Justin Trudeau confirms bid for Liberal leadership

OTTAWA – Justin Trudeau is off and running to lead the federal Liberals, determined to breathe new life into a party he says has lost touch with middle-class Canadians — and confront those critics who say he’s just a pretty face with a famous last name.

Hundreds of supporters in his riding of Papineau cheered as the 40-year-old Montreal MP confirmed his leadership ambitions, easily among the worst-kept political secrets in Canada.

“I am running because I believe this country wants and needs new leadership, a vision for Canada’s future grounded not in the politics of envy or mistrust,” Trudeau told a crowd peppered with Liberal party luminaries.

“One that understands, despite all the blessings beneath our feet, that our greatest strength is above ground, in our people. All Canadians, pulling together, determined to build a better life, a better Canada.”

Trudeau, the eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, said he wants to reconnect the Liberal party with the ordinary people who gave it life. And he singled out restoring the economic health of the Canadian middle class as a principal goal.

“A thriving middle class provides realistic hope and a ladder of opportunity for the less fortunate — a robust market for our businesses, and a sense of common interest for all,” he said.

But as the middle class in China, India, South Korea and Brazil enjoys increasing prosperity, Canadians are experiencing the opposite, he continued — stalled income levels, escalating costs and ballooning personal debt.

“What’s the response from the NDP? To sow regional resentment and blame the successful. The Conservative answer? Privilege one sector over others and promise that wealth will trickle down, eventually,” he said.

“Both are tidy ideological answers to complex and difficult questions. The only thing they have in common is that they are both, equally, wrong.”

A school teacher before jumping into politics in 2008, Trudeau has long been seen by his critics — many of them fellow Liberals — as a man of more flash than substance. Tuesday’s speech was designed to showcase a more cerebral, thoughtful side.

“It is time for us, for this generation of Canadians, to put away childish things,” Trudeau said. “More, it is time for all of us to come together and get down to the very serious, very adult business of building a better country.”

He said he chose to make his announcement on Tuesday because it would have been the 37th birthday of his late brother Michel, a skier who was killed in an avalanche in 1998.

“Every day, I think about him and I remember not to take anything for granted,” Trudeau said in French. “To live my life fully. And to always be faithful to myself.”

On Wednesday, Trudeau embarks on a cross-Canada tour designed in part to prove he’s more than just his famous father’s telegenic offspring.

He’ll kick things off in Calgary, a Liberal wasteland since his father’s hated National Energy Program, and Richmond, B.C., before attending a rally Thursday in Mississauga, Ont.

Trudeau has been in the public eye since he was born on Christmas Day, 1971. As a child, he travelled the country and the world with his famous father, then prime minister.

He eschewed offers to run in Montreal’s Outremont riding — then considered a safe Liberal seat, now held by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair — choosing instead to fight a contested nomination in Papineau, once a Bloc Quebecois stronghold and among the poorest ridings in the country.

He defeated a star Bloquiste in 2008 and bucked the NDP tide that swept Quebec in 2011, increasing his margin of victory.

In Liberal circles, he is an undisputed rock star, the party’s biggest draw at fundraisers. He boasts more than 150,000 Twitter followers. His already sky-high stock soared last spring when he won a charity boxing match against Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

“He’s one of the few Liberals that actually excites Liberals,” Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Alberta said.

But Bratt said Trudeau must demonstrate that he is more than his famous name, adding that the senior Trudeau left a bitter legacy in the west and parts of Quebec.

“The biggest strength and the biggest weakness that Justin Trudeau has is his last name,” he said.

He added that Trudeau’s focus has “got to be rebuilding the Liberal party from the grassroots all the way up.”

For all that, Trudeau remains an unknown quantity in many respects. In his various shadow cabinet posts _ youth, amateur sport, immigration — he’s had little to say about the big issues of the day, virtually nothing about the economy.

When he’s ventured occasionally into meatier issues, he’s invariably created controversy — criticizing the government’s use of the word “barbaric” to describe female genital mutilation, suggesting he’d support Quebec secession if he thought Canadians shared Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s values.

Trudeau has already emerged as a frontrunner in the leadership race but Bratt said he needs to combat his “lightweight” image.

“Some of that disappeared in his famous boxing match but now he’s an intellectual lightweight,” he said.

His choice of campaign team suggests Trudeau is well aware he needs to demonstrate more depth and substance.

Among his key supporters is Gerald Butts, longtime friend and former head of policy for Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, and a raft of key organizers from policy-wonkish Gerard Kennedy’s 2006 leadership bid, including campaign director Katie Telford, Bains and Alghabra.

Kennedy himself is still pondering whether he’ll take a second run at becoming federal Liberal leader. He insisted Monday he won’t be deterred by the fact that his old team seems to have moved, almost en masse, to Trudeau, who endorsed Kennedy in 2006.

“I think Justin has a lot to offer the country,” Kennedy said.

But he added: “There’ve been prohibitive favourites before. Sometimes they’ve won and sometimes they haven’t.”

Toronto-based constitutional lawyer Deborah Coyne, the mother of Trudeau’s half-sister, has already announced her candidacy, as has Manitoba paramedic Shane Geschiere.

A host of others are considering taking the plunge but may yet be scared off by Trudeau’s presumed edge.

Among them are Montreal MP Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut, Vancouver MP Joyce Murray, former cabinet minister Martin Cauchon, former MP and leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay, Ontario government economist Jonathan Mousley, former Ottawa candidate David Bertschi, Toronto lawyer George Takach, and David Merner, former president of the party’s B.C. wing.

New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc, a lifelong friend of Trudeau’s, and Ottawa MP David McGuinty are also mulling their chances but are not considered likely to take the plunge. Veteran Montreal MP Denis Coderre is pondering whether to  run for the Liberal leadership or mayor of Montreal and is thought to be leaning toward the latter.

Meanwhile, interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae told reporters he believes it’s too early to comment on the party’s leadership race.

“Let’s see what happens,” he told CityNews Channel in Toronto. “Mr. Trudeau has made his announcement and I’m sure there are other candidates who are thinking about it.

“I think only time will tell as to how the race will unfold. I can’t predict what will happen, but what will happen will happen. Que Sera Sera.”

The contest doesn’t officially begin until Nov. 14 and culminates on April 14. [View the story “Justin Trudeau confirms bid for Liberal leadership” on Storify]