Karina Gould

During the election campaign, she attracted minor attention for deleting a three-year-old tweet expressing opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines – eventually not approved by the Trudeau government – and to the development of the Alberta tar sands in general.[3][9] She defeated Conservative incumbent Mike Wallace, who had represented the riding since the 2006 federal election, by winning 46% of the vote to his 42.5%.[8][10]

On December 2, 2015, Gould was named the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie within the Liberal government.[3][11] During her time in this role she chaired a foreign-aid strategy session at the Health Systems Research Conference in Vancouver (2016) where stated that it was important to empower women and girls within a feminist approach to foreign-aid.[12] During Barack Obama's July 2016 state visit to Ottawa, he gave a shoutout to Burlington, where his brother in law lives, during his address to Parliament, prompting Gould to wave for the cameras, in what Macleans called her most high-profile moment.[3]

On January 10, 2017, she was named Minister of Democratic Institutions, succeeding Maryam Monsef.[13] She also became the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.[14] These appointments made her the youngest female cabinet minister in Canadian history.[8]

Despite electoral reforms being a pledged mandate of Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau's 2015 campaign, with this appointment such electoral reforms were no longer part of the Minister of Democratic Institutions mandate.[15][16] Instead, Gould's mandate included commitments to strengthen Canada's democratic institutions and improve Canada's democratic process by addressing and cyber threats like online meddling and the spread of disinformation from social media giants and combating foreign interference.[16][17][18] Gould has been credited as being instrumental in not both passing and defending Bill C-76 or Elections Modernization Act, which made significant amendments to the Canadian Elections Act, including numerous accommodations for voter accessibility, restrictions on third-party interference on election campaigns, and a prohibition on spending by foreign entities during elections.[19]

Running as the incumbent in the 2019 Canadian federal election, Gould was re-elected as the Member of Parliament representing the Burlington, Ontario riding.[20] Gould's hometown support proved to only be growing as her 2019 results surpassed that of 2015, winning 48.6% of the vote to Conservative Jane Michael's 33.2%[21] Winning just 157 seats as opposed to the 177 held prior, Gould's growing support in this key Southern Ontario riding enabled her party to obtain a minority government in the 2019 Canadian federal election.[22]

It came to light on 18 May that Gould, as the Minister for International Development (MID) in the second Trudeau ministry, was formally in charge of the Canadian government's sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO). As MID she is entrusted the discussions with DGWHO Tedros Adhanom. She had a "good and frank conversation" with him via electronic means the week before the 73rd World Health Assembly.[23]