the two weeks after the Prime Minister makes his announcement. These townhalls would allow all leadership candidates to showcase to Canadians in general and to Liberals and to Caucus in particular what they stand for, how they fare in debates, how they react to questions and comments posed to them by participants in the townhalls, and how they perform in public settings. The public reaction to these townhalls will have a major impact on Caucus and this type of public participation would help create a consensus around who the best candidates are before a vote in Caucus.

As a next step, two or three days after the second townhall and before the end of January, the Liberal Caucus would choose the next leader by a secret ballot vote. In the days between when Mr. Trudeau announces his intention to retire and the choice and swearing in of the new Liberal leader as Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau should remain as Liberal leader and Prime Minister of Canada.

The advantage of choosing a new leader by Caucus almost immediately after the national townhalls is that by the end of January, a new Prime Minister will be in place. This way, the new Prime Minister will have a window of a couple of months rather than just a couple of weeks to introduce his or her government and approach to Canadians, to deal with immediate issues as a result of whatever Donald Trump tries to do to Canada, and to be ready for the next federal election.

I sincerely hope the Liberal Party’s National Board chooses the process that puts a new Prime Minster in place before the end of January and gives him or her a runway of at least two months to govern and to be ready before the next election is likely to be called.  This is the only realistic way forward for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Eddie Goldenberg, C.M. (former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Chrétien and currently Senior Advisor at Global Public Affairs)