Any majority Carney cobbles together will be built on quicksand

Constantly flipping around the majority threshold is not a stable scenario.

In the Fall of 2024, Centre Block sits atop Parliament Hill, unoccupied by MPs and Senators while it remains under extensive construction and renovation. Like the Carney Liberals, they’re still putting the pieces together. | Copyright © Jake Landau, all rights reserved.

After the 2025 Canadian Federal Election was held on April 28^th last year, the Carney Liberals were awarded 169 of 343 seats, just three seats back of the 172 seats technically required for a majority. This was better than the 159 of 338 seats they won in the 2021 race, and much better than the 152 the Liberals had declined to by the time Prime Minister Carney requested the dissolution of Parliament.

So with the opening of the 45^th Canadian Parliament, holding the rare distinction of a throne speech by the actual bearer of that throne rather than the Governor General, Carney set to work governing his strong minority government just as if it was a majority, assuming there will be enough people in at least one other party willing to vote his way, an assumption that has mostly been proven correct.

And yet regardless of already being able to govern with sufficient power, the Carney Liberals want to restore themselves to the fully unlimited power that previous majority governments have had over Canadian society. So, since November, floor-crossings have become very important to the Liberals. Let’s see how far it’s taken them!

Prior to any floor-crossings, there was a temporary vacancy in the rural Alberta riding of Battle River—Crowfoot, where Damien Kurek resigned as MP in order to allow Pierre Poilievre to run in a by-election and get back into the House of Commons after losing his previous seat. While being publicly mocked for parachuting halfway across the country into an extremely Tory-slanted riding, this craven strategy did indeed work, and Mr. Poilievre returned to the House in short order.

But once then-Conservative MPs Chris d’Entremont of Acadie—Annapolis (Nova Scotia) and Michael Ma of Markham—Unionville (Ontario) crossed the floor to join the Liberals this past November 4^th and December 11^th respectively, things changed. Suddenly, the Liberals went from 169 seats to 171, just one short of having a majority. With one more floor-crossing or by-election win, it would happen!

Alas, this thesis quickly fell apart for the Liberal Party. Last month on January 9^th, Chrystia Freeland of University—Rosedale (Ontario) resigned her seat after controversy over her acceptance of a role a few days earlier advising the Ukrainian government while remaining a Canadian MP.

Then, on February 2^nd, Bill Blair of Scarborough Southwest (Ontario) resigned his seat, in order to accept a diplomatic appointment from the Carney government as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Suddenly, the Liberals were down to 169 seats again, back where they started.

But wait, it gets funnier. Remember how I said that after the election, the Liberals won 169 seats? In one of those seats, the Québec riding of Terrebonne, I noted last May that the Bloc was challenging the results in court, due to Elections Canada making an egregious error in ballot counting, an error they noticed and refused to correct, that could have easily affected the outcome based on the one-vote margin of victory they “declared” for the Liberal candidate.

I wrote that the result was fundamentally illegitimate, and it turns out the Supreme Court of Canada agrees with me, and as of February 13^th the result has been voided. The Liberal MP has been immediately vacated from her seat, and a by-election will be held again in Terrebonne, in which it is likely both she and her Bloc opponent, the previous MP for the riding, will run again.

This put the Liberals below where they started, at just 168 seats. But just yesterday, Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux announced he was going to cross the floor and join the Liberal caucus. This is curious, as last fall, there were rumours that he would cross the floor, but instead Mr. Jeneroux said at the time that he would resign his seat in Edmonton Riverbend (Alberta) in Spring 2026, denying any coercion from Mr. Poilievre and the Tory crew in that decision.

Assuming no more nonsense occurs between Mr. Jeneroux’s shift and the publication of today’s column, that puts the Liberals at 169 seats out of 343, right back where they started. Three of those seats are vacant, with both the Toronto ridings being considered “safe” Liberal seats that the Liberals should easily win. However, without also claiming Terrebonne in the new by-election, they cannot get to the 172 seat majority threshold, and this riding is a toss-up between the Liberals and the Bloc.

But even if the Liberals did get to the magic number of 172, there are so many practical issues with trying to wield such a majority. For one, the Liberals have to give up one of their MPs to be the Speaker of the House, and while it’s beneficial to have someone on your team adjudicating the rules, they’re also bound in that they can only vote to break ties, and even then only to continue debate and maintain the status quo.

As such, the Speaker will keep a government from losing confidence if there’s a tie vote, but their majority won’t be able to adopt time allocation to limit and control debate, or adopt a motion to change the composition of House committees to increase the number of Liberal MPs, because there would be a 171-171 tie, and the Speaker would vote against time allocation to continue debate, and vote against committee changes to preserve the status quo.

Even if the number isn’t exactly 172, there’s still the problem that MPs are physical human beings, and there are various circumstances which can make them incapable of continuing the job. What happens if during an important vote, a single MP doesn’t make it, and suddenly your majority doesn’t exist?

And if people can cross the floor to join the Liberals, surely they can cross the floor to leave as well, yes? Or they could resign, as two Liberal MPs did to cause some of these by-elections. What happens when you become a majority, change all the committees, and then two months later you dip back below 172 and have to change the committees again?

Prime Minister Carney may very well be able to cobble-together this majority, but that will not bring an end to the drama of floor-crossings and resignations. They will have to count their votes just as closely as they are doing now as a minority.

In truth? It would be merely a majority-in-name-only, built on a foundation of quicksand, easily washed away by the tides.