Mark Carney has his majority. Strap in and buckle up.
Full, unmitigated right-wing austerity is now upon us.
With a sweep of all three federal by-elections last night, the Liberal Party of Canada under Prime Minister Mark Carney has officially ascended to the status of a majority government, a first for the Liberals since they fell down to a minority in 2019.
Yet the Liberals of the early Trudeau era, centre-left in disposition, are essentially unrecognizable inside Carney’s aggressively right-wing party. Where the last Liberal majority sought to expand government capacity, this new one seeks to decimate it. And where the Trudeau era saw a focus on reducing inequality, the Carney era is firmly hewed in on making the wealth gap worse.
But most importantly, while the last Liberal majority came through a legitimate electoral mandate, this new one comes through backroom trickery and skulduggery, subverting the will of the electorate in multiple ridings. A new era of Liberal governance is upon Canada, and it’s going to be a rough ride. Strap in and buckle up.
While Liberals will technically claim they won a majority through these by-elections, it is substantively incorrect. The two Toronto seats are safe Liberal seats which were vacated by a retiring Liberal MP, and thus constitute a hold rather than a flip. In Montréal, legally Tatiana Auguste’s “election” as Terrebonne’s MP in 2025 was voided as invalid by the Supreme Court, but she has nonetheless won legitimately last night, and thus this result can also be categorized as a hold even though her prior holding of the office was illegitimate.
As such, not one of these three by-elections pushed the Carney Liberals closer to this majority. Rather, they were simply filling spaces vacated by previous Liberals. It is solely through the nefarious actions of five floor-crossing MPs, four from the Conservatives and one from the NDP, that the Liberals increased their seat count above the majority threshold.
I have already written in the past about the corrosive effect that all floor-crossings have on democracy, regardless of political ideology. As much as some may insist we vote for an individual and not a party, the reality is that the large majority of Canadians vote based on party, and that they are not voting Conservative or NDP with the intent that this person will suddenly flip over to an opposing ideology.
Further, I have written about the morally odious nature of Marilyn Gladu, one particular floor-crosser who the Carney Liberals have welcomed with open arms despite the filth she’s propagated. This is merely further indicative of the abandonment of basic ethics and principles in the pursuit of the power; for contrast,
The truth is that the Carney Liberals are attracting Conservatives because they are conservative themselves. Under Carney, massive cuts to the public service would eclipse those under former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper; indeed, Harper once attempted to recruit Carney into his party!
In contrast, the Conservatives outright rejected a floor-crossing from Kevin Vuong, a former Liberal MP accused of sexual assault, on the basis that his presence would be unacceptable. The NDP reject floor-crossing altogether as a matter of principle. The Liberals do not need to do these things, they simply choose to do them, with no regard for the consequences.
While Lori Idlout would seem to be an exception to the ideological motivations of the four ex-Tory MPs, her reasoning is actually worse. She claims that her floor-crossing is motivated by the fact that Liberals will do more for Nunavut if their MP is in government and not outside of it, which implies that the Carney Liberals are holding Nunavut hostage, refusing to support the territory and the Inuit who live there unless they elect a Liberal MP!
That’s not a healthy way for our society to operate. The government of the day has a responsibility to work with MPs on local issues that impact their riding, even if those MPs are not in their caucus. Our society cannot function if half the country gets intentionally spited by the government due to the way they voted! Ideology can be debated, but the Prime Minister is supposed to serve all Canadians, not just the ones who voted for him!
Mind you, considering that the Conservatives also support an austerity agenda, and the NDP—absent any coming revival under Avi Lewis—are currently a rump caucus, the Liberals already governed largely according to their own whims for this first year under Carney. This majority will mainly have the impact of changing committee appointments, allowing them to prevent debate and accelerate legislation at this important stage between second and third reading.
Nonetheless, just because the previous limits on their power were few does not mean we should remove those limits altogether. In Canada, a majority government is fully insulated from public opinion for several years, able to do virtually anything they want without fear that it will affect their electoral results, knowing the public has a short memory. The Carney Liberals will now rule for three more years without any fear of answering to the public, and they accomplished this by subverting the will of democracy in five ridings.
Canadians did not vote for this majority, but we are now stuck with what it will bring upon us. Carney’s push for right-wing austerity will proceed completely unabated, and the NDP will not have a chance to counter the Liberal-Conservative consensus until 2029.
I’m sure Liberal partisans are very happy. They’ve won power at any cost, as was their goal. The rest of Canada, however, is rightfully skeptical of their motivations. Only time will tell how much damage they do to our country.