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Karina Maxine Gould
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On January 18, 2025, Gould announced her campaign for the Liberal leadership. She was the youngest candidate, and was the only candidate still serving as a cabinet minister before resigning on January 24, 2025. She placed in third in the election.
She has three brothers. Her paternal grandparents were Czechs Jews who survived the Holocaust. Her mother was German and met her father while on a kibbutz in Israel. At sixteen, she participated in the Forum for Young Canadians, spending a week in Ottawa learning about the federal government, which she credits as the impetus for her goal of a career in Parliament. After she graduated from M.M. Robinson High School in 2005, she spent the next year volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico, where she met her husband, Alberto Gerones.
Upon her return to Canada in 2006, Gould attended McGill University, earning a joint honours degree in political science as well as Latin American and Caribbean studies. Writing her honours thesis on the Canadian electoral system, she graduated first class honours with distinction in 2010. During her time as an undergraduate student she served as the president of the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) and helped organize fundraising for humanitarian aid for Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
In 2010, Gould took a job with the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., working as a consultant in the Migration and Development Program. She is cited as contributing to the 2011 report, International Migration in the Americas: First Report of the Continuous Reporting System on International Migration in the Americas (SICREMI).
Gould subsequently completed a master's degree in international relations at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Upon completion of her graduate studies at Oxford, Gould decided to move back to her hometown of Burlington, Ontario. She took a job working as a Trade and Investment Specialist for the Mexican Trade Commission "ProMexico" in Toronto. Gould held this position for less than a year before announcing her candidacy in the 2015 election at the age of twenty-eight.
During the election campaign, she attracted minor attention for deleting a three-year-old Twitter 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.
Reflecting upon her first campaign in 2019 interview, Gould said: "In 2015, I'd say the No. 1 thing people asked me at the door was how old I was and why I thought I could jump into politics at such a young age... And I know, for a fact, that they wouldn't ask a man of the same age those questions."
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. Instead, Gould's mandate included commitments to strengthen Canada's democratic institutions and improve Canada's democratic process by addressing cyber threats, like online meddling and the spread of disinformation from social media giants, and combatting foreign interference. Gould has been credited as being instrumental in 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.
As minister, Gould was responsible for implementing Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy which targets gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls around the world. Gould assisted in leading Canada’s global efforts in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. As a champion for gender equality, she also worked to fight hunger, eradicate poverty and advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women. In 2021, Gould was appointed as co-chair of the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) Engagement Group to ensure safe and equitable access to vaccines for all 92 COVAX AMC-eligible economies.
In May 2022, followings leaks of the American Supreme Court's draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson, Gould said American women could access abortions in Canada before Roe v. Wade was overturned. She also expressed concern for Canadian women who accessed abortion in the United States because of lack of access in Canada.
During the spring and summer of 2022, the government received criticism regarding long passport processing times, which fell under Gould's ministerial responsibilities. The federal government had shut down Services Canada Centres and Passport Offices in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and limited applications to "valid urgent travel reasons". Service Canada had warned of high demand for passport applications to come following the loosening of pandemic restrictions, which the government had underestimated. Slow processing times led to lengthy delays, forcing many Canadians to cancel travel plans. In early 2023, under Gould’s leadership, Service Canada had returned the passport program to a steady state, reducing processing times and virtually eliminating the backlog of passport requests.
Gould said she would introduce a universal basic income program if she won the leadership election and became Canada's next prime minister. Gould acknowledged her government mishandled the affordability crisis and had not responded well to the issues that mattered the most to Canadians. She stated she would keep consumer carbon pricing but would stop the April 2025 increase if elected, adding she got into politics to stop climate change.
Gould placed third in the election, behind both victor Mark Carney and runner-up Chrystia Freeland, with just over 3% of the vote.
When forming the new government, Carney left Gould out of cabinet, and immediately removed the consumer carbon tax.
She was elected chair of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance in the 45th Canadian Parliament in 2025.
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