Liberal MP Justin Trudeau is holding a rally in his Montreal riding on Tuesday evening where he will announce his run for the leadership of the Liberal Party, the Huffington Post Canada has confirmed.
Late last week, the Montreal newspaper La Presse and CBC's French arm Radio-Canada were first to report that the popular MP would make a run for the Liberal leadership and would make a formal announcement on Tuesday.
UPDATE: Is he in? Liberal MP Justin Trudeau will hold a rally in his Montreal riding Tuesday evening to announce his leadership bid.
Late last week, the Montreal newspaper La Presse and CBC's French arm Radio-Canada were first to report that the popular MP would make a run for the Liberal leadership and would make a formal announcement on Tuesday.
Trudeau has been mulling a leadership bid for several months The Huffington Post has learned and spent the summer organizing and plotting strategy with a team of about a dozen organizers.
Monday afternoon, Trudeau invited Canadians to join him in his riding or check out his website justin.ca. He tweeted: “Have some big news to share.”
After Trudeau announces his bid Tuesday evening, he’ll take off in a mini-cross country tour. He’ll met Calgarians for lunch on Wednesday, fans in at the Radisson Hotel near the Vancouver Airport in Wednesday evening and Thursday will take part in an event in Mississauga, where 91-year-old mayor Hazel McCallion is expected to make an appearance.
Justin Kaiser, an organizer of the rally in Richmond, B.C., said he expects the 450-people capacity room he’s booked will be back and overflowing.
“The amount of people who are emailing and registering and people saying they are coming up more and more, so I think it will be a very large event,” Kaiser told HuffPost.
Trudeau is expected to give a regionally-focused speech playing up his family connection with the province (his maternal grandfather James Sinclair was a B.C. MP) and his time teaching in British Columbia.
“There are definite opportunities to grow the Liberal Party in B.C.,” said Kaiser. “We have to. In the last election, we only got 13 per cent of the vote. That is 87 per cent of the population not voting Liberal, that is pretty substantial.”
Former Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, who is co-chairing of the Mississauga event with another former MP Navdeep Bains, said Canadians would have to wait until Tuesday to find out what Trudeau decides.
But Justin’s message Thursday, Alghabra said, would be focused on listening and speaking to Canadians about how the Liberal Party is the best vehicle to channel their aspirations.
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