The Decibel - A 2026 forecast for Canadian politics

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

After a year that was truly one for the books in Canadian politics — from Trudeau’s resignation to Trump’s trade war, an “elbows up” election, Pierre Poilievre losing his seat, Jagmeet Singh resigning his leadership, and the prospect of a new Pacific pipeline — 2025 has come to a close. What will 2026 hold?Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter with The Globe’s Ottawa Bureau, and she’s on the show to discuss the Liberal road to a majority, the leadership of both the Conservative Party and NDP, and the renegotiation of Canada’s trade agreement with the U.S.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2025 was a whirlwind year for politics. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned. Mark Carney replaced him as liberal leader and prime minister. The conservatives not only lost an election they seemed destined to win, but their leader Pierre Pauliev lost his seat, only to win a different seat in a by-election a few months later. The NDP lost almost everything, including their leader. Oh, and of course, U.S. President Donald Trump started a trade war with Canada.

So what will 2026 have in store? Stephanie Levitts is a senior reporter with the Globe's Ottawa Bureau. She's on the show to give us a preview of the year ahead. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure. Good to be here. So let's start off by quickly looking back at 2025. If you had to describe 2025 in, let's say, three words in terms of political drama, what would you say?

Chaos, change, chaos. Okay, yes, it was a very dramatic time that that really sums it up. Chaos change, chaos. Okay. So at the end of the year, Justice Parliament was rising. Another conservative MP, Michael Ma, crossed the floor to join the liberals. So now the liberals are within one seat of having a majority. So, Steph, can you lay out the ways in which Carney could gain that?

final seat. So there's a couple of things we can think about. He could recruit another floor crosser, and that could be from any party, frankly. It could be from the conservatives. It could be from the Block Iqqq, could be from the New Democrats. It could even be Green Party leader Elizabeth May. Any one of them could raise their hand and say, hey boss, pick me. I'm willing to join your team. That's one way. Another way, I suppose, and albeit a risky one, would be to dissolve parliament, call for an election and hope the voters will give him a majority. I don't think that's necessarily going to happen, you know, in the earliest weeks of 2026, but it remains possible. An outside option is they could somehow strike a deal with another party that would give a member from that

party the chance to be the speaker. And then the liberals would regain one seat in the House of Commons giving them a majority. That would be like three-dimensional chess. But again, it's a way he could get a majority. Right. Okay. And so that's because the speaker right now is liberal. So that speaker will go back to the party? Correct. There's other ways that Carney could get a functional majority, which is to say that if MPs from other parties choose not to vote, they abstain from votes, they don't show up, they resign, changes the balance of numbers in the House of Commons. And it's also worth learning because the speaker is currently a liberal. In the event of a tie vote, the speaker always votes with the government. So that's another way Carney sort of could have

a majority on a particular issue as needed. Okay. How likely are these past, like which one is more likely to happen? Most people have their money on another floor crosser coming over to join the government bench. That would be a question for all of these MPs. Once the House of Commons broke for the winter, everyone's gone home. They're talking to their families. They're talking to their writings. We heard when Michael Maugh crossed the floor, he referenced extensive conversations in his own writing about what would be best for the people there, although there are lots of folks in Markham Unionville who disagree with his choice. So it could be, you know, is Mr. Carney and his team actively going out and looking for somebody right now. Do they have a short list, probably?

Do they have a path where they think, okay, maybe we can't get one now, but we could get one later? Is there something coming down the pipe that they think they could recruit somebody over with? These are all, you know, political machinations that when you're one seat shy of a majority government, I would think that the operations folks in the prime minister's office are looking at all of these possibilities to see what's most likely. But really, at the end of the day, the floor crossing option, relies on a floor crosser. It relies on somebody being willing to take that leap. I think for a lot of members of parliament who've been members of their party for a long time, they've raised money, they've recruited volunteers, they have so much support.

It's not a simple choice. It's not an easy thing to just go ahead and cross the floor. And it might take some time for somebody to arrive at that conclusion. There's been a lot of chatter that there might be other conservatives looking to join the liberals. How seriously should we take that gossip? It is the most likely party from which Mark Carney is going to drive. support, obviously. He's already gotten two of the parties members of parliament to come across. A lot of his agenda, many folks have noticed mirror what conservative leader Pierre Poliab was putting before voters in the last election. There are folks for sure in the

conservative party elected members of parliament who really hoped that the spring election was their time. They were going to be in government. There were things they were going to be able to do. And that possibility has really receded for them. And maybe, you know, as Mr. Ma himself said, when he left, he wanted to be somewhere where he felt like he could get things done. And that requires being in government. I'm not sure that it's a partisan choice. It's just a question of being in government. MPs from all parties can be very effective in the House of Commons.

They can get bills through. They can help their constituents on immigration files. They can help on taxes. But you can ask anyone on the opposition bench the sense of being in government, being able to actually say to someone, hey, I got infrastructure money for this riding, or, hey, I delivered this for the riding. That's pretty powerful stuff too. Okay. So, of course, this will be a big deal for Mark Carney if there is a majority.

How much easier will it be for him if he does get a slim majority? Yeah, I mean, there's so many different ways it will be easy. The more overarching one is this question of confidence. In a minority government situation, votes of confidence, which is an opportunity for the opposition parties to say, yes, we believe this government should remain in power. No, we don't think it is. Those happen with some regularity, and they're always tense. I think let's remember that in the waning days of the Trudeau Minority Government, you know, they had this deal with the New Democrats that made it so that they could survive every confidence vote so that precarious nature of a minority wasn't there for them.

But it is very much there for Prime Minister Mark Carney because it's obviously clear that the Block Quebecois at this point aren't interested in supporting his agenda. The New Democrats did help on the last confidence motion. Will they keep doing that? We don't know. And the conservatives, you know, on a case-by-case basis might support some elements of the government's agenda. But when it comes to a confidence vote, which is often tied to government spending, I'm not sure the conservatives will be willing to play ball there. So if you eliminate

that, Mr. Carney can breathe easy. He can get legislation passed a bit faster for sure. He doesn't have to worry about confidence votes. And he can sort of have a longer term legislative and probably policy roadmap to follow that would take him to the next election. So on the other side, of course we have the Conservatives and leader Pierre Poliyev. What would a majority mean for that party and specifically Pierre Poliouyev's leadership? It's such a tricky one. I mean, there are folks, you know, I think within the spectrum of conservatives, partisans, elected members of parliament, observers, long-time party members, new party members, and I don't think there's unanimity on that question about what it would mean. Politically,

it would be tricky for Mr. Polyev because how do you say you've got the confidence of your own caucus and that you are best place to lead your party to victory when you are losing your own MPs to the governing side. And so for Mr. Polyev, you know, in some ways it also gives him, if we look at it on the silver lining side of this cloud, removing the, is there going to be a snap election, allows for more thinking, more thoughtful approach, more, okay, how do I position myself for the next time? What kind of policies can I put before voters that maybe make them look at me and say, you know what, yeah, we'll give this guy a chance now. We're done with Mr. Kearney. So that would be the silver lining in a cloud, but I would think it's mostly cloud for

conservative leader, Pierre Polyev. Yeah, I can imagine it's mostly cloud because, I mean, you know, if you have your MPs going, crossing the floor, it doesn't look really great on you as a leader. It doesn't. I mean, there's, you know, there's folks in the conservative party who will talk about the movement that Mr. Polyev has created, and he's really built a different kind of conservative party than most Canadians, and many had come to know under the Harper years. I know that, you know, privately when they lost Chris Dantrema, he was the Nova Scotia MP who crossed first, and then they lost Michael Ma. They pointed to both of those people and said, well, they weren't really one of ours anyway.

And so there's a bit of shrugging. Convenient to say that. It is convenient to say it now, but I do think it's factually true. But I think, you know, there are folks in the conservative movement and plenty of them who look at the polls and say, look, the party still has 40%. The party has not dropped a ton since the election. It's objectively true that Mr. Polyev's own polling numbers are not strong, but the party is doing fine, the issue set is doing fine. If we are going to change leaders now, if we see this as a reflection of Mr. Polyev, well, then what? Who's next?

And these are big questions, and I go back to maybe a silver lining for the party in the cloud of a floor crosser, is to say, well, if we chose to get rid of Mr. Polyev, we would have perhaps time to find a new leader, whereas in a minority government's scenario, you never know when the next election is. You might not have that time. I'm not saying I see any appetite whatsoever to push him out at this moment in time. But it is, again, part of this chess game that everybody's playing. If this happens, then what's next? Steph, you actually interviewed Pauliev at the end of the year. What did he say to you about how he was feeling? I asked him, you know, to describe what the year had been like for him. If he had to describe, just like the question you asked me off the top, how would you describe the year that just was? And he paused. Do you say chaos change chaos? He did not. He paused for a minute. He thought about it

and he described it as busy and challenging. And I think both of those things are factually true, for sure. I think Mr. Polyev is trying to figure out a path forward. He talked a lot about, you know, his message and how he needs to get across to people that his party is fighting for them, fighting for everyday people. He wants to put forward a message of hope. When I asked him, you know, what do you need to do to win the next government? And he, he said, we just have to get our message out to more people, focus on this message of hope. I said, well, didn't you try that the last time? You know, and that didn't work for you.

So why is it going to work now? And he said something that was interesting to me. And I think it's a lens through which he certainly seems to be viewing 2026, was just that the onus is going to be on Mr. Carney, beginning early in this year, to start delivering, to start, you know, making good on the promises he made to Canadians that got him elected. And I think Mr. Polyev views that as an opportunity for opposition parties because, you know, you get a new leader gets a glow, they get a honeymoon, they get a lot of people willing to give them a chance. And I think Mr. Polyev is very much betting on people's patients

running out with Mr. Carney, especially when the issue set that has been so salient for the conservatives, which is affordability and crime, continues to be a problem. And it's challenging for Mr. Carney to convince Canadians that the things that he is saying he wants to do, pivot the Canadian economy, move away from reliance on the United States, you know, bring up our exports to other markets, all of these things. Will that make your groceries cheaper? Will that make your rent more affordable? In the short term, that's a really challenging proposition. Perhaps in the long term, it will absolutely benefit in the economy, but people are transactional. They want solutions now. The problem for Mr. Polyev, though, I think in that argument, and I put this to him,

if he and Mr. Carney are effectively arguing for the same things, increased natural resource development, more action on housing, if Mr. Carney couldn't deliver, why would people believe Mr. Polyev can? Yeah. What will he do differently? Polyev will be facing a leadership review by Conservative Party members at the end of the month. What happens there? So this is mandatory a leadership review, it's baked into the party's foundational documents that if you fail to form government in an election, the leader must submit to a review. The last two times that the conservative leader didn't win an election, that was under Andrew Shear and Aaron O'Toole, both of the men were gone from the job by the time a leadership review had come due at the convention. Mr. Polyev

has no such luxury. He is going to the membership in January. How that will work is that all of the riding associations across the country, 343 of them, have all picked deliative. that they'll be sending to this convention, and those delegates will vote on whether or not Mr. Poliov should stay on. That's basically it. And so you'll have a group of people from all over the country making the choice in real time. Okay. So what would be considered a good outcome from this leadership review? I mean, there's, you won it, and then there's, did you win it by how much, right? And so, you know, leaders have stepped down in this country. They've won upwards of 70% in leadership reviews and have said, I'm out. That's not enough. I mean, like, you know,

provincial levels, different federal parties. So it depends. Mr. Polyev has said he doesn't have a magic number. People around him, close to him, tell me that they're eyeing like 80% would be good. But that'll be something he's going to have to decide for himself what a successful result looks like, what number is deemed acceptable enough for him to stay on. So if he gets less than 50%, Does he have to resign? If more than 50% of the delegates at this convention vote that they want to have a leadership race, then there's going to be a leadership race. And it means Mr. Polyev is going to either, A, have to quit outright or B, run for leadership again. We'll be right back.

Okay, so let's go back to Mark Carney. And let's look at some of the relationships that he has to navigate over the course of the next year, both at home and abroad. Let's start here in Canada and I talk about Alberta and B.C. of course. So he's going to have to find a way to navigate between B.C. Premier David Eby and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith regarding the memorandum of understanding that he signed with Smith about a pipeline. So tell me, Steph, what will be challenging about this? One side wants a pipeline and the other side doesn't. Simple as that.

You know, it's as simple as that. And we've seen Daniel Smith in the waning weeks of 2025 actually start talking about not putting the pipeline that she wants through British Columbia at all, even though the memorandum of understanding that she signed with Mark Carney did, you know, specified the west coast of this country. What will be challenging for Mr. Carney is balancing everybody's needs and demands and likes and dislikes. And twas ever thus in our federation, right? It has always been the case that a prime minister has had to balance off competing needs and priorities of different provinces. And in this one, particular instance, you have a clear discreet.

connect between two provincial leaders about what is possible and what is necessary. You have to throw into that mix when we talk about Mr. Carney overseeing the relationship between Daniel Smith and David Eby in British Columbia, First Nations leadership. I mean, they're a part of this discussion and this dialogue as well, and he's going to have to also engage with them and bring them very much onside for natural resource development off the coast or export off the coast of British Columbia, if anything is actually going to get done. The most challenging relationship Carney will have to manage is, of course, the one with U.S. President Donald Trump. And the stakes are especially high because the North American free trade deal will be reviewed this year.

And at the end of 2025, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., Kirsten Hillman, stepped down. And Carney appointed Mark Wiseman to take her place. How much does Hillman's departure complicate things for Carney? I don't think it complicates things because if it did, he wouldn't have had her step down. Okay. You know, he is the prime minister. If he wanted her to stay, I'm sure Ms. Hillman could. could have found a way to make that happen for herself.

I think it was also her choice to go, and that's okay too. I think the diplomatic appointments he's making, including the U.S. ambassador, he wants to put his own stamp on government. He wants his own people by his side. I think the question becomes diplomacy is so much about relationship building. And it's about making these ties, getting to know people, talking things out. And when you replace someone who's been there for a very long time with somebody new, how able are they to either, A, change the tone of a relationship if that's necessary, open new doors,

build new bridges. We can use every metaphor we want here. This is a natural reset point for that particular diplomatic post because we are going into this free trade agreement review. And so maybe now is the time to bring somebody on to see that through to its conclusion. But ultimately, as some observers have noted, is this really the prime minister's deal at the end of the day? And folks like the ambassador and others, yeah, they'll be working on the nitty gritty, the finer print, but the overarching stuff, the big picture items, that's going to belong squarely inside the prime minister's office, if not with him personally, then with his chief of staff or with the clerk of the privy council, both who have been already involved in these negotiations

to date. What would you say are the challenges for Carney moving forward with the Trump situation? Not making it any worse. You know, in a lot of year-end interviews that the prime minister did. He was pressed by journalists about you said, you got elected on this promise that you were best placed to negotiate with Trump, that you would get a good deal for Canada. And we still have tariffs. So what gives? And his answer was a bit of revisionist history because he said, well, we still have the best deal. You wanted me in office so that we'd have the best deal. And we do have the best deal. And he was referring to the existing free trade agreement, which is factually true that the vast majority of imports and exports crossing between Canada and the U.S. remain tariff-free under that

deal. And so is Mr. Carney's bar for success now just the maintenance of the status quo? Or does he think that the new North American free trade agreement that will be ultimately negotiated can be better than the current one? What about all the sectoral tariffs? What about softwood lumber? What concessions are we going to make out of that? And so he is going to have to manage domestic expectations very closely and in reality hopefully not trigger the U.S. administration and that means President Donald Trump but also all the way through his cabinet not to rip up pieces of that deal because it is quite good now for Canada but also do something on the sectoral tariffs steel aluminum auto softwood which are very very punishing for

our economy. So so we haven't really talked about the NDP yet so let's take a moment to talk about the NDP. Another thing that is set to happen this year is that they will pick a new leader what's the lane they can occupy given that Carney is governing with the Liberals from my right of center position? They have a couple of places they can go.

You know, it is since the signing of that memorandum of understanding with Alberta and even a little bit before. There's a lot of tension in the Liberal Caucus about Mr. Carney and environmental policy and his commitment to climate change.

There is room, I think, for the new Democrats to focus on that issue as a way to attract voters, disaffected liberals perhaps, who for them climate was their number one. issue. I mean, Mr. Carney did lose a cabinet minister over this memorandum of understanding and a noted

environmentalist at that, Stephen Gilbo. So that's one lane. There is, you know, a way perhaps for the new Democrats to find some of the voters who abandoned them for Pierre Polyev and bring them back. You know, his heavy focus on blue-collar workers, on unionized labor. Is there a voice in the NDP that can get those voters back for them? I don't know. There's also setting aside, environment as an issue. I think there's a host of others, I'll call them social issues, where Mr. Carney has signaled very little willingness to play ball in the way that the previous liberal government did. And I'm thinking about big national programs, pharmacare, dental, child care, where he's certainly committed to the status quo. And child care has

continued, you know, to sign deals respecting the march to the $10 day daycare program. but are there folks and voters who need those programs expanded and broadened? And if it doesn't seem like Mr. Carney is going to do that, can they find a home in the New Democrats? Just to end here, Stephanie, can you pick one major challenge for Carney, Polyev, the NDP that they will need to tackle in 2026? For the New Democrats, it's finding a leader and a purpose and a lane to play in that makes a convincing case to voters. for Mr. Polyev, it's going to be finding a way to make himself an alternative for Canadian voters who sour on Mark Carney and who are comfortable and supportive of the Conservatives issue set, but uncertain about Mr. Pauliev himself. He's going to have to find a way to bridge those two things in the event that there's an election, and he wants to emerge with a majority.

because if he doesn't, if he fails to defeat the liberals, he's out of a job, full stop. And for Mr. Carney, it's delivery. It's time for him to show Canadians that all of the things he's done thus far are paying off for this country, not just existentially, not in terms of just elbows up, but elbow grease, that the work is getting done and things are happening and they're changing for the better. Stephanie, this has been great. Thank you so much. My pleasure. That was Stephanie Levitz, a senior reporter with the Globe's Ottawa Bureau.

That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.