PIEN HUANG, HOST:
In Canada, the race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party has officially started. But with President Donald Trump back in the White House, how much of what's happening in the U.S. is shaping Canada's leadership battle. Sheena Rossiter reports.
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PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister.
SHEENA ROSSITER, BYLINE: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's New Year resignation instantly triggered a leadership battle. Seven candidates have put their names forward for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, but two have emerged as the front-runners.
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MARK CARNEY: I'm back home in Edmonton to declare my candidacy for leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada.
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ROSSITER: Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England has never been elected to public office before.
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CARNEY: Let's say the candidate did have a lot of economic experience. Let's say...
ROSSITER: This was a far more upbeat pitch on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" just days before.
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CARNEY: ...In the here and now.
JON STEWART: You sneaky - you're running as an outsider.
CARNEY: I am an outsider.
ROSSITER: But he says that's exactly what Canada needs during these unusual times.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Freeland, Freeland, Freeland, Freeland.
ROSSITER: The other candidate to watch is Chrystia Freeland, who launched her campaign the day after Carney. As a longtime Trudeau loyalist, she's been a liberal member of Parliament for almost a decade. Her recent resignation as finance minister and the deputy prime minister sent a jolt through the political world and played its part in triggering Trudeau's resignation.
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CHRYSTIA FREELAND: I'm going to let you in on a little secret.
ROSSITER: This was her campaign launch video and the leadership pitch.
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FREELAND: Donald Trump doesn't like me very much.
ROSSITER: Trump is shaping this Canadian leadership race. Freeland is positioning herself as someone who has stood up to President Trump in the past. And with the looming threat of 25% tariffs being imposed on all Canadian goods going into the United States, she's campaigning on her strong negotiating skills.
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FREELAND: Join me. Join the fight.
ROSSITER: This leadership race is unusually compressed. Party members will vote on March 9, making the campaign just six weeks long. And it's all being shaped by the threat of tariffs, which Trump has pledged to impose on February 1.
JARED WESLEY: Publicly, we're having this open spat over whether tariffs should be imposed by the United States on Canada and the retaliatory tariffs.
ROSSITER: But according to Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, cooler heads seem to be prevailing.
WESLEY: Behind the scenes, what I'm hearing is that folks are still working on revamping and revisiting the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement with Mexico.
ROSSITER: And for political watchers like Dan Nielsen, a senior strategy adviser for Prairie Sky Strategy, this is a familiar playbook.
DAN NIELSEN: It's a movie we've seen before. It's got the same main character but different secondary cast. We can understand some of the things that he may do. He's making a lot of moves very early on. It's unprecedented, but it's also not unknown. It's going to be an interesting four years.
ROSSITER: Any new liberal leader faces an uphill battle. Canada's opposing Conservative Party leads by more than 20 points in several polls for now. With what's expected to be an election as early as the spring, whoever takes the leadership position might only be prime minister for mere months, but they still face the immediate challenge of dealing with Trump's tariff threats now. For NPR News, I'm Sheena Rossiter in Edmonton. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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