Liberal MP and leadership candidate Justin Trudeau reacts to the federal budget in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday March 21, 2013.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
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Justin Trudeau will come out of the Liberal leadership race with a seven-figure warchest that he will be able to use to grow his party if he wins the contest on April 14.
The spending limit during the current leadership race stands at $950,000, but the Trudeau campaign said it has surpassed its fundraising target. The unspent money will remain at Mr. Trudeau's disposal, suggesting that if he becomes the next party leader, he will be sitting on a tidy amount of money to continue his efforts to organize the Liberal Party into a real electoral machine.
The full financial details of each of the six campaigns that are still in the race will come out on Monday, as the candidates start filing the first of four weekly returns with Elections Canada. The financial information will be posted on the electoral watchdog's website, but Liberal insiders said that Mr. Trudeau is expected to eclipse his rivals in the fundraising game.
The impressive fundraising figure for Mr. Trudeau is a much needed boost for the Liberal Party, which has been embarrassed by the relatively low number of party members and supporters who have registered to vote for the next leader. The party bandied about the fact earlier this month that 300,000 people had signed up to play a role in the race, but that was only the first step in the voting process.
The various campaign teams and the party have failed to translate that strong showing to the second stage of the process, in which party supporters and members had to officially register as voters to receive a PIN to cast their preferential ballot by phone or on the Internet.
Despite a one-week extension in the registration process, only some 40 per cent of the potential voters have signed up, suggesting that many of the people who joined the Trudeau campaign, for example, have a low level of engagement with the party.
Still, Mr. Trudeau is increasingly acting like the next Liberal leader, coming out into the foyer of the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon to offer his thoughts on the Harper government's 2013 budget. Some of his comments were vague, as he argued that the Harper government is "is out of steam and out of gas when it comes to actually offering a vision to Canadians."
However, he also latched on to the fact that one of the key components in the budget is a job-training grant that has angered the province of Quebec and elicited concerns in provinces such as British Columbia.
"For a government … to now put emphasis on negotiations while forcing the provinces to invest new money in skills training, that worries me a lot," Mr. Trudeau said. "[Canadians] don't want to hear about fresh negotiations, they want help right now to get jobs, to get the training they need to be strong players in the economy."
Mr. Trudeau is expected to pick up on that theme during the last debate among Liberal leadership contenders in Montreal on Saturday. Mr. Trudeau's team is well aware that there is irony to the fact that their candidate – not known to bow to the frequent demands of the Quebec government – is suddenly able to position himself as a "defender of the provinces."
Still, it is a hat that he will gladly wear in Quebec, where the Marois government will suddenly have a surprise ally in its fight against the Harper government's plan to extend its reach over job training.
Daniel Leblanc is a parliamentary reporter in The Globe's Ottawa bureau.