Liberal leadership hopeful Justin Trudeau received an endorsement on Friday from a former contender for the position, Dominic LeBlanc.
LeBlanc declared his support for Trudeau, a lifelong friend, during an event in his New Brunswick riding of Beausejour.
LeBlanc briefly ran for the leadership of the federal Liberal party in 2008, before stepping aside ahead of the coronation of Michael Ignatieff.
His late father, former governor general Romeo LeBlanc, served in the cabinet of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau – Justin’s father.
The endorsement came one day after Trudeau appeared at a campaign rally in Mississauga, Ont., where he was cheered on by more than 1,000 local supporters.
Crowds gathered around the 40-year-old Montreal MP, hoping for a picture and asking for autographs.
“The Liberals haven’t packed rooms like this in a couple of generations,” said Mississauga city councillor Bonnie Crombie.
During the appearance, Trudeau kept to a message he laid out when announcing his candidacy in Montreal on Tuesday: learning from the past and looking toward the future.
During his speech, Trudeau focused on youth and multiculturalism, while promising to create more jobs for the middle class.
“We’ve got big challenges we are facing, and I don’t show up with a ready-made ideology that I am going to cookie-cut to any problem we come at,” he told reporters.
Trudeau’s appearance in Ontario on Thursday came on the heels of visits to Calgary and British Columbia, where he weighed in on a proposed pipeline between B.C. and Alberta.
Trudeau urged the two provinces to develop a better, more co-operative plan if they wanted it to proceed.
He said it was “wrong” to use natural resource riches to pit Canadians against one another, an apparent nod to the resentment Albertans feel over the national energy program briefly enacted by his father in the 1980s.
With files from CTV Toronto’s Ashley Rowe and The Canadian Press
