The Decibel - Mark Carney’s majority moment

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

More than a year after 2025’s federal election, the Liberal Party now has a majority government. Monday’s federal by-elections – a clean sweep for Liberal candidates – plus a steady flow of floor crossings ensure Mark Carney’s government now has a slim majority with 174 seats in the House of Commons. But how will Carney and the Liberals now use this power? And how will the dynamics in Parliament change? Today, a political panel of Stephanie Leviz, senior reporter in The Globe’s Ottawa bureau and Campbell Clark, columnist and The Globe’s chief political writer join The Decibel to talk about the future of this government. 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.

The woman who will be soon sworn in as the Member of Parliament for University Rosedale, our friend, our champion, our superstar, Danielle Martin. This is the victory party of Liberal candidate Danielle Martin, who replaces Christia Freeland as MP in Toronto's University Rosedale riding. And her by-election win on Monday was also the moment. that Prime Minister Mark Carney secured his majority government. Danielle Martin was the first Liberal winner of the night. Then came Dolly Begham's win in the Toronto seat of Scarborough Southwest,

followed by Tatiana August in the Quebec writing of Tehrbonne. This liberal sweep, along with five floor crossings in the last year, puts Mark Carney in the Liberals at 174 seats in the House of Commons. That's two seats over the majority line. Okay, but how exactly will this majority government help the liberals meet the moment, as Carney says? How much will this slim majority change the dynamics in Parliament? And how will the dynamics within the Liberal Party change? We've convened a panel to help answer these questions.

Today, I'm joined by... Stephanie Levitts. I'm a senior reporter in the Globe's Ottawa Bureau. And I'm Campbell Clark, the chief political writer in the Ottawa Bureau. And I'm Cheryl Sutherland. This is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Steph, hi, Campbell. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi there.

Hi. So, Steph, I'll start with you. Mark Carney has cobbled together his majority. Can you tell me about the significance of this moment, both in terms of what it means for Mark Carney and the liberals, and just historically. Because have we ever seen a majority government come together through floor crossings and by-elections?

Not in this combination, no. I mean, the pace that Mark Carney has seen MPs from other parties crossed his floor since November is, you know, unprecedented in modern minority governments. Minorities flip to majorities that's happened before, but sort of the one-to punch of how he secured this majority, that's big in the annals of Canadian history. And for Mr. Carney himself, you know, he'd been going around telling folks in his office for months, I don't want to go to an election, I don't want to go to an election, we have things to do. Let's, figure out a way through this, right, knowing that they were going to have the by-elections coming. And the floor crossers were part of that as well. And so what it allows Mark Carney now is a couple of

key things. One of them is time because with the majority government, it removes the immediate threat of an election, which is to say we can get off the narrative of the government might fall at any time and constantly look at every vote wondering if this is the one that brings down the liberals. And that allows for some longer-term thinking. It allows for a little bit more flexibility. It allows the team around him to shift from always thinking, how would we sell this in an election tomorrow, to what can we do to win the election a year from now, two years from now, three years from now at max. It also obviously paves the way for a smoother ride in the House of Commons. I mean, Mr. Carney, we have to be honest about this, was governing with a functional majority for months.

He had a lot of support from the opposition for elements of his agenda and was able to pass key votes. He survived confidence motions. He passed a budget. But in place, like parliamentary committees where the opposition has the upper hand in terms of numbers, they would use those committees to stonewall or slow things down or from their perspective, hold this government to account. And now the liberals will have the majority in those committees, meaning that agenda will have to move faster. And so that's one sort of tangible way. And I think one of the first signs we'll see of what a Kearney majority government will look like. On the committees, like how does having control over committees help a government? A couple of ways.

committees primarily do two things, right? Part of their biggest role is to review government legislation. So it goes to committee and that's where members of parliament hear from witnesses, they get feedback on bills, should we make this better? Should we change this? Should we change that? And those committees, we know we love to think of them as this intellectual room where people are really tearing apart legislation and really trying to make it better, but often they descend into sort of partisan showboating. And with an opposition majority on the committee, which is to say members of opposition, parties having more spots on a committee than the minority liberal government, they could take all the time they wanted for that stuff, because anytime the liberals tried to stop it, they could be

outvoted. And so it would bog things down. I think there's probably a sweet spot that both opposition and government would love to see, which is legitimate study of the bills. Let's legitimately hear from witnesses. Let's legitimately try to improve them where necessary. But let's dispense with the partisan theatrics built for clips on social media and not for serious legislative scrutiny. So that's one thing the committees do. The second thing committees do, which is, you know, most Canadians don't pay attention to as much, I think, is they study issue sets. They explore things. They do deep dives into, should we be concerned about this thing or that thing? That agenda is also, when it's an opposition-dominated committee, will be set by the opposition. And it can often be

partisan, very political, designed to show up the government in some way. Now the liberals will be able to set the agendas for committees and sort of use them the way they want to advance elements of their own agenda, not in a legislative sense, but more in an intellectual sense. All right, Campbell, I'm going to bring you in here. So it ended up that the two Toronto writings were truly safe seats with the liberal candidates winning over 60% of the vote. But in Quebec, in the Tarabun writing, the win was much closer. The liberal candidate got 48% and the block got 46%.

So Campbell, what does that signal to you in terms of liberals support in Quebec? Well, it's clearly at a high point. and I think pretty much everyone, including the Black Quebecois, that. And they were saying that openly in the run-up to this by-election, that, you know, Carney was popular, and he has been popular for the last year in Quebec. It also says something else, though, because this was a different contest than the general election. And the Black-Chebecoir MPs were talking about that in the run-up, too, which is this was no longer a question of who would be the government, who would be the prime minister,

and that was the driving factor in Quebec in the general election a year ago. So that wasn't on the table and the liberals still won. It also tells, and this is not a liberal riding, right? This is a writing that the Black Quebecois held up until last year, that the liberals won in quotation marks by one seat before that result was annulled. The Pacti Quebecois, the separatist party at the provincial level, holds this riding provincially. So this is not a riding that is nor.

normally liberal or traditionally liberal. And the ground organization, which was really important, and it's important in by elections because of the low turnout, that was pretty telling to both parties through everything they had at at the Black Quebecois and the Liberal Party. And, you know, you would have, in the past, thought that the bloc, with the help of the Peltiqueueblood would have the stronger organization, but it didn't turn out that way.

So those are all telling signs that the liberals are at a high mark in Quebec right now. Broadly speaking, Steph, I'll throw this one to you. How much can the liberals take this by-election sweep as a broader representation of their popularity

across the country? I don't know that you can use it as a comparable. I mean, the two writings that they won in near Toronto are both longtime liberal seats. The outgoing MPs in both those spots

won with over 60% of the vote in last year's election. And so the government and the liberals, I suppose, were widely expected to hold onto these seats. They were widely expected to secure their majority with these by-election victories. Nationally, public polling puts the liberals, you know,

well ahead of the opposition conservatives at this point, and probably it's those numbers that the parties are looking to right now to gauge where their respective pools of support might be in what they could change or make better in terms of the other opposition parties going forward. Campbell, anything to add? Well, I think what we saw here

was weakness of the other. parties pretty much cross the board. So, you know, the NDP did, I suppose, better in one riding than the other, but both had considered the NDP were not at all challengers in the two Toronto ridings. The in Telbun, you know, at one point in the Orange Way from 2011 to 2015, that was an NDP riding. Now, that was an unusual thing, but they got 0.5% of the boat on Monday night. So, you know, that is a long, long way. It shows you the last remnants of the orange wave in Quebec are all but gone. The Black Quebec War should look at this as a dead loss.

The conservatives had a poor showing across the board. So, you know, this was a drubbing for all of the other parties. But remember, this is the sort of peak honeymoon moment for the Mark Carney liberals. And it doesn't mean that, you know, they shall sweep all before them for the next three years. And just to get some numbers in here, there's a NAMO's research survey that has liberals well in front at 45% support followed by 32% for the conservatives and 12% for the NDP. Just wanted to get those numbers in there. So part of this majority is in part because five MPs crossed the floor to join the liberals, four from the conservatives and one from the NDP, which represents, of course, very different views. Mark Carney has talked about how big of a tent the liberals are.

But are there any political drawbacks to housing so many MPs with different political values? So there are, but they're outweigh by having a majority by some distance. I don't think anyone's in the prime minister's office is going to be complaining about, you know, their fractious bunch just yet. There always are because, you know, you have to keep your caucus happy. And when you have a majority of three seats, then you, you, have to worry about any MP leaving you or any two or any three or any four hold significant power. Now, the good thing for Mr. Carney is that backbench MPs in Canada don't generally

tend to understand how much power they have and they don't use it. But, you know, if there was an issue that divides the party, it can get quite ugly. But, you know, these floor crossers have all signed on and they've got nowhere else to go other than leaving politics in a way. It isn't likely to be an issue for, you know, some time because in the same way that Mark Carney was able to sort of govern as if he had a majority because of his popularity, you should be able to keep control of this caucus because of his popularity. We'll be right back. Steph, what do we know about how Carney and his closest advisors intend to manage this big tent caucus. It's a good question because there's a couple of pressure points for the

carnival liberals that relate to who they brought over, right? And the most obvious one that's got a lot of people talking is the latest floor crossers, Marilyn Gladeau, a long-time conservative, known for her socially conservative views. And it's had progressives in that party, in the liberals, I mean, looking at that and going, what? I thought we spent a lot of time under Justin Trudeau's liberals saying that we weren't this. This was not who we were. This was not how we wanted to govern the and now this person is in our caucus. And that comes at a time when progressive liberals in particular have been looking at Mr. Carney's agenda and wondering where are the things that made them join the Liberal Party,

right? Things like aggressive action on climate change, things like the pledge for $10 a day child care. And they wonder what's befallen those promises and those ambitions that were so baked into liberal identity, generally speaking, and then you bring over Marilyn Gladu. And so people look at that and say, what does this mean? What is my place in the party? And so there's a world in which Mr. Carney needs to keep an eye on that progressive caucus because also it bears noting that the NDP now have a new leader. And it's true that the new Democrats are far behind in the polls, and it's true they've got a lot of climbing to do to sort of make a presence felt on the national

stage. But that new leader, Avi Lewis, is really pushing to be a progressive voice. And for the first time since he was elected, Mr. Carney now has pressure on the left flank. There will be an NDP leader coming at him with regularity and ferocity. Does this represent an opportunity for Avi Lewis? Like the fact that this big 10 liberal, is it a good thing for him? It absolutely represents an opportunity because there are voters within that, you know, centrist party that Mr. Carney is pulling together that may look to Avi Lewis and say, you know, know, I like that better. I want that fighting spirit more. I don't want this centrist economic business bro agenda. It's not for me. I'd like to see something else. I'd like to see a challenge to

that, if not the NDP forming government. So that's a new reality for Mr. Carney that he hasn't had to deal with previously. And it's in some ways, you know, a bit of the, I'd say inverse. But Justin Trudeau had a similar problem with like centrist liberals in his tent, right? The people who thought He was spending too much money, going too far. People who thought Pierre Pollyev and his economic agenda, and I'm talking about voters, was really the response to that, right? And Mr. Carney managed to bring those voters back to the liberals. How he can keep the progressive voters now in the tent

will be something they do have their eye on in the months to come. What really matters for Mark Carney is the context and the narrative he's created, right? So it's all being about the crisis moment, the threats we face to our sovereignty, to our independence, to our economy, the idea that we have sort of a national mission right now that has to bring people together. And that's essentially galvanized or created more of a two-party system, one that's governing and one that's in the opposition. It's just the opposition has sort of weakened lately. But if you look inside his caucus, we saw Stephen Gilbo, the former

environment minister, leave based on his feeling that the government's not doing enough on climate change, but he left the cabinet and not the caucus, and he's still a loyal liberal because really, you know, that narrative is holding the liberal big tent together. It's going to be a lot harder to maintain if at some point there's a feeling that either those threats, those external threats or sort of national threats are no longer there or that Mark Carney no longer represents that mission. That's his biggest danger in keeping his political party together. You guys are bringing up some good points here making me think about what the liberals stand for.

The liberals had a convention this past weekend in Montreal. What exactly are the values of the liberals? Like how did Carney define them at the convention? I mean, I would take that two ways. I think if you ask liberals and I'm not trying to be cheeky here, what liberals want to do is win. And they want to govern. And over time, they have, you know,

this is not my phrase someone else that they shape shift. They meet the moment where it is. They put their finger on Canadians and say, okay, this is what people are looking for right now, and this is the direction we are going to go. And, you know, Mr. Carney, in so much as what he said to the convention, what his messaging was, it was talking about building a Canada for all. That's the big new theme coming out of this convention, right? He started with a build and trade agenda.

That's what got him elected. And now he's got to move on to the second half of that sentence, which is the for all piece of it, right? And making the case for Canadians, and this was his message, that his build agenda, will benefit everybody. And so if you live in Hamilton, you need to be able to understand why is a pipeline from Alberta to the BC coast. Why is that good for me? Those are hard dots to connect, I think, for a lot of people. And I do think to pick up on Campbell's really good point there about the narrative that Mr. Carney built around him, I do think the folks in his inner circle are mindful the clock is ticking on that narrative, which is to say that, you know,

should the Trump administration one day no longer be in place, that existential or external pressure point that had people looking to Mr. Carney as the foil to Donald Trump, well, that evaporates. And they're going to have to give Canadians a reason to reelect them. Campbell, you've actually written about how there were whiffs of liberal arrogance at that convention. I found that really interesting. But what did you mean by that? And also...

Well, there's whiffs again of liberal arrogance because it's sort of in the DNA. I guess one of the things, the starting point would be is if you looked at the last liberal convention in 2023 when Justin Trudeau was prime minister, they were pretty down. They were, you know, suffering from scandals and low popularity and sort of trying to pull themselves up. But, you know, here at this liberal convention, they were all celebrating, and I suppose that's normal. But they were also congratulating themselves quite a lot. They were acting as though all of their promises, which are yet to be fulfilled, are results that they've handed to the Canadian people. And there's a little bit of that sense in the Liberal Party that they're right and they're telling the country why they're right, rather than going out to seek the support of Canadians. The cult of Carney was on full view as well.

There was a lot of people pointing to his speech in Davos as if it was, you know, the seminal moment of modern politics. And it was a little excessive, you know. It was as much about what we are giving to you than how we represent the people. It was as much about the Liberal Party and its leadership. as it was about the people of Canada. And that's where they tend to fall off the road a little bit, the Liberal Party, that they've suffered that before. They suffer it generally because they do think of themselves collectively.

They tend to think of themselves as, you know, what's good for Canada. What's good for the Liberal Party is what's good for Canada. And they don't often see that, you know, there might be a difference between the two things. What about Pierre Pahliav? How much of a problem is this liberal majority for him? It's a problem because at the top level, right, he helped build it. It's four members of his caucus who said four out of the five floor crossers are conservative. And it's four out of the five floor crossers who looked at Pierre Polly of and said, nope, not interested anymore, do not want to be a part of this party. And, you know, in each case of the floor crossers, they all said in their public statements and to some degree in whatever media they've done since, they wanted to be part of the government agenda. They wanted to get things. done. It is fair to say that some of that frustration coming from them is the product of

staring down more time on the back benches of government. There are people inside Mr. Polyev's party who, you know, of the floor crossers, three of them have been there a very long time, three of those conservatives, and were eyeing government. And now under him, they couldn't be under Mr. Carney, they could be. It's a bad look for Mr. Polyev because it says something about his leadership. It also says something about his future and the people who work for him and where they see that future going. If his own team is writing him off, why should Canadians continue to believe that he's got the chops to form government? So from an optics perspective, this presents as terrible.

From a practical perspective, it also, a majority government buys the opposition conservatives time too. They can give time for Mr. Carney's agenda to spool out. They can play a role in holding him to account with a bit more freedom than they had before, and I know that sounds funny, but when in a minority situation, when the opposition tries to do its real job, which is to hold the government to account, they're often accused of obstruction and it's something that governments will weaponize. They'll say, well, they're getting in the way of our agenda and this is bad for Canadians and what they're doing isn't right. And, you know,

accountability is not dissent. Accountability is not always about disagreeing. It's about asking questions, why are you doing the thing that you're doing and is this the best decision? Now, firmly in opposition, in a majority situation, that label can't stick to them. They can't be accused of getting in the way. They can be accused of refusing to support, which will still be a narrative. Absolutely, we'll hear from the liberals. But that obstructionist piece, that thing that Justin Trudeau weaponized a few times, that evaporates. And so it buys them time. It buys them time to think about their agenda. It buys them time to consider whether they can write what looks like it might be a sinking ship. It buys people who think they might want to replace Pierre Polyev one day some time, too,

to consider, okay, what would I need to do if I wanted to do this? If there are people in Pierre Polyev's caucus, who might want to take the step of kicking him out as leader, which is an option available to them. It gives them time to either organize or give, you know, let him try and figure this out. So I think time is the best thing for them right now. I would say time is good for the conservative party. I'm not sure it's good for Pierre Poliyev. Yeah, when time, we're talking about three years here, right?

That's quite a bit of time. It does help the conservative party figure out what they want to be in three years time. But they could spend a lot of that time figuring out they don't want Pierre Polyeve anymore. It's been a disaster for him over the past year, right? He lost that election, but then he's lost the year since pretty badly. He has, you know, not only plummeted in terms of personal popularity and polls, but he has lost four MPs, and he's still upsetting his own caucus and not managing to bring them together in the fold.

Pierre Poliev is a politician who's always campaigned, always election year, never really been known for sitting down and putting forward, you know, serious policy alternatives. He's tried to do that in the last few months. But that's not the persona that we've known of Pierre Paulyev for a long, long time. Even in government when he was the Minister of Human Resources, he was really campaigning for the next election rather than acting as a serious cabinet minister or a portfolio manager. So he's got a lot of things that could go wrong at a lot of time for it. go wrong. And he's really going to be in serious difficulty if he doesn't write the ship this spring and summer.

So just looking ahead, I'm wondering if this majority can still grow. Steph, you've reported that there may be eight other MPs considering crossing the floor. Does the fact that the liberals now have a majority change any of this math for other potential defectors? Yeah, it's a pretty good question. And I'll just say it's not that eight MPs are considering joining the floor is that the liberals are looking at a list of eight MPs they think they could get to join the floor and that's what they're looking for, right? The majority math now, you know, you could see both sides of that argument, right? You could see the argument that I talked about a bit before, this question of, do I really want to sit on the backbench for another three years? If I go over to the government side, I'll have more access to ministers,

maybe I'll get to be a cabinet minister. Every MP thinks that they're going into cabinet. It's a curse of their lot. You know, they'll think they have more power, more flex, especially if you weren't thinking about running again because there are questions for all of these MPs. Could they get elected as a liberal? That's a different thing than crossing the floor to sit as a liberal. And so if you were already coming to the end of your political tenure and thought, you know what, I'd like to go out in government. I already have my pension. I'm not running again. My life in my home riding is such that I will not be ostracized and forever shunned for doing this. There's already at least one by-election, another one that everyone thinks is going to happen

when Naderzkin Smith steps down and tries to run for Ontario liberal leadership. So that'll open up a seat. And who knows what else happens. So there's still, I think, a reason why Mark Carney would want to keep bumping those numbers. Conversely, if you're on the opposition benches, you might look at this now and say, okay, I can't be a liberal. You know, I could join, but, like, I'm not going to get very much out of being a majority. The downside, my family, all of these things isn't worth it. So I'm just going to stick this out. And probably Pierre is going to lose the next election. And we'll just see where it goes from there. I think, again, there's both sides there that are very, very possible. Just to end, Campbell, you've talked about this nationalist narrative the liberals are relying on

and that the majority with diverse political points of view allows them to meet a tough moment for Canada. But I am left wondering, how much momentum does this majority give them to accomplish the big promises that they've made? So it's not momentum that gives its time. It's the ability to take risks. We forget how vulnerable minority governments feel. You know, when Stephen Harper was elected in 2006, I thought he was, you know, secure for a good long time after defeating the liberals. But they celebrated every time they passed another former prime minister's minority. They had a cake when they passed Joe Clark. So, you know, they feel like they're under threat regularly and they don't want to take risks.

There's a lot of things that Mark Carney's government can do now, that they probably didn't want to risk before. They can take more serious action to cut spending, for example, and try to sort of fix the public finances. They can take more risks in the trade talks with the United States. They can give concessions they probably wouldn't want to give as the elbows up government when they were in minority. And they can start fashioning a long-term agenda that looks ahead over a period of years. So the point is, there's all kinds of momentum. And the big thing on Mark Carney's agenda is implementing what has essentially been a year of expanding. promises, right? The major projects, the building homes, trade agreements, the MOU with

Alberta that is supposed to bring climate and energy peace in our time. All of those things are big, big promises still. And now he has some room to take risks to try to, you know, fulfill them. Campbell, Steph, thank you so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. That was Stephanie Levitz, a senior reporter in the Globe's Ottawa Bureau. and Campbell Clark, a columnist in the Globe's chief political writer. And we want to hear from you. The Globe wants your questions about Carney's majority government, like, how will this change the dynamic in Parliament?

Or what will be the big pieces of policy Carney is targeting? Send your questions to tgam.ca.ca. slash majority questions. That's tgam.com.ca. slash majority questions. And your question could be picked for a piece in the globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

Our associate producer and intern is Emily Conahan. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.