HALIFAX—Justin Trudeau’s campaign for the Liberal leadership has drawn a staggering 150,000 supporters to the party, according to tallies provided to the Toronto Star at the sign-up deadline on Sunday night.

That’s 20,000 more than the New Democratic Party had in total memberships during its leadership campaign last year and a roughly 150 per cent increase in the number of people who were signed up as backers of the federal Liberals only a few months ago.

It also doesn’t include all the new supporters and members gathered up by the other seven leadership campaigns — a total the Liberal Party plans to release Monday.

Trudeau told the Star Sunday evening that this explosion of interest means that he’s finding an eager audience for what he calls an “open, positive” campaign.

“People are hungry for change,” he said. “People want to be part of a movement.”

Nearly three-quarters of these new Trudeau backers are also new to the Liberal party, testing the party out by signing up in a new class called “supporters” — not full, card-carrying members of the party, but eligible to vote in the leadership contest that will be settled April 14.

As well, Trudeau has signed up 10,000 people in his own “volunteer” category and these are the people who will be busy in the next few weeks getting people to register and to vote in early April.

Trudeau says the numbers are vivid proof that the Liberal party is in the midst of a revival and can’t be written off so easily by its Conservative and NDP rivals.

Conservatives don’t give out membership numbers, but Fred DeLorey, the party’s communications director, noted that the last leadership contest in 2004 put the membership at about 250,000, while the New Democrats reported membership figures of about 128,000 for its 2012 leadership that elected Thomas Mulcair as leader.

During its heyday, when the Liberal party was switching leaders from Jean Chrétien to Paul Martin in 2003, about 250,000 were signed up as Grits.

Trudeau, who has been attracting unusually large crowds on his cross-country leadership tour, may help the party surpass those figures from a decade ago.

The deadline for signing up new members and supporters for the leadership fell on the same day as the fourth debate for the leadership contenders.

The focus at this debate, held in Halifax on Sunday afternoon, showed many of the contenders looking beyond April 14 toward the next election.

Vancouver MP Joyce Murray, who has been crusading in favour of electoral co-operation with the New Democrats, Greens and other “progressive” voters, drew some flak from Trudeau and other rivals for her plan.

Murray says she’s not talking about a merger — “I’m talking about one-time co-operation . . . to defeat Stephen Harper,” she says — but Montreal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau portrayed her plan as defeatist.

“Joyce, have you abandoned the Liberal party? Have you lost faith in our party?” Garneau asked her in his one-on-one debate with her. Garneau also used the debate to once again prod Trudeau to provide more policy substance, but Trudeau said the Liberals’ chief concern should be connecting with citizens.

On the question of electoral co-operation, Trudeau told Murray that toxic partisanship would only increase under her plan. “If you make a deal with the NDP, that positive approach is the first to go,” he said.

Murray may have emerged as a target because of a flurry of endorsements over the past week — including from prominent environmentalist David Suzuki, as well as the progressive organization leadnow.ca — that could vault her support into serious numbers. Her campaign team reports that Murray volunteers were signing up about 1,000 supporters each night over three nights before Sunday’s debate.

Martha Hall Findlay, the former MP for Willowdale who created sparks by attacking Trudeau in the last debate, cast her eyes in this debate on the next election and the attacks that any future leader was going to experience from Conservatives.

“How do we win in 2015?” Hall Findlay asked candidate Deborah Coyne. She said it was fine to talk about engaging people and attracting Liberals to policy debates, “but we have to beat Stephen Harper and we can’t be Boy Scouts about this either. None of us likes attack politics. None of us likes what has happened. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around and react to another set of attack ads.”

Trudeau, in his closing statements, gave a nod in this direction as well, pitching his comments as much at Canadians as he was to the Liberals in the room.

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“Canadians are tired of the cynicism, tired of the negativity, want to be once again builders of this country,” he said.

The attacks are already starting, Trudeau said, but he rebuffs suggestions that it shows Conservatives are afraid of him.

“Stephen Harper is afraid of engaged, empowered, active citizens. Stephen Harper isn’t afraid of me; he’s afraid of you.”

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