While former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland lost by a wide margin to Mark Carney in the Liberal leadership race, her campaign team was told that she placed second in 317 of 343 ridings. According to an internal email sent to members of Freeland’s leadership team and leaked to CTV News by a campaign source, Freeland came second in every province and territory. “Of Liberals who did not rank Chrystia first, about 70,000 (or half) ranked Chrystia second -- a clear and resounding endorsement of her leadership and role in the Liberal Party,” said Freeland’s national campaign manager, Tom Allison, in the email. Carney clinched victory decisively on Sunday, winning on the first ballot with 85.9 per cent of the vote, and handily beating the three other candidates in all 343 ridings. Of the 151,899 party loyalists that cast a ballot, 131,674 put Carney first. Freeland placed a distant second, securing just eight per cent of the vote, and a total of 11,134 votes. Still, Freeland’s campaign lead told the team that their targeted outreach and efforts to engage grassroots Liberals at townhalls across Canada “paid off.” “With the exception of Ontario and Saskatchewan, we won larger proportions of points than our proportion of votes… We raised over $700,000 from 3,000 donors across the country in less than two months,” Allison said. Over the same time period, Carney fundraised $4.5 million. The Liberal Party of Canada announced on Wednesday that in the 72 hours since he was declared the winner that the party had raised an additional one million dollars. Allison’s lauding of the campaign team’s effort over the last two months included noting the “positive campaign” Freeland ran, that “in no way” discredited Carney. He also said they helped show Canadians a party that could offer “two strong women candidates,” in reference to fellow candidate Karina Gould, who placed third with three per cent of the vote. Allison also implored Freeland’s supporters to now focus on supporting Carney in his push to defeat Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the upcoming federal election. Carney will be sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister on Friday and is widely expected to call a snap federal election this spring. It remains to be seen if Freeland or Gould will be brought back into cabinet. Both have committed to run for re-election as Liberal MPs, and said if they had won, they’d invite Carney to join their ministries. “There is much work ahead, for all of us Liberals, but there is also much that we can be proud of today,” Allison said.
