Canadians woke up Tuesday morning to a Liberal majority, albeit a slim one, after the party won all three of Monday’s byelections. The party’s two Toronto candidates, one of which was previously Deputy Leader of the Ontario NDP, won with landslides, as predicted, and a third candidate won a tight race against the Bloc Québecois candidate in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne. Mark Carney’s government now holds 174 seats in the House of Commons, two more than are needed for its majority. 

While it was technically these byelections that sealed the deal for the Liberal majority, it was the five floor crossings in the past six months that almost guaranteed Monday’s wins would be but icing on the cake. 

Floor crossers aren’t new, but using them to grow from a minority to a majority government is. Carney is the first Prime Minister in Canadian history to do this. 

Since November, four Conservative MPs and one NDP MP have decided to join the ever-expanding Liberal tent, which some pundits are now referring to as a circus tent, a wall-less canopy, or simply a collection of poles without any roof or structural integrity. 

Most floor crossers justify their decision as one requested by their constituents. Conservative Chris d’Entremont, the first to cross the floor, said Carney’s priorities were aligned with those he had “heard most in [his] riding, to build strong community infrastructure and grow a stronger economy.” He also said he no longer felt represented by Pierre Poilievre’s “negative” leadership style, that he no longer felt it was right for Canada. 

Last week, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said she decided to change allegiances because she’d heard from her constituents that they wanted “a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy,” and cited her desire to be part of a more collaborative approach to governing and building this country. 

And no, you’re not crazy. This is the same MP who ran for Conservative leadership in 2020, who opposed the Liberal’s legalization of cannabis, has identified as pro-choice and stated an openness to anti-abortion bills, expressed vaccine skepticism she later retracted and opposed a bill banning conversion therapy, a position she also later amended. Since she was first elected to her Sarnia riding in 2015, she has been an outspoken social Conservative. And now she’s a Liberal. 

Whether this shapeshifting is indeed what floor crossers’ constituents want will only become clear in the next election. It’s not looking promising for Gladu.

But for now, Canada seems to have a one-party system, described by one anonymous Liberal source as an “anti-Trump coalition.” This is, after all, the reason Canadians voted Carney into office a year ago. And his support today is stronger than ever. But will it last?

Unity does not require uniformity, Carney is insisting. But based on the number of times his new recruits have expressed their excitement to “build Canada strong,” parroting Liberal talking points the second they donned that red sweater, uniformity seems to be the leading dogma. 

What happens to this coalition when Trump is gone? Unity based on fear is powerful, but unstable. It is forever dependent on the existence of a dangerous, threatening ‘other’. The Liberals now have three years to prove this unity is more than just performative. In that time, let’s hope both the NDP and the Conservatives pull themselves together. 

Building the economy, brokering new trade deals and defending Canadian sovereignty may be of top priority now, but when we finally have space to turn inwards, to reconsider who we are, what we stand for, and what kinds of policies we need to uphold these values, we best hope we’ll have opposition politicians in place ready to stand by the convictions that got them elected.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson