Nearly one year after the election that validated Mark Carney’s instincts about pursuing a career in elected politics, the principal casualty of that choice, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, finds himself in a peculiar position. Poilievre, whose party lost that election from a starting lead of 20 points, who lost his own seat, and who has witnessed a mini stampede of...
For someone relatively new to elected politics, Mark Carney has developed a habit of leaning into his pre-political past. When Carney unfurled his middle-power response to the geopolitical upheaval fronted by Donald Trump’s weaponized presidency, he didn’t do it at the Canadian Club, the United Nations, or Chatham House. He delivered his code-cracking economic GPS from the annual gathering of...
Not once have I ever thought that Doug Ford has much in common at all with U.S. President Donald Trump. Sure, the Ontario premier is a blustery, (in-theory) right-leaning politician who even has a passing physical resemblance to the U.S. president. But anyone actually making the comparison has always been, in my mind, confessing how superficial their understanding of either...
For two decades, Canada pursued a values-based foreign policy, although the values pursued by Liberal and Conservative governments were very different. Today, Canada is pursuing a more hardnosed foreign policy that puts Canada’s national interests front and centre. Putting Canada first, so to speak, has proved to be a far better approach. Of course, values and interests have always comingled...
Where did this idea come from, of Canada joining the European Union? I know the Prime Minister likes to say that Canada is “the most European of the non-European countries,” whatever that means. (More European than, say, Argentina? Uruguay? New Zealand?) And sure, we’ve all joked about it, at least once, in the heat of Donald Trump’s latest outrage (“that’s...
As political weeks go, Prime Minister Mark Carney couldn’t have asked for a better one. Fresh from the Liberals’ convention where he was fêted as the party’s new Messiah, his candidates won all three byelections Monday by larger percentage margins than in last spring’s general election.
The Political Pulse panel breaks down Week 1 of the Liberals' majority government, and how opposition parties are responding.
When federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre appeared on the popular right-wing American podcaster Joe Rogan’s show last month, many in his party were ecstatic with the result. Mr. Poilievre resisted his worst instincts, passing on invitations to dump on Prime Minister Mark Carney, fuel separatist sentiment in Alberta or indulge in the conspiracy theories being propagated by Mr. Rogan. Over...
The newly cobbled together majority government in the House of Commons has given the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Mark Carney more time and more leeway to peruse its far-reaching, extremely expensive “Build Canada” agenda. But the new alignment in the Commons has also changed the calculations of at least two of the three opposition parties. The majority created by...
There is a particular kind of political delusion that sets in after a loss. It is quiet. It hides behind familiar talking points. It feels like conviction, but it is really just refusal to accept reality. Too many Conservatives in this country are still running against Justin Trudeau. And it’s not really a strategy, it’s a combination of a putrid...
Coming off three byelection wins and a handful of floor-crossers, Prime Minister Carney is now armed with a newly minted majority government. The benefits of going from a minority to a majority for the government are quite clear. As the PM noted in a press conference earlier this week, a majority government will make for a much more substantive and...
The Liberals have their Majority Government. For the past few years, politics in Ottawa has been about counting votes, negotiating support between parties, and legislative gridlock. For Liberals it’s been about surviving, not thriving. That problem is now gone. It has been replaced by a new challenge: managing a diverse caucus. The Liberals no longer need opposition parties to stay...
I don’t know what the Conservatives’ path back to electoral relevance looks like. If I did, I might try to sell them the roadmap for a heap of money. I do have a strong hunch it won’t involve attacking the academic credentials of Prime Minister Mark Carney, he of the Liberals’ newly established majority government. That’s why it’s been so...
After this week’s byelection results, Carney’s governing Liberals will have more unchecked power. But the party has moved away from its old progressive politics
George W. Bush took up painting when he left the Oval Office in 2009. In 2014, he unveiled his first public exhibit, entitled “The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy,” which featured portraits of world leaders he met during his time in office. The whole thing was sort of … odd. It wasn’t just that Mr. Bush’s portraits were...
With the flock of floor-crossers from the Conservative Party and the by-election results Monday, Mark Carney and company can remain in power until 2029. That will mark a 14-year stretch since Justin Trudeau’s dismantling of the Stephen Harper Conservatives in 2015. And who knows how much longer this run might extend. Ho hum, here we go again, another Liberal dynasty...
Last week, the Conservatives saw yet another Member of Parliament cross the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals. Marilyn Gladu, the Sarnia, Ont.-area MP and—briefly—a former Conservative leadership candidate, was the one who made the move. Gladu, who had previously chastised fellow floor crossers and is someone seen as being a far-right leaning Conservative, was an unexpected departure...
“Unity,” said Mark Carney last weekend, “does not require uniformity.” Accommodation beats assimilation, the prime minister told the Liberal faithful at the party’s convention in Montreal — and partnership is better than domination.
The byelection results on Monday night in Terrebonne, Scarborough Southwest and University--Rosedale have given everyone much to consider about the shift from minority to majority Parliament and the anticipated and rumoured fallout to come. In our 343-seat national legislature -- unless there are additional floor-crossing MPs on the horizon -- having a two-seat majority is still very unstable. Health challenges...
A slave labour apologist, chloroquine promoter and blue Albertan all walk into a bar … Only it’s not a joke, and they didn’t walk into a bar. Michael Ma, Marilyn Gladu and Matt Jereroux are three former Conservative MPs who have walked into the Liberal caucus, where they found a Red Tory, Chris d’Entremont, already tickling the party ivories...
Seeking to explain just where the Liberals draw the line on accepting members of other parties into their midst, House Leader Steven MacKinnon said the party would “keep a light on and a door open for all of those who want to support Liberal Party principles,” which he described as “immutable.” And of course, he’s right. Liberal policies may come...
How much more Liberal raiding and spending and winning can Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre survive? Maybe very little. Three byelection losses Monday night are a further humiliation. Prime Minister Mark Carney took quick advantage.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet stepped out to meet reporters and take his by-election defeat on the chin. “We have to take it with humility. And we have to take it with patience,” Mr. Blanchet said. There’s a wave, he said – arguing that past Conservative and New Democrat voters moved to the Liberals – that seems even stronger now...
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney won three byelections Monday night, giving him a majority government and a free hand to further remake the government he inherited from Justin Trudeau.
Officially, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is outraged. “The Carney Liberals did not win a majority government through a general election or today’s by-elections,” Mr. Poilievre posted on X Monday night, as the results erasing his leverage in the House of Commons rolled in. The Liberals swept all three by-elections, less than a week after they seduced the unlikeliest of floor-crossers...
Tories worry that Carney has reshaped politics in Quebec
LIBERAL PARTY MEMBERS milled, decked in red lanyards, taking photos. “Welcome to Libcon2026” read a banner high on the wall at the top of the escalators in Montreal’s Palais des congrès. On a merch table nearby lay piles of red shirts and crewnecks, emblazoned with the Liberal logo. Two rows of black hats were amongst the items. The words “Canada...
Mark Carney didn’t just get a majority on Monday night — he also won the precious political commodity of time.
Byelections give the Liberals one of the most remarkable majorities in Parliament's history. There have been a total of 24 prime ministers in Canada's history, but before Monday night only 13 could claim to have led their party to a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Mark Carney is now the 14th to do it.
The second phase of Mark Carney’s government now begins. It has a majority in the House of Commons, and that allows it to look further ahead. In the year since winning a general election on the hustings, Mr. Carney’s Liberals have campaigned by other means. They have juggled expectations higher and higher – adding onto Mr. Carney’s narrative about an...
As Mark Carney celebrates a belated majority victory nearly a year after his election as prime minister, he can once again thank Donald J. Trump, along with the voters of University-Rosedale, Scarborough Southwest, and Terrebonne. Of all the improbable outcomes Trump’s presidency has rationalized, Canada’s pro-technocrat groundswell of floor-crossers and byelection voters is among the most interesting, and least dystopian...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured the first Liberal government since 2019. That’s right — in case you hadn’t noticed, Canada has been operating under minority governments for seven years. Two were won by Justin Trudeau in 2019 and 2021, one by Carney in 2025. Trudeau’s minorities necessitated significant compromise with the NDP; from 2021 until the fall of 2024...
On Sunday, after 16 straight years of hoarding power and money, the authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lost one of the last things in Hungary he’d allowed to remain free: the election. He lost with everything behind him but the Hungarian people. He had the judiciary, every level of which he’d stacked with loyalists and, in some cases, created out...
The global expansion of the illiberal right has been so seemingly inexorable that the victory of a democratic centre-right leader in Hungary, after 16 years of “electoral autocracy,” still seems implausible.
The federal Liberals are now the strongest party in the country, as was amply on display at their convention in Montreal over the weekend. It’s not their politics that have put them there, as was also clear in Montreal. It’s the absence of politics — the ability to shape-shift into a force that can’t be pinned down as right or...
Pierre Poilievre has flunked the most basic test for any leader, advancing his party's prospects to portray it as a government-in-waiting. But it will be waiting a long time under the status quo. Admittedly, part of the reason that the CPC has set up permanent residence in the political wilderness has to do with the current prime minister.
Amid the floor-crossing, Liberals may have needed to hear a salute to their party. At a moment of celebration and on the eve of potentially even greater triumph, Prime Minister Mark Carney offered a brief note of caution. "Just over a year ago, in the midst of a blizzard ... we started down the road to make the best country...
The buzz at the Liberal convention over the weekend was all about floor-crossers. On Friday morning, there was a rumour circulating that Prime Minister Mark Carney would show up unexpectedly to unveil another, freshly recruited Conservative to follow the surprise defection of Marilyn Gladu. Later, there was scuttlebutt that Mr. Carney might show up on Saturday with two or three.
As Quebecers prepare for an election in early October, the dramatis personae of what will be a very political summer — from the beaches of Gaspésie to the Festival Western de Ste-Tite — was filled-in with another major party leader on Sunday. Christine Fréchette, 56, a former minister in the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government of outgoing premier François Legault...
