Former Laurentian Bank executive seen as a potential asset on Mark Carney team
Laval’s incumbent Liberal MPs seem to agree about their party’s newest Laval-area candidate.
As far they’re concerned, Carlos Leitão would be an asset to a future Liberal government.
After all, they say, he has a lengthy CV of experience in banking and high-finance, plus he and Liberal leader Mark Carney both helped direct the Bank of Canada at various stages of their careers.
Supporters, family and friends of the former Quebec Liberal finance minister crowded into Leitão’s Autoroute 440 campaign headquarters on Friday evening last week to help launch his bid to win the riding of Marc-Aurèle-Fortin in the April 28 election.
Former PLQ MNA
Leitão served two terms as the Liberal MNA for the West Island Montreal riding of Robert Baldwin, winning elections in 2014 and 2018, but declining to run again in 2022.
Leitão, 69, was an economist at the Royal Bank of Canada from 1983 to 2003. He was Quebec’s Minister of Finance in Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard’s cabinet. He was also chair of the Quebec treasury council from spring 2016 to early 2017.
He was the chief economist for Laurentian Bank Securities, making a name for himself while tracking economic trends and indicators – at one point ranking as one of the world’s most accurate forecasters, according to Bloomberg financial news services.
They met before
While at Laurentian, Leitão interacted with Mark Carney, who was the Bank of Canada’s governor between 2008 and 2013. In 2023, Leitão was appointed to the Bank of Canada’s board of directors.
Carney reached out to Leitão after winning the Liberals’ leadership contest on March 9, and Leitão agreed to run in Marc-Aurèle-Fortin for the Liberals. Leitão will be running for a seat last held for the Liberals by Yves Robillard, who served three terms since 2015, but decided not run this time.
“Bringing my political experience from the National Assembly, I would like to now represent your voices in Ottawa and advocate for fiscal responsibility and a strong and effective response to U.S. tariffs,” Leitão states on a leaflet his team is currently distributing to potential voters in the riding.
Dealing with the U.S.
In an informal address to the gathering of more than 50, Leitão was quick to get straight to the point as to why he’s running: the U.S. and its punishing tariffs. However, he insisted the Americans will always be neighbors – geographically-speaking at least. “But now the neighbors are a little less reliable,” he said.
Noting that over the past 30 years the economies of Canada, Quebec and the U.S. drew closer than ever before, he said the world we knew before last January “is now behind us and will not be coming back.
“Therefore, we will have to readjust, restructure, redirect the Canadian economy,” he continued. “And I think it’s in that context that I as much as possible will have a role to play to contribute to the dialogue that will be taking place in the federal government for this process of restructuring and reorientation of the economy to diversify our markets.”
Laval MPs agree
The Laval regions’s three Liberal MPs, who were all at the launch, agreed he’s the right man for the job. “I think we’re very lucky to have someone with the caliber and experience of Mr. Leitão as a candidate,” said Vimy MP Annie Koutrakis.
“He played a major role when he was minister of finance of Quebec,” said Laval-Les Îles MP Fayçal El-Khoury. “We welcome everyone who stands to give a facelift to the Liberal party because new blood never hurts,” said Alfred-Pellan MP Angelo Iacono.
Will Marc-Aurèle-Fortin stay Liberal?
While the Liberals have comfortably won Marc-Aurèle-Fortin in every election over the past decade, the NDP scored a single decisive victory there in 2011 during the so-called Orange Crush.
Perhaps more significantly, former Parti Québécois provincial cabinet minister Serge Ménard, running federally for the Bloc Québécois between 2004 and 2008, won three successive elections in Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.
The Bloc was stopped only by the NDP, when the riding’s predominantly francophone voters had seemingly grown tired of Quebec nationalism. Since then, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin’s electoral boundaries (which used to leap over the Rivière des Mille Îles onto more nationalistic North Shore territory) were modified.
The riding is now entirely in Laval, where booming population growth and evolving demographics favor the anglophone and allophone sectors. In an interview with The Laval News on launch night last week, Leitão said he was aware of Marc-Aurèle-Fortin’s short-term history as a Bloc constituency.
However, he said he felt confident that in this election, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin voters would respond to the Liberals’ appeal for unity at a time of economic crisis.
“As I’ve been going door-to-door talking to the people, a number of them have been telling me they don’t usually vote Liberal,” said Leitão. “But this time they will because they feel we need someone like Mark Carney to lead Canada and to face the United States and Donald Trump.”
