Former astronaut and Montreal MP Marc Garneau is widely expected to announce Wednesday that he will be a candidate for the Liberal leadership.
It would be hard to imagine why Garneau would hold two news conferences, one in the morning in his riding, and then one mid-afternoon in Ottawa, if he's not running.
When someone tweeted to ask whether Garneau would be "window dressing" in a contest where he will run against Justin Trudeau, he answered, "Do you really think I would take on a huge personal commitment to be window dressing?"
Garneau will add another kind of celebrity to a race that's been dominated by Trudeau, who is often referred to as the "rock star candidate."
What other leadership contender has two high schools named after him, as Garneau does? Who else was once asked by the Montreal Alouettes to try out for their team, as he revealed on Twitter during the Grey Cup furor.
Garneau, born in Quebec City and a Royal Military College graduate, became a naval officer after getting his doctorate in engineering. In the mid-80s he became one of six Canadian astronauts (out of a field of 4,000 serious applicants) and flew his first shuttle mission in 1984. His biography on his website says he's logged 644 hours in space.
In 2001, he became head of the Canadian Space Agency and left in 2005 to enter politics. He lost his first election in 2006, but in 2008 won the riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie. He is the Liberal House Leader and the party critic for science, industry and technology. In his political career, he has championed the idea of a commissioner for children and young people.
Garneau becomes the third sitting MP to enter the race, after Justin Trudeau and B.C. MP Joyce Murray.
Garneau has 'intellectual heft'
One supporter says he is attracted to Garneau because of his "intellectual heft." A Liberal insider says that if Trudeau falls flat on his face, then Garneau will be there as a solid, credible candidate, and a household name to boot.
At 63, Garneau qualifies as an early boomer, a member of a political age-cohort that ranges from Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Bob Rae and a number of his seatmates on the Liberal bench. There is a sense of the headiness of what it was like coming of age in the 60s as he relates how he crossed the Atlantic in an 18-metre yacht with 12 others in 1969, the same year, he notes, as Woodstock and the moon landing.
His 8000 Twitter followers don't compare to Trudeau's nearly 170,000, but nothing humanizes him more than some of his tweets, as he obligingly answers questions about life in space. Is there a special space toilet, how does the shuttle's vacuum cleaner work when the shuttle's flying in a vacuum, is there a Velcro strip inside the helmet to aid in nose-scratching? (Answers: yes, it just does, and no).
The other candidates who have declared their leadership bid or their interest are former MP Martha Hall Findlay, Ottawa lawyer David Bertschi, Deborah Coyne, Vancouver lawyer Alex Burton, retired air force colonel Karen McCrimmon, senior government economist Jonathan Mousley, B.C lawyer David Merner, and Toronto lawyer George Takach.
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