Excellent post. Agreed Conservatives should not dump their leader. But I also think the threat of that happening is very small. I'm know a lot of Conservatives and I can't name you one who thinks the party would be better off with a Ford or a Houston. Poilievre is actually in the sweet spot for the party, which is a free markets conservative but not anti-union or so-con. He inspired a ton of people who don't normally vote and a lot who normally vote NDP. Yes he turned off a lot of older and female voters with his smug, mansplainy tone, but Mark Carney can seem arrogant too, and Pierre learned by the end of the campaign how to appear more likeable. He's not going anywhere.
I agree that Poilievre's conservatism is pretty tame overall and shouldn't turn off moderates if he can get through the propaganda narrative and conspiracy theories about the perpetual Hidden Agenda.
Remember, whatever leader the Conservatives have, Liberals and most of the media will re-calibrate to find "unacceptably far right". They did this with Harper (an incrementalist who didn't touch abortion or gay marriage), Scheer (because he's a religious Christian which isn't an acceptable religion to the left), and O'Toole (because he supported less aggressive forms of vaccine mandates and gun control, I think?).
Thank you both; Matt with a bad wing and Jenn with allergies and a lot of alcohol. I was flipping feeds as your feed did not have a ticker, with the seats like Juno , Rebel, CPAC, but my 13 year old wanted you guys on, all the time. He said he liked your energy and banter. As I write this, I am fearful a few feckless NDPers will cross the floor and we are screwed for 4 more years with a Liberal progressive government, bringing in policies eschewed by liberal democracies in Europe. Not one word about Portugal and Spain going dark yesterday when their net zero grid went down. Canada better get ready once Carnage Carney and his Eco Green Zealot wife take over. The irony, as she comes from a wealthy pig farm in the UK but is concerned about methane. Oh well, new referendum in Alberta started today.
Gavin, Big Daddy will morph into such an indie punk band, with the support and organisation of Gerry Butts and Katie . Not sure how they will play their instruments with the elbows in the air. Anyway, yes, bombastic comment for sure. It is tough to live another federal election where the election is called before the polls are closed in Western Canada.
Good point about the backup singers as it were, it'll be interesting to see whether the frontman keeps them around (I personally hope not). And yeah, as a BC-dweller, I'm glad I at least had Matt and Jen to watch during that brief, beautiful 15-minute window when we could pretend that western Canada mattered electorally.
I did not vote for Mark Carney. But I liked his acceptance speech. Carney has pulled the Liberal party not just to the centre, but to slightly the right of centre with his campaign promises. The commitment to making Canada into an Energy superpower, both conventional and clean, removing resource development red tape, along with interprovincial trade barriers, his message of seeking unity- struck a cord with this Western Canadian. He does not strike me as a politician, and he does not strike me as a fool.
There is a narrative out there that the Liberals are now a full progressive party and have absorbed the NDP. I don’t agree at all, I think the Liberals attempted a hard tack back to the centre, with a credible leader espousing nationalist language in a time of pressure, fear and uncertainty, and this won them the male boomer vote they needed. That brand of boomer does not vote NDP - but they would vote conservative. The Liberals did not win on their record, in fact they didn’t run on it at all, they ran from it. They won on Mark Carney, Donald Trump, a message of pragmatism, and a promise of wartime like national economic expansion.
The last 2 points no Conservative will disagree with. But most NDP voters will. It would be a massive and catastrophic mistake for the nation if the Liberals misread this. The NDP voters had no where to go. The durable centre of your party definitely does.
This is a once in a generation opportunity for Canada to ignore the fringes and govern the nation with an informal supermajority coalition between the Liberals and Conservatives based on the many shared visions and priorities they both have communicated. I expect both parties to take the opportunity
I have decided as a consequence to sign up for team Carney for a renewable 6 month term. Terms and conditions apply, and a breach of this agreement renders it null and void. The agreement is this. Govern on the platform you ran and won on, nothing else. No tricks and legislative poison pills that let you fake right and run left. No more wedge politics. No more culture war. No more ill conceived targets and mandates. Reach out, listen to, and make compromise with the West. Unify the country.
I encourage other Conservative voters to take the same approach.
A lot depends on you Prime Minister Carney. Godspeed.
Would continuing Trudeau's multi-billion-dollar gun confiscation program qualify as wedge politics and culture wars? Because if so your membership in Team Carney will likely run out on day one. To those affected by this absurd policy it is the equivalent of telling a lefty downtowner that you are going to close every abortion clinic and annul all the same-sex marriages.
I guess it's possible Carney will backtrack or kick the ball down the road for another 5 years but he recruited perhaps the most intense anti-gun activist in the country as an MP who won in a safe Quebec riding. I wouldn't be surprised if she eventually gets the Public Safety portfolio where hunters and sport shooters will be the one and only enemy as she has no time for crime, mental health, or actual gun safety, just confiscation as beginning and end.
That leaves me concerned as in one interview Carney was asked about crime and he replied, “you can’t talk about crime without talking about gun control”. I’m not a gun owner; however, I do not see legal gun owners as a problem in this country.
The Liberals' only response to crime is to punish non-criminals. It's one of like a half dozen issues that should be absolute deal-breakers for any Canadian thinking about voting for them, up there with uncontrolled immigration.
(Edit: half a dozen is being both generous and broad - I could easily come up with 20)
Yes it would. Unfortunately there are a lot of Trudeau era policies and laws that will need to be killed or not moved forward for Prime Minister Carney’s perceived platform pivot and message of unity to hold. I will need to see some quiet exits at minimum from some of these policies/positions, as two things cannot be true at the same time. Like I said, he’s got my long time Conservative vote for the moment. My 6 month agreement is renewable. I know what will probably happen - but I’m willing to set that aside and give him a fair shake.
$120B more deficit than Trudeau is hardly right of centre. I as a Conservative supporter am willing to give Carney a chance. I don’t detest him as I did the fake, pretentious, know-it-all Trudeau. If he brings back ministerial responsibility and tones down the empirical PMO he may not gain my support, but would gain my acceptance.
What exactly do you (and J. Singh) mean by a "supermajority"? Unlike some American circumstances, there is no such expression in a Parliament where anything requires a supermajority instead of just a majority.
Very good Chris! I’ve seen altogether too many posts gloating over Poilievre’s crushing defeat when almost half of the voting electorate supported them. We need to see our Prime Minister move immediately to send out the message of cooperation and collaboration that he signalled in the English debate. We need to see the Liberals and Conservatives working for the welfare of Canada and literally putting petty politics aside and we need the small people to mind their piece while those shared visions and priorities are pursued.
I feel remarkably nonplussed by the outcome of this election. None of the parties made a particularly compelling case for my vote, but it feels like all of the parties have received some punishment for their failings: the Liberals were denied a majority again and were stuck in the position of cleaning up their own mess, and Carney now has to show those much-touted technocratic chops. The Conservatives were jerks, blew a big lead after getting overconfident, and Poilievre lost his own seat. The NDP had been feckless and irresponsible props for the Liberals, and focused on chasing trivialities and contrived issues like "grocery price gouging". They lost official party status, and Jagmeet Singh lost his seat and resigned his leadership. The BQ got knocked back on their heels as well. The Greens evaded extinction, but are basically stuck in the same Elizabeth May limbo they've been in for decades.
I have to admit, as an ex-NDP voter, it's pretty disappointing to see "oh it's just fear of Trump" being used as the exclusive reason for NDP-to-Liberal drift. Singh is getting away with murder on this one.
The conservatives here will laugh at me for saying this, but the NDP is not as serious as it once was. It seems completely unmoored from any kind of firm ideological foundations, which means it ends up latching onto whatever half-baked policy trend comes up next. I mean, it should come as no surprise that Singh referenced supermajorities the other day - his politics are rooted in terminally online left-populism, obviously he would begin importing Americanisms (I think he was talking about a Green New Deal a few years ago as well). It's just not a very good sell when compared to the Ultimate Technocrat in an age where a lot of people have tremendous nostalgia for the technocracy of the 90s-00s, even with their misgivings.
Agreed entirely. As another ex-NDP voter, I'm hoping that this electoral obliteration gives them pause and encourages them to return to some more compelling pro-worker positioning rather than tiktok-addled neolib-lite.
To the tiktok-addled neolib-lite, must be added NDP's open adherence to entrenched Jew-hatred (aka antisemitism) and cheering and support of violent hatred cults. Some people do pay attention to what NDP supports and want no part of it.
They became a party of civil service unions and lost their ideological centre. Trades unions started supporting Conservatives because their platform talked to the traditional ‘working class’ concerns.
The math on a collapsed NDP made it nearly impossible to win . There are too many ridings where that liberal / NDP split meant a conservative win . Canada is conditioned to blame government for all their bad choices in life and expect the government to solve it . We have a much lower “ personal responsibility culture “ than America . As such , the party that believes in more regulations , more government, more offices , more spending , etc is going to win many more elections than it loses. We are not a conservative nation at heart over the long term .
My nomination for worst take on this election is the NDP lady from the anti-panel who kept going on about how you can't believe national polls and how the vaunted NDP ground game would get its voters out there in the ridings it could win. Turns out national trends has local consequences.
Trump's threats, Pollievre's reluctance to pivot and Carney-mania are probably the big three as you mentioned; but the fourth is the catastrophic collapse of the NDP.
Everyone know it would end in tears when they signed on with the 2021 Liberals, it always does for the junior partner. But I don't think 6% of the vote was in anyone's crystal ball.
And the left abandoned the NDP for a Liberal Party that is clearly shifting to the right from where Trudeau led them. That should have been their dream scenario! Instead, they're the ones assigned to wear the failure from the last dysfunctional parliament.
Please stop saying the ridiculous juvenile Elbow ups chant?
Can anyone please explain what/who votes by special ballots and is there no time restriction on when they have to be received in order to be counted in time for election night results?
First thing that all parties should decree is new election rules to avoid ballots with an extraordinary number of candidates like in Pollievre's riding. If they do not that will become the norm in the next election whenever that erupts!
A quick cure for that nonsense is to mandate a $10,000 deposit, which is forfeited if the candidate doesn’t garner at least x% of the vote. There is currently no deposit required, due to a court decision in Alberta, viz:
On October 25, 2017, the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta rendered its decision in Szuchewycz v. Canada (Attorney General), stating that the $1,000 deposit requirement for prospective candidates in federal elections infringes on section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides that: "Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein."
In order to run, you need the signatures of "at least 100 people who consent to your candidacy and: are qualified electors; and live in the electoral district where you intend to run" (from Step 4.4 of Political Entities / Tools for Candidates / "Becoming a Candidate" on the Elections Canada web site).
As far as I can tell, the reason that the Longest Ballot Committee can run so many candidates is that people can sign the nomination papers of as many candidates as they like, so they just have to find 100 people who are willing to sign the nomination papers of 80 candidates.
I think a good solution to this problem would be to say that any one qualified elector can only sign the nomination papers of one candidate.
Agreed & instead of 100 signatures why not 500 or 1000? A by-election in my riding a few years back had 40 odd people on the ballot which I thought was ridiculous at the time.
I'm in favour of electoral reform, but the long ballot thing isn't the way to go.
I don't think that it was to troll him. They wanted publicity, and there was far more publicity to be had by making the networks explain why the PM/Leader of the Opposition's riding still hadn't been determined by midnight or 1 am than would have been gained by delaying the results in some random backbencher's riding.
First off, thanks for a fantastic evening of coverage, even if - full disclosure - I occasionally switched to NHL hockey action, which was unarguably more exciting than watching the CBC election results site continually fail.
As an American, I view Canadian politics as an essential counterpoint to what I reluctantly face down here. I take from the result that rather than reflecting the US, Canada is choosing to kinda-sorta-in-a-very-Canadian way choose a third path with Carney getting a pretty solid minority government endorsement. Living in Maine with a lot of Quebecker friends makes me think the BQ will be far more Liberal friendly in this minority, especially on truly federal issues (trade, defense, foreign policy, industrial policy), and the NDP have no choice but to grant government to the Liberals while they reshape their own identity (RIP Jagmeet, who I feel like is the kind of integrity-filled real leader who always gets shot in the head in the bloodsport that is democratic electoral politics). Carney has a lot to prove - namely in ditching the entrenched losers who make up much of the Liberal thought police - but I've been a banker in both of the regimes he led as governor of the central bank, and he can do it.
As a hopeful future Canadian, I feel cautiously optimistic about where the confederation goes from here... which is better than I have felt in probably ten years. Pretty Boy Junior was an abomination. Just savoring the idea that his shadow is gone makes today feel good.
My continuing full freight subscription to The Line is assured. Keep up the great work and get some nap time in during the next few days.
But how can you get energy projects like much needed pipelines built when you’re relying on Dippers, the Bloc and your leader was a net zero zealot until the day before yesterday. I predict we get more of the same crappy policies from Carney as we got from Trudeau.
I predict PM Carney will fairly quickly start to mirror recently re-elected B.C. Premier Eby, walking back many of his big vote-buying promises, citing a variety of “changed” or “new” circumstances, all of which existed or were completely forseeable at the time the promises were made. I’m old, I’m female and my home value has appreciated considerably AND I AM VERY FOND OF PIERRE POILIEVRE! You want creepy? I give you Mark Carney (and his wife).
"Jenni’s guy won 1.1 million more votes in Ontario than Kory’s guy."
Did Jenni's guy win or nah? Remind me how Kory's guy did?
The only way this stat is useful or meaningful is if the same amount of Ontarians voted in the provincial election vs the federal elections. It was 45% for the provincial and 69% for the federal. More people voting = more votes in general. I'd be curious to see of there is some sort of math equation that could be used to actually compare the two numbers, but the raw numbers are kind of meaningless.
In any event, Dougie is the Premier and Mr. Polievre is the seatless (and apparently now homeless?) opposition leader. I suspect Polievre's team would trade bragging rights for victory.
Anti-votes don't count. Anti-candidates don't get elected to anti-seats to form anti-governments to enact anti-policies. The only thing that matters is who gets more pro-votes than any other individual candidate did.
As critical as I am of Poilievre, I think it is more the case that party leaders determine the level of voter turnout rather than voter turnout driving support for respective leaders. Ford's kind of campaign would only work in the context of opposition parties that themselves failed to drive turnout.
I think that's right. You work with the tools you've got, and while a direct apples to apples comparison is oh so tempting, there are too many variables (with the leader being a big one).
Kind of. The Ontario NDP ultimately suffered a lesser collapse than the federal NDP, but the ONDP vote went down significantly in just about every non-incumbent riding.
Perhaps one good reason to stick with Poilievre is to properly set the Conservative Party up for a Liberal “quickie” snap election to cynically seek a majority government. Eighteen months is the average length of a minority government isn’t it, and the months slip away quickly to produce a new leader and have that person in place for a snap call to the polls.
The NDP are on the stretcher with Code Blue alerts blaring across Canada. Leaderless and mired in a cycle of debt repayment problems, the Liberals just might savour the chance to call it. And, seeing how amping up the temperature by plying voters with fear works so well, national unity problems in Alberta and Quebec would be a tempting target to galvanize voters around.
This election confirms that today's Canada as a whole is somewhat left of center. Without a reasonable showing from the NDP or a successor party, the Liberals will win. The Conservatives will generally peak at around 40% and will struggle to move past that. This may eventually change as my generation dies off and the younger generations increasingly realize that the current system is working against them.
I think that the problem is that too many Canadians, and especially the older ones, are afraid. We are afraid of changes, we are afraid of taking on more responsibility for ourselves, we are afraid of not having our governments take care of us. Any suggestion of a smaller role for the state is scary.
And of course the Liberals play to these fears, in this election aided and abetted by Mr. Trump. But absent Mr. Trump, they would have found something else.
I suppose elderly Canadians know we have not been able to save anywhere near enough to pay for our own health care in our dotage if we wanted to have the services we currently get lavished on us for free. So we want the government to look after us. And the reason we haven't been able to save for ourselves is because all our working lives we were taxed to pay for health care being consumed then by those who were then old. Classic Ponzi scheme. And now that we boomers are largely retired and getting sick and frail, we expect to harvest in our turn the entitlements to the taxes paid by young working people now. Two things make this scary:
1) Medical advances continue to add to the menu of services today's elderly can expect to have provided free, which didn't exist when we were working. This is particularly in advances that allow expensive procedures to be done for people too old and frail to have major surgery.
2) There are just so damn many of us. And we haven't even hit the Alzheimer's and nursing home years yet. The people in that age group now are the ones born during the Depression and the Second World War, a small generation. You're having it easy right now, paying for them. Just you wait 5-10 years!
I think you have captured the essence of the conundrum well. I think it is worthwhile to recall that Harper was supposed to win in 2004 on the heels of Shawinigate and didn't until the following trip in 2006 with a minority.
Certainly the 7 successful NDP candidate's phones are ringing as Carney's team tries to get them to change their stripes. I don't think that's a winning strategy for their longevity in the H of C. Didn't do Jack Horner a lot of good in the late 70's if I recall?
I enjoyed last night's broadcas,t and Jen's follow up to my suggestion of an Asshole Canada coalition, for a war cabinet probably is more realistic. My two big questions for now are:
1) Will Carney have the garumba to punt the majority of Trudeau's gormless weasels? Will he be able to relegate Gibeault to somewhere where he can't piss off 3/4 of the population every time he speaks?, and
2) Which Alberta MPs in a safe seat have achieved their pension and are ready to take one for the boss?
If the CPC, whom I don't really support, wishes to capitalize on its gains this election they have to stop the wash, rinse and repeat cycle. They really should have kept O'Toole but . . . now they need to keep PP for at least one more election while learning from their mistakes or be doomed to fighting back from a poor position every time. At the very least we need a mature adult opposition and leader to hold Carney's feet to the fire for the benefit of the country.
Poilievre was perfectly poised to take out Trudeau in a peacetime election. (ie: the state of affairs that existed before November 5, 2024). (I, a lifelong liberal, probably would have stayed home in that election.)
But then two things changed:
a) the antics of Trump
b) Freeland's majestic knife to Trudeau's ribs which gave us Mark Carney
After that, it was over. The election was then about "who can best deal with Trump's unhinged demands", and unless Poilievre could get a PhD in Economics and years of central banking experience in a month, and make everyone forget that he himself was an apple-chomping populist, the answer was "Mark Carney".
All this monday morning quarterbacking about Poilievre's campaign misses the point. There was *no* campaign that Poilievre could have run that would have beaten Mark Carney in this moment. In some other moment, yes. But not this one.
A campaign that was about two weeks longer might have done the trick though, which speaks to how much of this national mood was artificial and how shit the Carney campaign was other than "between myself and Pierre I am the one who is least like Donald Trump, whose existence is the biggest and only issue for Canada for some reason".
A better take-down of Carney was certainly possible. Poilievre's team engaged in cheap character assassinations of Carney that helped to rile up the Conservative base but which had no persuasive power to any undecided voters. He could have done better at chipping at Carney's support by explaining how Carney is a character *type* in line with that of the Trudeau Liberals, as opposed to making the laughable claims that Carney was directly responsible for everything wrong in the Trudeau era. Poilievre behaved like a partisan clown even late in the campaign.
Thank you Matt and Jenn for the run up. Your podcast on Apr 25 was the best summary of this election I have heard.
Respectfully disagree that PP needs to stay.
As heartbroken as it is, this is now the 3rd (not the 1st or second) open net the conservatives have F*cked up and missed on. SNC lavalin, We charity, blackface, the disaster that was Trudeau, and they can't beat these bozos. This one should have been a tap in for birdie.
The liberals suck and they're weak. Carney is a fraud, surrounded by the same failing/destructive liberal team, and this will become very clear in the coming few weeks.
PP lost this election because of his supreme arrogance, creepiness, unlikability and his inability to stand up to Trump (or anything that is extreme RWNJ).
If the conservatives had an actually nice, normal person, to convey the same powerful criticisms and plans that the PC's campaigned on, with some shared spotlight and vision, with a spine to stand up to extreme right wing filth, I believe they would have won.
I really think the “PP is creepy “ is way offside as that word conjures some bad things. Come on …. You are manifesting something in your head or listening to online smears . By all legit accounts he is a good husband and dad .
Creepy: causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease.
The dictionary definition of "creepy" almost perfectly aligns with what the average Poilievre-disliker was saying about him - that they were fearful of him/uneasy with the idea of him as PM.
You can pull the dictionary all you want but that is not what is implied when you call a male creepy . Language does not exist solely in a dictionary. You know exactly what you meant :)
Of course! Not trying to be ornery or nitpicky, this one just struck a chord because I have literally been told "he just gives me the creeps" multiple times, and each time it was clarified as being about them not trusting him/his plans as a politician, not that they actually thought ill of his character.
He lost this election because of a fear-induced near-total NDP collapse. Basic math.
But maybe you think Jean Charest would have done better. And neither Justin Trudeau nor Mark Carney are "nice normal people".
"Inability to stand up to Trump". Trump wanted Mark Carney to win. Theories are all over the place as to why that is, but his intentions there were pretty clear. There isn't going to be much standing up to Trump going on from Our PM except the purely performative and cleared with Donald ahead of time.
Excellent post. Agreed Conservatives should not dump their leader. But I also think the threat of that happening is very small. I'm know a lot of Conservatives and I can't name you one who thinks the party would be better off with a Ford or a Houston. Poilievre is actually in the sweet spot for the party, which is a free markets conservative but not anti-union or so-con. He inspired a ton of people who don't normally vote and a lot who normally vote NDP. Yes he turned off a lot of older and female voters with his smug, mansplainy tone, but Mark Carney can seem arrogant too, and Pierre learned by the end of the campaign how to appear more likeable. He's not going anywhere.
I agree that Poilievre's conservatism is pretty tame overall and shouldn't turn off moderates if he can get through the propaganda narrative and conspiracy theories about the perpetual Hidden Agenda.
Remember, whatever leader the Conservatives have, Liberals and most of the media will re-calibrate to find "unacceptably far right". They did this with Harper (an incrementalist who didn't touch abortion or gay marriage), Scheer (because he's a religious Christian which isn't an acceptable religion to the left), and O'Toole (because he supported less aggressive forms of vaccine mandates and gun control, I think?).
Thank you both; Matt with a bad wing and Jenn with allergies and a lot of alcohol. I was flipping feeds as your feed did not have a ticker, with the seats like Juno , Rebel, CPAC, but my 13 year old wanted you guys on, all the time. He said he liked your energy and banter. As I write this, I am fearful a few feckless NDPers will cross the floor and we are screwed for 4 more years with a Liberal progressive government, bringing in policies eschewed by liberal democracies in Europe. Not one word about Portugal and Spain going dark yesterday when their net zero grid went down. Canada better get ready once Carnage Carney and his Eco Green Zealot wife take over. The irony, as she comes from a wealthy pig farm in the UK but is concerned about methane. Oh well, new referendum in Alberta started today.
"Carnage Carney and his Eco Green Zealot wife"..great indie punk band name.
Consider dialing back on the kool-aid maybe?
Dialing back on the kool-aid should be you. KS is spot on.
Gavin, Big Daddy will morph into such an indie punk band, with the support and organisation of Gerry Butts and Katie . Not sure how they will play their instruments with the elbows in the air. Anyway, yes, bombastic comment for sure. It is tough to live another federal election where the election is called before the polls are closed in Western Canada.
Finally, a comment actually worth thinking about!
Good point about the backup singers as it were, it'll be interesting to see whether the frontman keeps them around (I personally hope not). And yeah, as a BC-dweller, I'm glad I at least had Matt and Jen to watch during that brief, beautiful 15-minute window when we could pretend that western Canada mattered electorally.
I did not vote for Mark Carney. But I liked his acceptance speech. Carney has pulled the Liberal party not just to the centre, but to slightly the right of centre with his campaign promises. The commitment to making Canada into an Energy superpower, both conventional and clean, removing resource development red tape, along with interprovincial trade barriers, his message of seeking unity- struck a cord with this Western Canadian. He does not strike me as a politician, and he does not strike me as a fool.
There is a narrative out there that the Liberals are now a full progressive party and have absorbed the NDP. I don’t agree at all, I think the Liberals attempted a hard tack back to the centre, with a credible leader espousing nationalist language in a time of pressure, fear and uncertainty, and this won them the male boomer vote they needed. That brand of boomer does not vote NDP - but they would vote conservative. The Liberals did not win on their record, in fact they didn’t run on it at all, they ran from it. They won on Mark Carney, Donald Trump, a message of pragmatism, and a promise of wartime like national economic expansion.
The last 2 points no Conservative will disagree with. But most NDP voters will. It would be a massive and catastrophic mistake for the nation if the Liberals misread this. The NDP voters had no where to go. The durable centre of your party definitely does.
This is a once in a generation opportunity for Canada to ignore the fringes and govern the nation with an informal supermajority coalition between the Liberals and Conservatives based on the many shared visions and priorities they both have communicated. I expect both parties to take the opportunity
I have decided as a consequence to sign up for team Carney for a renewable 6 month term. Terms and conditions apply, and a breach of this agreement renders it null and void. The agreement is this. Govern on the platform you ran and won on, nothing else. No tricks and legislative poison pills that let you fake right and run left. No more wedge politics. No more culture war. No more ill conceived targets and mandates. Reach out, listen to, and make compromise with the West. Unify the country.
I encourage other Conservative voters to take the same approach.
A lot depends on you Prime Minister Carney. Godspeed.
I appreciate this. A lot of bitter Conservative voters appear to hate the liberals more than they love Canada.
Whereas the Liberals under Trudeau simply hated Canada, and sought at every turn to remake it according to their progressive preference.
Let's see if they change their tune under Carney.
Would continuing Trudeau's multi-billion-dollar gun confiscation program qualify as wedge politics and culture wars? Because if so your membership in Team Carney will likely run out on day one. To those affected by this absurd policy it is the equivalent of telling a lefty downtowner that you are going to close every abortion clinic and annul all the same-sex marriages.
I guess it's possible Carney will backtrack or kick the ball down the road for another 5 years but he recruited perhaps the most intense anti-gun activist in the country as an MP who won in a safe Quebec riding. I wouldn't be surprised if she eventually gets the Public Safety portfolio where hunters and sport shooters will be the one and only enemy as she has no time for crime, mental health, or actual gun safety, just confiscation as beginning and end.
That leaves me concerned as in one interview Carney was asked about crime and he replied, “you can’t talk about crime without talking about gun control”. I’m not a gun owner; however, I do not see legal gun owners as a problem in this country.
The Liberals' only response to crime is to punish non-criminals. It's one of like a half dozen issues that should be absolute deal-breakers for any Canadian thinking about voting for them, up there with uncontrolled immigration.
(Edit: half a dozen is being both generous and broad - I could easily come up with 20)
>The Liberals' only response to crime is to punish non-criminals
And *not* punishing criminals is the other half of that mindset.
Yes it would. Unfortunately there are a lot of Trudeau era policies and laws that will need to be killed or not moved forward for Prime Minister Carney’s perceived platform pivot and message of unity to hold. I will need to see some quiet exits at minimum from some of these policies/positions, as two things cannot be true at the same time. Like I said, he’s got my long time Conservative vote for the moment. My 6 month agreement is renewable. I know what will probably happen - but I’m willing to set that aside and give him a fair shake.
$120B more deficit than Trudeau is hardly right of centre. I as a Conservative supporter am willing to give Carney a chance. I don’t detest him as I did the fake, pretentious, know-it-all Trudeau. If he brings back ministerial responsibility and tones down the empirical PMO he may not gain my support, but would gain my acceptance.
“$120B more deficit than Trudeau is hardly right of centre.”
I agree, the budget is a major issue for me. Unfortunately, the conservatives did not have the courage to present one that was that much better.
...... imperial PMO ..... or ....... imperious PMO ...... or ..... tyrannical PMO ....
What exactly do you (and J. Singh) mean by a "supermajority"? Unlike some American circumstances, there is no such expression in a Parliament where anything requires a supermajority instead of just a majority.
Generally anything north of 80% gets referred to as a supermajority. In American politics I think it’s 66%?
I’m speaking from a moral standpoint rather than a legal one in a sense
Very good Chris! I’ve seen altogether too many posts gloating over Poilievre’s crushing defeat when almost half of the voting electorate supported them. We need to see our Prime Minister move immediately to send out the message of cooperation and collaboration that he signalled in the English debate. We need to see the Liberals and Conservatives working for the welfare of Canada and literally putting petty politics aside and we need the small people to mind their piece while those shared visions and priorities are pursued.
I feel remarkably nonplussed by the outcome of this election. None of the parties made a particularly compelling case for my vote, but it feels like all of the parties have received some punishment for their failings: the Liberals were denied a majority again and were stuck in the position of cleaning up their own mess, and Carney now has to show those much-touted technocratic chops. The Conservatives were jerks, blew a big lead after getting overconfident, and Poilievre lost his own seat. The NDP had been feckless and irresponsible props for the Liberals, and focused on chasing trivialities and contrived issues like "grocery price gouging". They lost official party status, and Jagmeet Singh lost his seat and resigned his leadership. The BQ got knocked back on their heels as well. The Greens evaded extinction, but are basically stuck in the same Elizabeth May limbo they've been in for decades.
I have to admit, as an ex-NDP voter, it's pretty disappointing to see "oh it's just fear of Trump" being used as the exclusive reason for NDP-to-Liberal drift. Singh is getting away with murder on this one.
The conservatives here will laugh at me for saying this, but the NDP is not as serious as it once was. It seems completely unmoored from any kind of firm ideological foundations, which means it ends up latching onto whatever half-baked policy trend comes up next. I mean, it should come as no surprise that Singh referenced supermajorities the other day - his politics are rooted in terminally online left-populism, obviously he would begin importing Americanisms (I think he was talking about a Green New Deal a few years ago as well). It's just not a very good sell when compared to the Ultimate Technocrat in an age where a lot of people have tremendous nostalgia for the technocracy of the 90s-00s, even with their misgivings.
Agreed entirely. As another ex-NDP voter, I'm hoping that this electoral obliteration gives them pause and encourages them to return to some more compelling pro-worker positioning rather than tiktok-addled neolib-lite.
To the tiktok-addled neolib-lite, must be added NDP's open adherence to entrenched Jew-hatred (aka antisemitism) and cheering and support of violent hatred cults. Some people do pay attention to what NDP supports and want no part of it.
They became a party of civil service unions and lost their ideological centre. Trades unions started supporting Conservatives because their platform talked to the traditional ‘working class’ concerns.
The math on a collapsed NDP made it nearly impossible to win . There are too many ridings where that liberal / NDP split meant a conservative win . Canada is conditioned to blame government for all their bad choices in life and expect the government to solve it . We have a much lower “ personal responsibility culture “ than America . As such , the party that believes in more regulations , more government, more offices , more spending , etc is going to win many more elections than it loses. We are not a conservative nation at heart over the long term .
Depends which part of the country you are talking about.
Agree! That’s the major difference between East and West and rural versus urban.
Perfect comment. Thank you
My nomination for worst take on this election is the NDP lady from the anti-panel who kept going on about how you can't believe national polls and how the vaunted NDP ground game would get its voters out there in the ridings it could win. Turns out national trends has local consequences.
Trump's threats, Pollievre's reluctance to pivot and Carney-mania are probably the big three as you mentioned; but the fourth is the catastrophic collapse of the NDP.
Everyone know it would end in tears when they signed on with the 2021 Liberals, it always does for the junior partner. But I don't think 6% of the vote was in anyone's crystal ball.
And the left abandoned the NDP for a Liberal Party that is clearly shifting to the right from where Trudeau led them. That should have been their dream scenario! Instead, they're the ones assigned to wear the failure from the last dysfunctional parliament.
Did Carney have any policies that indicated a shift to the right?
All I remember is rhetoric about building and getting things done, but keeping C-69 will ensure that things don't get built or done.
He's going to implement C-63 which is so far left it is over the horizon to me.
Please stop saying the ridiculous juvenile Elbow ups chant?
Can anyone please explain what/who votes by special ballots and is there no time restriction on when they have to be received in order to be counted in time for election night results?
First thing that all parties should decree is new election rules to avoid ballots with an extraordinary number of candidates like in Pollievre's riding. If they do not that will become the norm in the next election whenever that erupts!
A quick cure for that nonsense is to mandate a $10,000 deposit, which is forfeited if the candidate doesn’t garner at least x% of the vote. There is currently no deposit required, due to a court decision in Alberta, viz:
On October 25, 2017, the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta rendered its decision in Szuchewycz v. Canada (Attorney General), stating that the $1,000 deposit requirement for prospective candidates in federal elections infringes on section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides that: "Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein."
Notwithstanding clause, anybody? :-)
In order to run, you need the signatures of "at least 100 people who consent to your candidacy and: are qualified electors; and live in the electoral district where you intend to run" (from Step 4.4 of Political Entities / Tools for Candidates / "Becoming a Candidate" on the Elections Canada web site).
As far as I can tell, the reason that the Longest Ballot Committee can run so many candidates is that people can sign the nomination papers of as many candidates as they like, so they just have to find 100 people who are willing to sign the nomination papers of 80 candidates.
I think a good solution to this problem would be to say that any one qualified elector can only sign the nomination papers of one candidate.
Agreed & instead of 100 signatures why not 500 or 1000? A by-election in my riding a few years back had 40 odd people on the ballot which I thought was ridiculous at the time.
I'm in favour of electoral reform, but the long ballot thing isn't the way to go.
Not disagreeing with you on the long ballot in PPs riding to troll him, but he didn’t lose because of that silliness
I don't think that it was to troll him. They wanted publicity, and there was far more publicity to be had by making the networks explain why the PM/Leader of the Opposition's riding still hadn't been determined by midnight or 1 am than would have been gained by delaying the results in some random backbencher's riding.
First off, thanks for a fantastic evening of coverage, even if - full disclosure - I occasionally switched to NHL hockey action, which was unarguably more exciting than watching the CBC election results site continually fail.
As an American, I view Canadian politics as an essential counterpoint to what I reluctantly face down here. I take from the result that rather than reflecting the US, Canada is choosing to kinda-sorta-in-a-very-Canadian way choose a third path with Carney getting a pretty solid minority government endorsement. Living in Maine with a lot of Quebecker friends makes me think the BQ will be far more Liberal friendly in this minority, especially on truly federal issues (trade, defense, foreign policy, industrial policy), and the NDP have no choice but to grant government to the Liberals while they reshape their own identity (RIP Jagmeet, who I feel like is the kind of integrity-filled real leader who always gets shot in the head in the bloodsport that is democratic electoral politics). Carney has a lot to prove - namely in ditching the entrenched losers who make up much of the Liberal thought police - but I've been a banker in both of the regimes he led as governor of the central bank, and he can do it.
As a hopeful future Canadian, I feel cautiously optimistic about where the confederation goes from here... which is better than I have felt in probably ten years. Pretty Boy Junior was an abomination. Just savoring the idea that his shadow is gone makes today feel good.
My continuing full freight subscription to The Line is assured. Keep up the great work and get some nap time in during the next few days.
1) Gosh. Where in the Jagmeets behaviour as NDP leader did you see integrity ??
2) Conflict Of Interest Marx Carney with Profitably Flexible Ethics is a proponent of thought police himself.
But how can you get energy projects like much needed pipelines built when you’re relying on Dippers, the Bloc and your leader was a net zero zealot until the day before yesterday. I predict we get more of the same crappy policies from Carney as we got from Trudeau.
I predict PM Carney will fairly quickly start to mirror recently re-elected B.C. Premier Eby, walking back many of his big vote-buying promises, citing a variety of “changed” or “new” circumstances, all of which existed or were completely forseeable at the time the promises were made. I’m old, I’m female and my home value has appreciated considerably AND I AM VERY FOND OF PIERRE POILIEVRE! You want creepy? I give you Mark Carney (and his wife).
"Jenni’s guy won 1.1 million more votes in Ontario than Kory’s guy."
Did Jenni's guy win or nah? Remind me how Kory's guy did?
The only way this stat is useful or meaningful is if the same amount of Ontarians voted in the provincial election vs the federal elections. It was 45% for the provincial and 69% for the federal. More people voting = more votes in general. I'd be curious to see of there is some sort of math equation that could be used to actually compare the two numbers, but the raw numbers are kind of meaningless.
In any event, Dougie is the Premier and Mr. Polievre is the seatless (and apparently now homeless?) opposition leader. I suspect Polievre's team would trade bragging rights for victory.
You don't need advanced math. 1.1 million more people got up off the couch and went to vote for Poilievre.
Here are the numbers:
Ontario provincial election 2025: Ford 2.2 million, anti-Ford 2.9 million.
Federal election 2025 in Ontario: Poilievre 3.3 million, anti-Poilievre 4.3 million.
Therefore, 1.4 million more people got up off the couch to vote against Poilievre than got up off the couch to vote against Ford.
Anti-votes don't count. Anti-candidates don't get elected to anti-seats to form anti-governments to enact anti-policies. The only thing that matters is who gets more pro-votes than any other individual candidate did.
As critical as I am of Poilievre, I think it is more the case that party leaders determine the level of voter turnout rather than voter turnout driving support for respective leaders. Ford's kind of campaign would only work in the context of opposition parties that themselves failed to drive turnout.
I think that's right. You work with the tools you've got, and while a direct apples to apples comparison is oh so tempting, there are too many variables (with the leader being a big one).
Was Kory’s guy running against a collapsing NDP, yah or nah?
Kind of. The Ontario NDP ultimately suffered a lesser collapse than the federal NDP, but the ONDP vote went down significantly in just about every non-incumbent riding.
Perhaps one good reason to stick with Poilievre is to properly set the Conservative Party up for a Liberal “quickie” snap election to cynically seek a majority government. Eighteen months is the average length of a minority government isn’t it, and the months slip away quickly to produce a new leader and have that person in place for a snap call to the polls.
The NDP are on the stretcher with Code Blue alerts blaring across Canada. Leaderless and mired in a cycle of debt repayment problems, the Liberals just might savour the chance to call it. And, seeing how amping up the temperature by plying voters with fear works so well, national unity problems in Alberta and Quebec would be a tempting target to galvanize voters around.
This election confirms that today's Canada as a whole is somewhat left of center. Without a reasonable showing from the NDP or a successor party, the Liberals will win. The Conservatives will generally peak at around 40% and will struggle to move past that. This may eventually change as my generation dies off and the younger generations increasingly realize that the current system is working against them.
I think that the problem is that too many Canadians, and especially the older ones, are afraid. We are afraid of changes, we are afraid of taking on more responsibility for ourselves, we are afraid of not having our governments take care of us. Any suggestion of a smaller role for the state is scary.
And of course the Liberals play to these fears, in this election aided and abetted by Mr. Trump. But absent Mr. Trump, they would have found something else.
I suppose elderly Canadians know we have not been able to save anywhere near enough to pay for our own health care in our dotage if we wanted to have the services we currently get lavished on us for free. So we want the government to look after us. And the reason we haven't been able to save for ourselves is because all our working lives we were taxed to pay for health care being consumed then by those who were then old. Classic Ponzi scheme. And now that we boomers are largely retired and getting sick and frail, we expect to harvest in our turn the entitlements to the taxes paid by young working people now. Two things make this scary:
1) Medical advances continue to add to the menu of services today's elderly can expect to have provided free, which didn't exist when we were working. This is particularly in advances that allow expensive procedures to be done for people too old and frail to have major surgery.
2) There are just so damn many of us. And we haven't even hit the Alzheimer's and nursing home years yet. The people in that age group now are the ones born during the Depression and the Second World War, a small generation. You're having it easy right now, paying for them. Just you wait 5-10 years!
Interesting that what you say drove older Canadians to the Liberals used to drive older Canadians to the Conservatives.
I think you have captured the essence of the conundrum well. I think it is worthwhile to recall that Harper was supposed to win in 2004 on the heels of Shawinigate and didn't until the following trip in 2006 with a minority.
Certainly the 7 successful NDP candidate's phones are ringing as Carney's team tries to get them to change their stripes. I don't think that's a winning strategy for their longevity in the H of C. Didn't do Jack Horner a lot of good in the late 70's if I recall?
I enjoyed last night's broadcas,t and Jen's follow up to my suggestion of an Asshole Canada coalition, for a war cabinet probably is more realistic. My two big questions for now are:
1) Will Carney have the garumba to punt the majority of Trudeau's gormless weasels? Will he be able to relegate Gibeault to somewhere where he can't piss off 3/4 of the population every time he speaks?, and
2) Which Alberta MPs in a safe seat have achieved their pension and are ready to take one for the boss?
If the CPC, whom I don't really support, wishes to capitalize on its gains this election they have to stop the wash, rinse and repeat cycle. They really should have kept O'Toole but . . . now they need to keep PP for at least one more election while learning from their mistakes or be doomed to fighting back from a poor position every time. At the very least we need a mature adult opposition and leader to hold Carney's feet to the fire for the benefit of the country.
If the criteria is a safe seat, and a current MP has served long enough... Take Blaine Calkins. Please.
Re (2): There are several- in my area for example, Dane Lloyd and Michael Cooper. Everyone has their price; they're young, with lots of runway.
Poilievre was perfectly poised to take out Trudeau in a peacetime election. (ie: the state of affairs that existed before November 5, 2024). (I, a lifelong liberal, probably would have stayed home in that election.)
But then two things changed:
a) the antics of Trump
b) Freeland's majestic knife to Trudeau's ribs which gave us Mark Carney
After that, it was over. The election was then about "who can best deal with Trump's unhinged demands", and unless Poilievre could get a PhD in Economics and years of central banking experience in a month, and make everyone forget that he himself was an apple-chomping populist, the answer was "Mark Carney".
All this monday morning quarterbacking about Poilievre's campaign misses the point. There was *no* campaign that Poilievre could have run that would have beaten Mark Carney in this moment. In some other moment, yes. But not this one.
A campaign that was about two weeks longer might have done the trick though, which speaks to how much of this national mood was artificial and how shit the Carney campaign was other than "between myself and Pierre I am the one who is least like Donald Trump, whose existence is the biggest and only issue for Canada for some reason".
A better take-down of Carney was certainly possible. Poilievre's team engaged in cheap character assassinations of Carney that helped to rile up the Conservative base but which had no persuasive power to any undecided voters. He could have done better at chipping at Carney's support by explaining how Carney is a character *type* in line with that of the Trudeau Liberals, as opposed to making the laughable claims that Carney was directly responsible for everything wrong in the Trudeau era. Poilievre behaved like a partisan clown even late in the campaign.
Thank you Matt and Jenn for the run up. Your podcast on Apr 25 was the best summary of this election I have heard.
Respectfully disagree that PP needs to stay.
As heartbroken as it is, this is now the 3rd (not the 1st or second) open net the conservatives have F*cked up and missed on. SNC lavalin, We charity, blackface, the disaster that was Trudeau, and they can't beat these bozos. This one should have been a tap in for birdie.
The liberals suck and they're weak. Carney is a fraud, surrounded by the same failing/destructive liberal team, and this will become very clear in the coming few weeks.
PP lost this election because of his supreme arrogance, creepiness, unlikability and his inability to stand up to Trump (or anything that is extreme RWNJ).
If the conservatives had an actually nice, normal person, to convey the same powerful criticisms and plans that the PC's campaigned on, with some shared spotlight and vision, with a spine to stand up to extreme right wing filth, I believe they would have won.
I really think the “PP is creepy “ is way offside as that word conjures some bad things. Come on …. You are manifesting something in your head or listening to online smears . By all legit accounts he is a good husband and dad .
Creepy: causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease.
The dictionary definition of "creepy" almost perfectly aligns with what the average Poilievre-disliker was saying about him - that they were fearful of him/uneasy with the idea of him as PM.
You can pull the dictionary all you want but that is not what is implied when you call a male creepy . Language does not exist solely in a dictionary. You know exactly what you meant :)
Of course! Not trying to be ornery or nitpicky, this one just struck a chord because I have literally been told "he just gives me the creeps" multiple times, and each time it was clarified as being about them not trusting him/his plans as a politician, not that they actually thought ill of his character.
He lost this election because of a fear-induced near-total NDP collapse. Basic math.
But maybe you think Jean Charest would have done better. And neither Justin Trudeau nor Mark Carney are "nice normal people".
"Inability to stand up to Trump". Trump wanted Mark Carney to win. Theories are all over the place as to why that is, but his intentions there were pretty clear. There isn't going to be much standing up to Trump going on from Our PM except the purely performative and cleared with Donald ahead of time.
On PP you are just so flamin' wrong. Do not be an uncritical absorbent of focused propaganda and misinformation.
"If the conservatives had an actually nice, normal person..."
Michael Chong refused to run for the leadership because he is a nice, normal person.
Yes, but he also "read the room" correctly - it was not the right time for him- and so took a pass.