The Decibel - Two Conservative MPs are gone. Where does the party go from here?

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

On the day the budget was tabled, Chris d’Entremont, the lone Conservative MP from Nova Scotia, crossed the floor to the Liberals. Two days later, Matt Jeneroux, a Conservative MP from Alberta, announced he would be leaving politics altogether. His name had also been circulated as a potential defector to the Liberals. These moves overshadowed news of Carney’s first budget — and d’Entremont’s move gives him one more crucial seat ahead of next week’s confidence vote, which could trigger an election. Poilievre’s opposition benches, however, appear increasingly shaky.  Campbell Clark is the Globe’s chief political writer. He’s on the show to talk about what these moves mean for Poilievre and the Conservatives, why people cross the floor to begin with, and what past defections can teach us about the moment the Conservatives are facing now.  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.

It's been a rocky time for the Conservatives as of late. On the day the budget was tabled, Chris Dantramont, the only Conservative MP from Nova Scotia, crossed the floor to the Liberals. Two days later, Matt Jenneroo, a conservative MP from Edmonton, announced he would be stepping down altogether. His name had also been circulated as someone who might join the Liberals. It's certainly not the first time a party had. has been in this kind of situation.

But what's happened recently is leaving conservative leader Pierre Puellev in an increasingly precarious position. So today, Campbell Clark is here. He's the globe's chief political writer. He'll explain what all this means for Paulyev and what we can learn from defections of days gone by about the moment conservatives are in right now. I'm Cheryl Sutherland and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Hi, Campbell. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. There's been quite a bit of political drama last week. So on a scale of one to ten, where one is, I got a flat tire and I fell in a puddle, my way to work, and ten is, I got a promotion, and there's free lunch in the office. How did Pauliev's week compare? Well, it was a lot worse than falling in a puddle than your car getting a flat tire. It was pretty bad.

He's probably more like a bear has chewed off my foot, and I hope it rose back. That's been, it's a really bad week for Pierre Pauly. We don't know if it's disastrous. I don't know what number to put on it, but it is something that left him in trouble. And what kind of details do we have right now about how everything went down with the conservatives last week? Well, I mean, we know quite a bit about how Chris Dantremant crossed the floor.

And in fact, he had been expected to cross the floor, but he kind of gave it away with a sort of offhand remark to a journalist from Politico, so then the thing started bubbling up while the budget lockup was going on. He made a statement later that evening, even though he was going to cross the floor, that sort of forced speculation about other MPs, including Matt Jenneroo, who, you know, a couple of days later announced that he would resign as an MP in a few months rather than crossing the floor himself. He'd been expected, or at least there'd been a lot of rumors that Matt Jenneroo from Edmonton would cross the floor too. Okay.

And so we're talking about two people here. Can you just put this into perspective? Like, is this really a big deal? It is a big deal because the liberals are so close to a majority. And that means a lot in parliament, but also in Canadian politics. So at the election on April 28, the liberals won 169 seats out of 343. now with Christontremant crossing, they've got 170. So they are still two seats short of being able to command a majority in the House of Commons.

What that means is they could fall at any time on a confidence vote. If they get a majority, they won't fall on a competence vote. So they're more or less ensured to be able to live out their full term of four years. It would change everything for Pierre Poitieb because he would go from being an opposition leader who might be priming next year to an opposition leader who would be sitting on the benches, opposition benches till 2029. We actually learned some details as well as what happened with Don Tramon. And Don Tramon himself actually said in an interview that apparently Shear barged into his office.

Yeah. So there was an interview that Chris Dantramon gave several days after he crossed the floor, where he sort of said that one of the things that sealed the deal on him crossing the floor was that two conservative MP, so that's conservative house leader Andrew Shear, the former party leader, and the conservative whip, Chris Workington, barged into his office on the day that the rumor sort of started getting out there, barged into his office, sort of pushed their way past his assistants and sort of called him, you know, a snake. Now, the conservatives have sort of pushed back on this, by the way, and said, you know, it wasn't really the abrupt sort of

threatening confrontation that Chris Dantremont, claims that they just sort of came in an him what was going on. But there is a thing that that story underlines, and that is there is a bit of an issue within the Conservative Caucus for Pierre Pauliev about the people who are sort of protecting and defending him, because there's a bit of a clique there that Andrew Shear and Chris Workington kind of represent the people who protect the Prime Minister. And there's a group of MPs in the Conservative Caucus who don't really like those guys and don't really like the sort of hard line of Praetorian Guard around the leadership that they represent. So that's part of the sort of division within the conservative caucus. Okay. I want to get back to the week Poliyev had

last week. So usually after the budget is delivered, the leader of the opposition gives a speech in reply to the budget and then moves an amendment to alter it. But Poliyev didn't do that. Is that unusual? So it's very unusual. So this is a formal thing that happens in parliament. One of the things that's the most formalized in the House of Commons is the way the budget is dealt with. And there's a process, and it leads to a confidence vote that in a minority parliament could defeat the government. And the way that works is the finance minister gets up one day and presents his budget. And the next day, the first order of business is the opposition leader gets up and gives his speech in reply and moves a motion to amend the budget. And then

the next party leader, the third party leader, in this case to block Quebec, what would get up and move a sub-amendment? So that's what's expected of the opposition leader. Pierre Polia had one job and he failed to pull it off at the end of his speech. And that's a big deal. Like in terms of parliament, you know, maybe people at home won't really notice it, but everybody in parliament noticed it. And it looked like, you know, a big miss, a big gap, a big lapse. And the kind of thing that Pierre Pauliev wouldn't normally forget, he's been in the House of Commons since 2004 for 21 years. So, you know, that was a major lapse. And you had to wonder just how rattled was he? Based on what we're hearing right now, does it sound like,

more MPs could cross the floor? So put it this way, it's still a possibility. At least conservatives are still talking about it as a possibility. Now, out in public, you know, a couple of them, like Gerald Deltel, who from Quebec, has said, no, no, no more will be crossing the floor. But, you know, I've been talking to some conservatives and they're not as sure as that. But certainly that is what a lot of conservative MPs and staffers are talking about. Is there someone else?

how many might go, what happens if they do? Let's talk about Pollyev's reaction to all of this. Let's start with Dantramont. How did he respond when Dantramant crossed the floor? Well, he more or less didn't. You know, he sort of gave a shrug to it, and it was left to his lieutenants to really reply to it. And, you know, they expressed disappointment.

Andrew Shear suggested that it was, you know, sort of dishonest that he had, Chris Dantraman had been kind of lying to his constituents because he ran as a conservative and then is crossing the floor. And that is sort of the typical thing that you hear about floor crossers from the party that they leave. Mr. Scher didn't feel that way when a liberal crossed the floor to the conservatives when he was the party leader.

And he actually made Leona Elleslev, the floor crosser, the deputy leader of the conservative party. So, you know, it tends to be in the eye of the beholder, the morality of a floor crosser. But also, you know, I think the sort of general feeling was amongst, many conservative MPs was disappointment that it had come to this and that maybe, you know, this should have or could have been avoided, a little bit of confusion, too, because, you know, in some cases they just don't really understand why he left.

What about Matt Jenneroo? Did Poliyev react differently for that situation? Yes. Well, the reaction was very different. And that's because Matt Jenneru didn't actually cross the floor. And, you know, there has been a lot of discussion about what was happening there. certainly Matt Genru had been talking to liberals about possibly crossing the floor. And in the end, he didn't cross the floor.

So the response from the Conservatives from Pierre Puella was much more laudatory. It was, you know, we wish him well in the future. There was the mention of the fact that even though he was going to resign, he was going to stay on for a few months, which seemed very bizarre. and then there was the strange statements from Mr. Jenneru that there had been no coercion involved. Which is a weird thing to say. It's a strange thing to say. But, of course, it had been rumors of coercion, and there still is lots of talk of whether he was coerced within the conservative party. You know, rumor mill is still going strong on that.

So what exactly has happened there still hasn't pushed completely into public view. Okay. Yeah. So if we look ahead to next week, Parliament will vote to pass the budget on Monday. And this is a confidence vote. So the government could fall and we'd be back in an election campaign. But given where the conservatives are right now, is that something they'd be ready for? So, yes, no, I suppose you would think that the conservatives don't want an election right now when their party leader seems to be on the back foot.

And, you know, there is some speculation that, you know, it's the liberals that want an election right now. because of that. What we still don't know, even now, less than a week away from that confidence vote, is how an election will be avoided. So it could be avoided in a couple of ways. The most obvious way is that some MPs, let's say the seven NDP MPs, decide to vote with the government. That's, you know, easy than there's seven more votes and the budget passes. So right now, with Chris Dantrema, the liberals have 170 votes in a three. 338 seat parliament. They're too short. One seat, by the way, is the speakers who doesn't vote unless there's a tie. That has happened before. But basically they need two more MPs or they

need four who don't vote. In the past, there would be, oh, no, these people just happen to not show up. We don't know where they went. But that's harder to do now because there's electronic voting and MPs can vote with their phones as long as they're in the country. So maybe some will have to leave the country for some kind of emergency. I don't know. But that has been the way these things have worked out in the past. You know, you could just have not a few people show up so that your party could vote against the budget, but you could not trigger the defeat of the government. We'll be right back. So, Campbell, it seems like there's a lot of turmoil among the conservatives right now. Can you

give us some context for when we've seen a party in this kind of situation? before? So often, you know, opposition parties are in turmoil after an election that they've lost, and there's division, right? So, you know, you've seen it after every previous election of the last few times that the conservative leader has lost their job. And back in the early 2000s, the Progressive Conservative Party, which was by then sort of a rump party and being led by Joe Clark, their MPs were being picked off by the governed and liberals sort of on a regular basis. There were several. And there was another occasion when there was, you know, high drama in a minority parliament about whether MPs would cross the floor to give the

government a majority or keep it in power. And that was back in 2005 when Paul Martin had a minority liberal government. And they were three seats short of passing their key votes in parliament. And a conservative MP, Belinda Stronick, she was a sign of the Magna Auto Parts family and she'd run for the conservative leadership and a conservative MP who crossed the floor just days before a crucial confidence vote when Prime Minister Paul Martin was in danger of seeing his government fall. We, the journalists, were all sitting in the national press theater for a press conference with the prime minister when we caught sight of her coming in the door and we all sort of gassed because we knew what it meant. It meant that

there was another liberal MP and the liberals would probably survive the next vote. And when Paul Martin said that the significance of it was not that they would win the vote, everybody in the room laughed because obviously the significance was they were about to win a vote and the government was going to stay in power and not be defeated. And a couple of days later, that's in fact what happened. There was a tie vote in the House of Commons and the speaker broke the tie and the government survived. You know, you mentioning this, this moment here with Blintestronic and then, of course, the moment in the present day of Dantramont, it makes me think about who knows what, when,

like what happens when it comes to crossing the floor? So what does happen behind the scenes for someone to actually cross the floor? Well, usually there's like a long period of courting, sometimes negotiation. We've seen some of that break into the open at times. You know, back in those Paul Martin days I was talking about 20 years ago, there was a conservative MP named Germont Graywall who was apparently talking to the liberals about crossing the floor. And Mr. Martin's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, went to have a private meeting with him to try to convince him to cross the floor. And Mr. Graywall recorded the conversation in which, you know, Paul Martin's chief of staff was saying, you know, if you do want to cross the floor, there will be a nice, fuzzy, warm welcome mat for you. that we will lay out. You know, nothing specific about we'll give you this job. And I think

some of those negotiations are sometimes that specific as it was the case of Belinda Stronick. But there was definitely a feeling of, we will make you very comfortable and good things will happen for you. And it was kind of an embarrassing moment for the liberal government sort of seemed to be begging a conservative MP to cross the floor. Yeah. So I mean, so let's talk about the reasons why MPs would cross the floor. What are the reasons behind why they would do it? Well, look, there's some obvious reasons, I think, that we could all sort of see that you might get a better job, you might have a better career if you crossed the floor. You know, the case of Belinda Strontic, who became the human resources minister, joined

the cabinet immediately when she crossed the floor, that's very unusual, but that was obviously something that she had to gain in her political career from crossing the floor. And I think when you're talking about opposition MPs crossing to the government side, there's often a feeling that maybe they could accomplish something more on the government side. And there's also the dissatisfaction issues with your own party and the people issues. And I think those are often pretty serious, right? They combine together. So you're feeling like perhaps, you know, you're not treated the way you deserve to be treated.

Or you don't like a group of people within your own party who, A, are either pushing you around or B, just you don't see eye to eye with. and you feel like you're not in the right club. You know, one case that is ideological was when the old progressive conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the new conservative party, Scott Bryson, who was a Nova Scotia MP, crossed the floor to the liberals. And his argument was that my party left me, not the other way around. Okay.

So I want to bring it back to the specifics of Pierre-Poliath's leadership. As of the time we're speaking, one conservative MP has crossed the floor, another has resigned, and it sounds like there is, at the very least, the possibility of more defections. So what does this mean for Pollyev and the conservatives right now? So it means a lot for both. In Mr. Paulyev's case, it could mean everything, right? So I was talking to some MPs yesterday. If there's no more floor crossers, this probably could be a situation that was an eruption that could eventually just go away over time, that he could sort of win over the people in his caucus, in his party. He already has, I think everyone thinks, control over the rank and file of the party enough that he can win the leadership review vote in January, that he

faces in January at a party convention. But then there are people, conservatives who will say, but if two more conservatives cross the floor of the liberals, and the liberals have a majority, then Pierre Pahliav is done. Because that changes a lot for the calculations for the conservative party. It means they're no longer trying to defeat a minority. government so they can have an election sometime in the next year or two. It means they're sitting on the opposition benches till 2029. And if Pierre-Polyev's management of his own caucus has led to the liberals gaining a majority after the election, I think that that will be a very damaging situation for them. Now, there's something in between, right? Like, so there could be no

floor crossers. There could be two floor crossers. And if there's just one, well, then there's going to be a lot of tension because then the liberals are one seat short of a majority. And whoever is thinking about crossing the floor, if anyone is, from the conservatives to the liberals at that point, well, they know that if they cross the floor, then they're going over to a majority government that will be in power for three and a half years, that they're not going to face an election campaign in their own writing that they have to worry about for three and a half years, that changes the calculations quite a lot. So, Campbell, it sounds like all this political drama has kind of overshadowed any news

out of the budget. So where do you think that leaves Mark Carney right now? Well, I think it's bought him some time. He was going to be under pressure this fall because he'd been making so many promises from the moment he got into politics. He'd been setting expectations high. We're going to focus on the economy. we're going to build Canada strong.

I mean, that was his slogan, build Canada strong. You know, he led people to believe that he would be the best person to negotiate with Donald Trump. And I think we all know that hasn't gone anywhere. Maybe it wasn't going to go anywhere good anyway. But certainly he had created a great deal of expectations. He's created the expectations that he would find ways to develop Canada's oil and gas resources and also protect the climate through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. You know, all these sort of expectations of what he's going to be able to do were coming due this fall.

There was, you know, impatience about it, in particular about the cost of living. Those things were supposed to be addressed in large part in the budget. At least he led us to believe that. Mark Carney did by calling it a generational budget. He'd built up the expectations. The budget itself didn't deliver, as they had implied, but nobody's asking too many questions about not living up to those expectations because the political system has been distracted into what's going on with the conservatives.

In other words, the conservatives who are supposed to hold the liberals government to account over their budget ended up saving the liberals over their budget, or at least giving them some comfort over their budget. This is what bought Mark Carney some time, right? Because at least until next spring, he's not likely to face another money bill budget after the one that he faces next week, not a big money bill budget. He's got some time to sort of live out, implement some of his promises. And, you know, this was going to be a pressure point from Mark Carney, and it is no longer.

Campbell, always great to have you on the show. Thanks so much. Thank you. That was Campbell Clark, the Globe's chief political writer. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Ali Graham mixed this episode. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer

and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.