After 12 months, five floor crossings and one Liberal convention this weekend in Montreal, Mark Carney is going to get his majority government. If the Liberals win the three byelections scheduled for next week, and they should, they’ll have 174 seats, enough to pass legislation without relying on the Speaker of the House of Commons or support from another party. Carney’s Liberals will also regain control of the parliamentary committees, which will allow the party to better shape and support the government’s agenda. For a prime minister who is clearly more comfortable operating as a chief executive than a parliamentary coalition builder, this is the moment he's been waiting for.

The majority didn’t come without a cost. The latest defection from the Conservative Party of Canada is also, by far, the most controversial. Marilyn Gladu, the MP for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, has a rich history of comments that seem pretty obviously out of step with Liberal values, whether it’s her bizarre theories about marijuana, her past appreciation of Donald Trump or her fondness of — and support for — the trucker convoy. It’s not hard to imagine the Liberal Party’s most progressive supporters taking a closer look at Avi Lewis’s NDP.

But that’s a cost I suspect Carney is more than willing to pay. His political success depends on Canadians continuing to believe that his is a different government than the one led by Justin Trudeau. Short of inducting Rex Murphy into the Order of Canada or professing his undying appreciation for Nickelback, there probably isn’t a better way to drive that essential point home than by welcoming someone like Gladu into his caucus. 

His political success also depends on suppressing Alberta’s separatist movement and defeating it soundly in any potential referendum. An Ontario MP isn’t going to turn the tides there on her own, of course, but recruiting someone who spent two decades at Dow Chemical (and is, in fact, the first female engineer elected to parliament) and who launched more than her share of missiles at the last Liberal prime minister can’t hurt. 

Neither can the fact that, according to Pollara’s latest “Alberta spotlight”, the prime minister has a plus-seven favourability rating in Alberta, just one point shy of CPC Leader Pierre Poilievre. He’s actually ahead of Poilievre by 14 points in Calgary and 30 points in Edmonton, which is both an indictment of the Conservative leader and an unusual endorsement of the Liberal one. Most importantly, perhaps, only 18 per cent of Albertans said they were “angry” towards Carney. Back in December 2024, by way of comparison, 48 per cent of Albertans told Pollara they were angry at his predecessor. 

The big question now is what Carney intends to do with all of his political capital. He’s already put a down payment on a deal with Alberta, one that includes both new pipelines and a renewed commitment to industrial carbon pricing, and it’s hard to imagine him walking away from that. He’s also made big bets on expanding trade relationships with India and China, pushing past concerns about foreign interference — and outright criminality — from those governments. And, of course, he has articulated the role that middle countries like Canada can play in the rapidly evolving global order. 

I suspect the first few months of his new majority government will look and sound the same, especially as Alberta embarks on a seemingly-inevitable separatist referendum campaign. His first and highest priority as the first Liberal prime minister from Alberta has to be preventing that movement from catching any more political tailwinds and a good way to do that is by acting — and governing — like the living reincarnation of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Expect more announcements and appointments, and maybe even another defection or two, that reflects that approach. 

That doesn’t mean abandoning Carney’s other objectives, which clearly — to me, anyways — still include embracing the broader trends around electrification and clean technology that have always interested and animated him. He’ll simply pursue them under the umbrellas of economic development and national sovereignty, an approach that offers far more political cover than climate ever did. 

But make no mistake: when it comes to Carney’s version of the Liberal Party of Canada, it’s economy first, economy last and economy always. There are periods in our recent past where that wouldn’t have resonated with voters, but we’re clearly not in one of them at the moment. Most Canadians are scared some kind of shitless right now, whether it’s about their own job, their own industry or the long-term prospects of their children and grandchildren. Carney’s job now, with three years left in a soon-to-be-majority mandate, is to address and allay those fears as quickly as he can. If he succeeds at it, another majority — and maybe a far bigger one — will almost certainly be his reward. 

© National Observer