Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne plans to reveal Tuesday whether he will run in the upcoming party leadership race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Champagne is expected to share his decision during a talk at the Canadian Club in Toronto hosted by business journalist Amanda Lang, a source close to the minister said Monday.
It goes without saying that the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada must be able to communicate in both English and French, Canada's two official languages.
— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) 🇨🇦 (@FP_Champagne) January 11, 2025
It will also be just as important to have a debate in French.
On March 9, make your voice heard! pic.twitter.com/B511jfEXoc
That event, scheduled for 12:40 p.m., is being billed as a conversation about artificial intelligence, economic security, supply chains and critical minerals against the backdrop of the incoming Donald Trump administration in the U.S.
Other Liberals considering launching their own leadership bids are now making public appeals for support.
Seven prospective leadership candidates now have forms posted on the Liberal party website to collect the signatures they require to enter the race.
Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, former central banker Mark Carney and former B.C. premier Christy Clark each have their forms up on the site, along with cabinet ministers Karina Gould and Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal MP Chandra Arya and former MP Frank Baylis.
While Champagne has long been floated in media reports as a potential leadership contender, he appears to have no publicly available page on the party website seeking signatures.
To launch a leadership run, each candidate must collect 300 signatures from registered Liberals, including at least 100 from three different provinces or territories.
Transport Minister Anita Anand and Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon bowed out of the race over the weekend, while Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced last week they would not run.
They dropped out shortly after the party announced the tight timeline and a steep entrance fee of $350,000.
MacKinnon said in a social media post on Sunday that he wanted to enter to ensure strong bilingual representation, but the "time available does not allow me to mount the kind of campaign that I would want to run."
The vote will be held on March 9 and candidates have to declare their intention to run by Jan. 23. They also face a fast-approaching cutoff date of Jan. 27 to sign up members eligible to vote in the race.
"There are time constraints, no doubt about it," Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi told reporters in Ottawa Monday, noting a federal election will follow closely after the new leader is chosen. "It's important we have a strong leader in place as quickly as possible."
Trudeau's office confirmed the outgoing prime minister will refrain from weighing in during the race and will remain neutral.
The party's leadership vote committee, led by former party president Suzanne Cowan and the party's Quebec director Marc-Etienne Vien, is drafting the rules and procedures for the vote, while the leadership expense committee is working on setting the spending rules and limits.
Party president Sachit Mehra announced over the weekend that the committee has tapped Beatrice Keleher Raffoul to serve as the chief electoral officer for the vote.
