I personally like Freeland. Although I don’t know how electable she is, because people who don’t like Trudeau are probably going to closely associate her with him.
I’m not on board with either Carney or Joly.
I also like Anand, although we haven’t heard much from her lately. I could go either way on LeBlanc. I don’t feel I know enough about Champagne to make an informed opinion.
So Anand announced today that she's not going to be running for the leadership, and she's not even going to run for re-election. This is a huge loss to the party. I think she would have made a great leader.
Joly and LeBlanc have also both confirmed that they won't be running for the leadership. From what I've read, some members of caucus are trying to get LeBlanc to reconsider, but he seems pretty adamant right now. Champagne is reportedly considering it, but he hasn't declared at this point.
The only two declared candidates so far are Chandra Arya and Frank Baylis, neither of whom probably have a chance. (Unless no one else enters, I guess.)
Carney and Freeland are both apparently getting things ready for their runs. As I mentioned earlier, I'm really not on board with the idea of Carney becoming leader. I know people are probably counting on his name recognition from his time with the Bank of Canada. But he has never held elected office before, and really, in our current environment, who is going to vote for someone whose post-BoC and BoE work has been as vice-chair or chairman of the board for major financial companies? Talk about out of touch with the problems of regular Canadians.
My personal favourite is still Freeland, again acknowledging that she would probably have a huge hurdle trying to distance herself from Trudeau.
Cristy Clark is apparently also considering running. She wouldn't be my choice for the same reason I'm not really a fan of Bonnie Crombie: she's more right on the political spectrum than I would prefer. Of course, I guess that could be helpful trying to attract voters in the general election who thought Trudeau was too far to the left, but may be uncomfortable supporting Poilievre, and are currently only doing so because he's the only viable option on the right.
There are a couple other people who haven't been mentioned yet who are also considering a leadership run. One of those is Karina Gould. I don't really know a lot about her, but some people whose opinions I respect are really hoping she will run, so I might have to do some research.
The $350,000 entry fee is probably a huge barrier to some, but I'm guessing they did that to narrow the field from the start, since they have such a compressed timeframe to work with.