Then there were five: Liberal race narrows with Carney the choice of caucus – National

By day’s end on Thursday, the race to become the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada — and the country’s 24th prime minister — had narrowed to five candidates.

One of those remaining candidates vows to deport 500,000 “illegal immigrants”; another would halve the size of cabinet; another would cut the GST while raising corporate taxes; just about all seemed prepared to bail on the consumer carbon tax while one — the perceived leader in the race — has been noticeably silent and media-shy.

That perceived leader — the former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney — will de-cloak in Halifax Friday morning where he will make an announcement and take questions from reporters, the first time he will answer journalists’ questions in more than a week. Carney will face the press with two of of the more than 50 members of the Liberal caucus that have endorsed him standing behind him.

Carney got what, by my count, is his 53rd caucus endorsement late Thursday when Jaime Battiste, the Mi’kmaw MP who represents the Cape Breton riding of Sydney–Victoria, announced he was out of the race and that he was throwing his support behind the 59-year-old central banker.

Caucus endorsements didn’t much seem to bother the former Government House Leader and leadership candidate Karina Gould, who, at 37, is the youngest in the race by more than a decade. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa Thursday afternoon, she shrugged off the fact that just two of her caucus colleagues have endorsed her while most have endorsed either Carney or the 56-year-old former finance minister Chrystia Freeland.

“When I hear from one of those MPs who said, ‘I’m really sorry, I’m endorsing someone else’, then they always say, ‘But don’t worry, you’ve got my dad’s support, or you’ve got my hairdresser’s support, or you’ve got my [riding association’s] board support’. And guess what? Those votes are equal to the votes of cabinet ministers and MPs,” Gould said.

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Karina Gould launches Liberal leadership bid with pledge to freeze carbon price

Indeed, the Liberal leadership race is, like the Conservative races won by Pierre Poilievre, Erin O’Toole or Andrew Scheer, a modified one-member/one-vote system. This race will operate under…