Front Burner - Politics! 4th floor crosser, NDP's future

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Nunavut MP Lori Idlout crossed the floor this week, becoming the first New Democrat to defect to Prime Minister Carney’s Liberals.With three byelections coming up next month, this puts the Carney Government on a likely path to a majority. It also adds to the troubles facing the NDP, who are in the middle of a leadership race following their worst election result ever.CBC senior writer Aaron Wherry talks through how this could all play out.

At University of Montreal, researchers are improving lives all over the world, turning previously incurable blood cancers into treatable ones, searching for signs of life on planets light years away, training AI to detect diseases earlier and more accurately. It's breakthroughs like these that make us one of the top two universities in Canada for research, because it's more than what we do. It's our raison d'être. University of Montreal and of the world. This is a CBC podcast.

Hey, everyone, it's Jamie. Mark Carney and the Liberals have added yet another MP to their ranks with a floor crosser, this time, though, from the NDP. Nunavut MP, Lori Idlout, is the fourth MP to cross the floor since last November. The last three were from the Conservative Party. With three by-elections coming up next month, this puts the Carney government on a likely path to a majority. Friend of the show and CBC senior writer Aaron Wary is here to talk.

through how this could all play out for the liberals, for the NDP, as they get ready to vote on a new leader and for the conservatives too. All right. Let's get to it. Erin, hello. Hey, Jamie. Here we are again. I think it was less than a month ago that we were talking about the last floor crossing. And I think at the time we were talking about how three was unprecedented. So what are we supposed to call for, I guess? Doubly, quadruply unprecedented.

All right. This all got rolling late Tuesday night when interim NDP leader Don Davies released a statement and he was expressing his disappointment that Lori Idlout was crossing over to the liberals. Saying we're very disappointed that Lori Idlout has decided to join the liberal caucus. In a democracy, something as important as the choice of party representation in parliament must always remain with our constituents. We believe that should happen here. What do we know about how this all went down?

So first of all, it was a bit surprising to get that statement last night. You know, usually it's the MP themselves or their new party who announces it. I think Don Davies and the NDP somehow got word of what was about to happen and attempted to preempt or spoil the surprise for the liberals. This had been rumored for a while. There was an interview Lori Idlote gave a couple months ago where she said she wasn't. planning on moving to the liberals at this point, quote unquote, which led many to believe that maybe something was still possible. Her name had circulated as one of the potential floor crossers for a while. So I don't know that it was a big surprise that it happened. It was a bit of a surprise

that had happened the way it did. And at that particular moment, but as you and I have talked about for a long time now, this has been a point of fascination in Ottawa for months and the expectation of floor crossing has kind of been hanging in the air for a while now. Yeah, I remember she abstained from the budget back in November, right? And so people were kind of trying to read those tea leaves a little bit back then. She really hung her reasons for crossing on the north, right? And just tell me more about what we've heard from her since. I guess her former boss broke the news.

You know, look, she's the MP for Nunavut, which is a unique job in Parliament, and a unique riding. I'm sure many MPs would say their writings are unique, but I think it goes a double for her. It is a great pleasure. One of Canada's greatest constituency MPs, you represent a riding that is the size of Mexico. And very down here we've had conversations about what we can do

both large and small in Newtivit, large projects, but also helping everyone. The North obviously has some pretty particular concerns right now in terms of both climate change and Arctic sovereignty. Those are issues that Mark Carney has obviously talked about, particularly when it comes to protecting the North. And she really leaned on her riding and on the concerns of the North as a particular reason for moving to the Liberals. It's not just what I heard from Nunavut, but it was the sheer volume of the number of Nunable Milk that asked me to cross the floor. I've heard from so many of them that they're asking me to do it so that I could have a stronger voice in government and to make sure that what's important to them is

being vocalized and heard and part of the decision-making process that will form our policies and our legislation. I think you can see the argument that, you know, being a member of the NDP, particularly at this point in time, your ability to influence things and to advance the interests of your region of your riding are pretty limited. Part of what they were saying when they were asking me to cross the floor is that I'm just appearing as a complainer. That I just, whenever there's announcements, that I just complain about what the announcements are.

And they reminded me that that's not how we should be. And that in order to make sure that we are getting the work that we need to do, then a better way to do it is to be a part of government. you know, moving to the liberals and being the MP for a riding where there are, you know, these kind of bigger geopolitical issues could put her in a place to really, you know, have an influence on government policy. And I think that's sort of what you saw in her statement. It's interesting, though, she has been pretty critical of the Carney government in the past year. Specifically, I remember of rechanges your program that provides support to Inuit children.

Last year, she told Nunavit news, quote, they would rather dig for critical minerals than ensure Inuit have food to eat. I'm disgusted by the Kearney government's response to none of it. Those are pretty strong, strong words, hey? Quite. Look, this happens almost every time there's a floor crossing. You know, it doesn't take people too long to go through previous statements and say, well, what about this? What about that? I think it does raise some questions about, you know, how she views the liberal government. whether she has received any assurances that it's going to address some of the concerns she has. It's definitely, I know, you know, just from, as I say, going through the last few months of all the

speculation about floor crossers, watching her in the House of Commons and listening to the questions she asked during question period, for instance, at times it has been like, oh, okay, she seems pretty critical to liberal. So that must suggest she's not going to cross the floor. And so, you know, when she does cross the floor, you know, naturally you do want to ask, okay, well, have your positions changed? Does the government giving you some assurances? In her defense, this does come up, as I say, every time someone crosses the floor, they have ended up making statements that don't seem to match. And I think that just ends up being something that every person who crosses the floor ends up having to answer for at some point.

Just a few days ago, she was on stage with NDP leadership candidate, Uvi Lewis. And Uvi is very far away from Carney, right? He is anti-fossil fuel development. He recently said... Really, what by objection to Carney's leadership is exactly that. He's a smart guy and he's very popular in Canada right now because he has a diagnosis about where we are in history. We're at a turning point. But what he wants to do is make us into a petro state that is a militarized petro state, a junior arms dealer on the world stage. I have a very different vision for Canada. His platform is really one of democratic socialism. You know, make that make sense to me.

There's a bit of a resemblance to the Michael Maugh situation where he showed up to the conservative Christmas party and then I believe it was exactly 24 hours later showed up to the liberal Christmas party. You know, she didn't go so far as to endorse Avey Lewis. So maybe there's a bit of room there where you can see that you could show up at an Avey Lewis event and then cross over to the liberals.

But I think, you know, it is, again, it adds to this sort of awkwardness that I think any floor crosser has to answer for or try to explain. And as I think we'll probably get into, it adds some questions for potentially Avey Lewis as the next NDP leader. Yeah, yeah. I want to get back to Uffi in a minute. Just on this point that the Kearney liberals have now wooed an NDP MP, you know, how should we read the fact that they now have three people from the Conservative Party and one from the NDP? It's very odd. These are two completely different parties.

Yeah, it's definitely the most interesting political angle on this that, as I'm sure we talked about at various points, the liberals, the Mark Carney liberals being able to attract previously three conservative MPs was read, including by me, as a sign of, you know, you know, this is where Mark Carney has moved the liberals. He's moved them towards a kind of progressive conservative or a more centrist liberal party. And, you know, I think that would have been something that new Democrats would have pointed to as a failing of the liberal party, as a criticism. And for Mark Carney to have now attracted an NDPMP, sort of upsets that tidy narrative that some of us wrote at various points. Yeah. I think it is an interesting idea that Mark Carney has somehow built a liberal party that can attract both Lori Idlout and Matt Jenner. Matt Jenner is a four-term, was a four-term conservative MP.

Lori Idlet's a two-time elected NDPMP. And somehow both of these people can find a home in the Liberal Party. That's a remarkable thing for the Liberal Party to be able to claim and probably something. that the Conservatives and the NDP both have to worry about. At University of Montreal, researchers are improving lives all over the world, turning previously incurable blood cancers into treatable ones, searching for signs of life on planets light years away, training AI to detect diseases earlier and more accurately.

It's breakthroughs like these that make us one of the top two universities in Canada for research because it's more than what we do. It's our raison d'etre. University of Montreal and of the world. Oh, hi, Steve Patterson here. Host of the debaters, the show where Canada's top comedians take on the world's most important questions. This week, we're asking, are jeans the best pants for funny that will never fade away? Listen anywhere you get your podcasts. Okay, we're coming back to the NDP, but let's do some math first. So before this, as we've talked about we saw those three conservatives cross. So with Lori, the liberals are at 170 right now, two away from a majority. And we've got three by-elections coming up next month. And like we

talked about last time you were on, the two in Toronto are seen as pretty safe bet. So if my math is right, then we've got a majority there in 172. Yes, we have a majority in the narrowest sense. Yeah, if they win. And then there's a majority. is Terban Quebec. The Liberals won the riding last year by one vote, just one vote over the Black Quebec Cua, but last month the Supreme Court tossed the initial result out in order to redo because of a misprint on mail and ballot envelopes. And this is looking like it's actually still a very tight race. And so if the liberals won that one and the two in Toronto, that would get them to 173. And just what would that?

extra seek at them? The difference between 172 and 173 is not small. 172 is a magic number for the Liberals in the sense that at that point, they would have, as I say, a narrow majority in the House of Commons. Because the Speaker of the House is a liberal MP, though, they would be in a situation where they would need the Speaker to essentially break tie votes if everyone showed up to vote. and that would ensure they could survive confidence votes. It would mean that they weren't in imminent danger of falling of being defeated in the House, but it would make it a bit harder to do some other things. Particularly, it would be harder for them to give themselves a majority on House of Commons committees,

which are really pivotal to moving legislation through the House. And so if they can get to 173, then even with the House, the Speaker being a liberal MP, they've got a clear straight majority in the House of Commons. They can move a motion to change the allotment of MPs on House committees. They can more easily do a number of things to move legislation forward. They can be assured that legislation is going to be moved forward. So by all means, I'm sure they'd be happy to take 172. Getting to 173 or more is really where you start to get some real freedom.

to govern like a majority. And of course, just to state the obvious, if they don't get all three next month, there is still the very real specter of more floor crossers, too. Yeah. I mean, I've said this, I'm sure, before on the show, at this point, you just have to assume that somebody else is going to cross the floor because it just seems to keep happening. Yeah. Okay.

So let's just say, for the intellectual argument, that next month, they get to 173, right? Or I guess even 172. that would mean we wouldn't have another election just practically for three years unless the liberals decided they want one, right? Yeah, pending other developments. They'd be clear until, in theory, 2029. Okay. How else do you think that this could materially change the way that the Kearney government actually governs? Yeah, I think it's a big question, and I think it's an open question.

Do the liberals under Mark Carney, if they get a majority, do they start acting bolder? Do they try to make some even more ambitious changes? Are they even less inclined to listen to criticism or complaints or opposition suggestions? A majority government has a lot of freedom to do a lot of things. And I think you've seen in the past, arguably, you know, if you go back a ways to when Stephen Harper's conservatives gained a majority, once they moved from a minority to a majority, they definitely got bolder and not always in ways that people liked. And it at times got them into some political trouble. So I think there's a risk of overreach in a situation like this that the liberals probably have to be mindful of.

But I think the other piece of it that's kind of potentially interesting is if they're sitting at something like 172 or 173 or even 174 seat, they may have a fair bit of freedom to do things, but suddenly, you know, it could be a matter of a few liberal backbenchers suddenly have a bit more leverage to say, actually, I disagree with what we're doing and I think we should do something else. And suddenly they're maybe holding the balance of power. And we've seen in the past, you know, under Justin Trudeau and now under Mark Carney, that there are liberal backbenchers who are willing to speak their mind, to disagree with the government. And suddenly, instead of opposition, MPs having the potential balance of power. Maybe it's those sort of independent-minded liberals who do. Right, right. There's one, I think last week, who spoke out against Carney's position on the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Will Greaves here, the member of parliament for Victoria. We can be clear eye about Iran's human rights record and its abuses and the destructive role that it has played in the Middle East and still insist on consistency, restraint, and the protection of civilians, because that's what credibility looks like in a fracturing world.

When you say that the Harper government got kind of too triumphant and there were consequences for that, what do you mean? Yeah, so if you go back to that time, Stephen Harper, for the first five years of his time as prime minister, the story on him was that he was pragmatic, that he was cautious, that he had to kind of work his way through minority parliaments that weren't necessarily lined up in his favor. And then they get the majority, and they start doing some bolder things and some things they hadn't really advertised in the past, you know, changing the age of eligibility for old age security,

overhauling environmental assessment laws, unilaterally changing some of the rules around health care funding for the provinces. And it's hard to do a counterfactual and say that that necessarily led to them losing in 2015. but it certainly galvanized opposition against them in some cases. And I think it is at least fair to note that they may have won that majority in 2011, but four years later they were completely out of office. So, you know, the idea that winning a majority is sort of the end of the story and you can do whatever you want.

There's a pretty big asterisk on that, I think. Okay, let's talk more about the NDP then. So they're coming out of their worst election in history. They had seven seats now with Idlock on. They have six. Another one of their members is considering running for Quebec provincial politics in the fall. So that would bring them down to five if that happens. As we've talked about, they have this leadership race.

People are actually starting to vote right now on who they want to lead the party. And it will culminate at the end of the month. And we've got five candidates. A couple of front runners here. Let me go through them for people. Heather McPherson, who is an Edmonton MP, who's got a lot of support from the Alberta NDP. She often points out how she is the only leadership candidate with a record of beating conservatives. Avi Lewis, who we've already talked about, running on a more social, democratic, environmental

platform. He has raised more than double the money that Heather has and has gotten big endorsements from people like David Suzuki. Rob Ashton is getting a lot of union support. And how are these different visions playing out here? I think in broad strokes, the party is having a version of a debate it's had lots of times in the past about, you know, should it move further to the left, should it move further to the center, principle versus power? These are longstanding debates within the NDP. And I think Avey Lewis is running on the idea that the party needs to be bold and ambitious and unabashedly progressive and distinct, and, you know, that sort of socialist or social

democratic idea should be front and center. I think Heather McPherson is running kind of more on the idea that she has more experience. She knows what it takes to win, maybe not being quite as bold in her policy pronouncements. I think that's sort of the shape of the debate that they're having, and they're having it under, you know, remarkably different. circumstances for the NDP. It wasn't that long ago, you know, 2011 when they had 103 seats. And it looked like they had fundamentally sort of reshaped the political left and federal politics writ large. And now they're looking at maybe being down to as few as five seats when their next leader takes over. So I've listened to a lot of pundits lately,

talk about how Avi is selling something that voters across the country don't want right now. Maybe like an energetic base or a certain segment of the population want it, but they make the argument that there's broad support amongst Canadians, right large, for things like investing in more resource development like pipelines and pouring money into the military. And just what do you make of what we are hearing from the pundit class? Yeah, I mean, look, if you look at the polls as they are right now, you would say that a pretty strong plurality of Canadians, like what Mark Carney is doing, like what he's talking about,

like what he represents. And, you know, at least based on the polls, you wouldn't see that there has been much of a backlash to anything he's done in terms of, you know, moving the party too far to the center or,

or in any other respect, you know, it doesn't look like the NDP has suddenly come back or that voters who maybe went to the liberals in the last election are starting to move back to the NDP. So based on that, yeah, you would wonder how much appeal there is for what Avey Lewis is promoting what he's selling, what he, you know, the kind of ideas he's promoting. That said, it's so hard to know, you know, look, we just talked about the NDP being at 103 seats

in 2011 and seemingly the world had changed at that point. the endless lesson in Canadian politics is to be very humble about how things are going to play out and where voters are going to go. Because they shift and they change and you never quite know what's going to catch fire. And I can see the argument that Avi Lewis is making that, look, the NDP can't just be a slightly different version of liberals. They need to be something completely different. And maybe there's a constituency for that. You know, you can't look at the polls right now and say that there is. but I think we have to see how it plays out over what could be now,

we now know it could be a full three years before the next election. Yeah. And I mean, I want to try and make an apples to apples comparison here. But, you know, there were a lot of people throwing cold water, a lot of cold water on Zora Mamdani's campaign in New York, and he is now mayor of New York City. So, you know, to your point, a lot can change. Heather is the only one with a seat in the House of Commons, though,

and just how much of a challenge would that be? if, let's say, Avi or Rob Ashton, they don't have a seat. Yeah, I think it's a challenge. Look, any NDP leadership candidate running without a seat will very quickly point out to you that Jack Layton also didn't have a seat when he became NDP leader. But I think people in Ottawa would point out that Jack Layton spent a lot of time in Ottawa, getting in front of cameras, getting attention, making sure that he was involved in the discussion and wasn't an afterthought. And I think that's the key even more than the seat necessarily is making sure that you have a presence. Politicians will always say, oh, look, you know, you don't need to be inside the bubble. You need to be out across the country, you know, shaking hands and talking to people. And social media has obviously changed the way people communicate, politicians communicate.

But I think more than having the seat, it's really about can you get yourself into the conversation, can you be relevant to the discussions that are happening here in Ottawa? because you need to be relevant somehow. With the Greens basically decimated and the NDP now down to six, maybe five, and we don't know if they're going to be able to kind of pick themselves up here, what do you think our democracy loses ultimately when we basically have a two-party system and the block of a qua? I think there's a few points to make here.

First, you don't necessarily want a democracy which options are limited. you know, you can take it to an extreme. You probably don't want too many political parties, but having a number more than two of political parties does, you know, lead to a richer conversation and a richer debate. I think, though, as much as it looks like we're moving to a two-party system, you know, maybe connected to a point I made earlier, like, I wouldn't bet a lot on it remaining a two-party system for very long. I think the Canadian political system has had moments when it looked like it was moving into a two-party system when it has been a two-party system. and inevitably it fractures or other parties emerge, you know, voters move around. It doesn't look like Canadian politics sort of naturally defaults to a two-party system very easily, either because the country's so big or the issues, the way the issues break down.

And so as much as at this moment, it looks like the liberals, you know, could have a majority and the conservatives could be the main opposition and the block could be solidified in Quebec. and that doesn't leave much room for the NDP, I wouldn't count on that remaining that way for very long. And just to go back to 2011, because apparently it left a big mark on me, there were a lot of pieces written after that election that said, well, now Canadian politics has changed forever.

The federal liberal party is essentially dead. We are now finally going to be like some of our Democratic cousins and we're going to be a two-party system where there's a clear party of the left and a clear party of the right. and the NDP shall be the clear party of the left. And none of that survived, you know, much more than a few more years, because then four years later we had a liberal majority and the party system has changed at least once or twice over that period of time.

So I think the lesson here is, you know, and we may be seeing it with the four crossers too, is that these things are just going to kind of continue evolving and changing and assuming that the kind of political situation is sort of in concrete. and set, it just doesn't stand up to what we've seen in the past. Before we go, we haven't really touched on the conservatives. Is the latest floor crossing from the NDP good for them, bad for them, or a little bit of both? Yeah, it's interesting because every other floor crossing has been from the conservative, so it has seemed to directly reflect on Pierre Pollyov's leadership.

This one isn't, so it doesn't quite fit into that narrative. and if the thinking was that the Conservers don't want an election right now because they're trailing in the polls and they could be headed for a big defeat if they were to stumble into an election, then you can look at this and say, oh, this is good news for the Conservers, because now they have three years, they don't have to worry about an election. They can kind of rebuild and maybe wait for some of the shine to come off Mark Carney

and be in a position to defeat him in 2029. That's certainly one way this could play out. I think the question is still how well does Pierre Polyev's leadership hold up over the next three years, three more years in opposition. What if his poll numbers don't come back? What if they stay down? We haven't really seen any kind of overt challenge to his leadership other than the floor crossings. So does a more serious challenge to his leadership emerge? As much as the Conservatives don't want an election right this minute,

I don't know that it's necessarily therefore good news that an election might not happen until 2029. Erin, good talking to you. We'll talk to you, I don't know, I guess, when there's another floor crosser right now. I'm sure it's just next week. Okay, thank you. Thanks.

All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.