MONTREAL—Federal Liberals are facing an increasingly stark choice as their leadership contest is winding to a finish: should they stand on their own in coming election battles or work with other parties to defeat the Conservatives?

That question was at the centre of Saturday’s final leadership debate in Montreal, pitting pro co-operation candidate Joyce Murray against front-runner Justin Trudeau and most of the other contenders too.

Trudeau called co-operation a “hodgepodge” idea that will ensure NDP leader Thomas Mulcair becomes the next prime minister. Murray called it “insurance” against future Conservative victories.

The dispute is no longer simply a theoretical one either, thanks to an announcement earlier in the day by the Green Party that it will stand down from a looming byelection in Labrador to help the Liberals win the seat.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May chatted with Murray about the idea last week. It was cleared by the party on the weekend, and the decision was announced just as candidates were arriving in Montreal for the debate.

That gave a boost to Murray, who seems to be acknowledged now as the strongest challenger to Trudeau in this contest.

Trudeau said he had the same discussion last week with May, but he’s chilly to the idea of co-operation.

“I said that would be wonderful and delightful, and it’s great news if she’s decided to do that ... In fact, I’d urge all members of the Green Party to vote for the Liberal party,” he said.

Trudeau said these kinds of calculated gambits will backfire on the Liberals because they’re simply about “taking away power from people we don’t like.”

Liberals, he said, must show Canadians they’re concerned about things other than power.

“For the last 10 years, the Liberal party has suffered because Canadians looked at us and said, you know what, they’re too divided internally to be able to form a cohesive, united government ... I’m very worried that if we assemble a hodgepodge coalition or coming together or co-operation that actually removes choices from Canadians by forcing them to make an either-or choice, they will not believe we’re ready to govern.”

For many of the other contenders, too, the issue of electoral co-operation goes to the heart of the Liberal identity, if not its continued existence.

“It’s dangerous for the Liberal party of Canada,” said Martha Hall Findlay. “I just don’t think that people have actually crunched the numbers. ... As much as it’s hard for us to accept that, the Liberal party is in third place.”

Like Trudeau, she said such a strategy would amount to handing power to the NDP.

And not just the Liberal identity was on the table for discussion. Quebec’s identity in Canada — an issue that has bedevilled the Liberals for much of the past decades, including the 1970s and 1980s, when Trudeau’s father, Pierre, was prime minister — came up.

Trudeau threw out his script for the closing statements to argue for a whole new way of dealing with the age-old questions over Quebec’s place within Canada.

Trudeau, who sparred with former justice minister and candidate Martin Cauchon on this score on Saturday, said politicians must stop spending so much time trying to come up with gestures or offerings to placate Quebecers.

“We’ve been doing that for 30 years and I think that we have to really now admit it doesn’t work,” he told the 1,000 or so Liberals who turned out to hear the remaining contenders’ final debate.

“For far too long we’ve tried to buy Quebec, to buy them off rather than to get them involved ... This is our real challenge. How are we going to bring everybody together and set aside old squabbles and quarrels? We have to start talking about a common future. We Quebecers have to feel comfortable in a country, not just geographically speaking, but through the values that we recognize.”

The Montreal debate was held after the deadline to sign up and register to vote in the race, which ends April 14. Only six of the original nine candidates remain in the race and there were even some hints Saturday from some still in the contest that a Trudeau win was inevitable.

Deborah Coyne came right out, in fact, and admitted she wasn’t going to win.

“I have to be honest right now, I’m not going to win the race,” Coyne said. “But I was in it for the principles and for the vision that I saw as missing and to bring some clarity to the race.”

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Hall-Findlay hinted too that it’s been a tough slog, with expectations running so high for Trudeau and so low for the others in the race.

”It’s a challenge running a six-month campaign when so many people have been saying why are you bothering,” she told reporters. “Let’s not kid ourselves, this is the discourse, and it is hard for the candidates to run in that circumstance.

“But,” she said, “if you feel so strongly about the Liberal party and you feel so strongly as I do about the future of this country, then you actually do need to bother.”

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