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Jesse Kline: Even this Avi Lewis super-fan is fleeing the NDP

For unprincipled politicians like Lori Idlout, Carney's pragmatism and Lewis' socialism are but two sides of the same coin

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Prime Minister Mark Carney may have just pulled off the coup de grâce in his plan to cobble together a majority government by exploiting the weak convictions of federal politicians.

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Elections are generally seen as a contest of ideas, with many Canadians voting for the party, or leader, that most closely aligns with their views, or offers a platform that conforms to their wants and needs. But the truth, as the deluge of floor-crossers in recent months has laid bare, is that many of the people who run for office are more interested in power than ideology.

Jesse Kline: Even this Avi Lewis super-fan is fleeing the NDP Back to video

When former Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout announced on Wednesday that she was joining the Liberal caucus, leaving the floundering New Democrats with a mere half dozen seats, she said she made her decision after “hearing clearly from Nunavummiut that this is a crucial moment for Nunavut and for all of Canada,” and praised Carney as “our first prime minister from the North.”

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It’s perhaps not the most ringing endorsement, but it’s a stark contrast from what she was saying a month ago, when she chided the Liberals for choosing “to ignore the concerns of Nunavummiut.”

In the past six months, she also accused the government of “looking to prevent justice” by appealing a lawsuit over medical experiments allegedly conducted on Inuit children, railed against the fast-tracking of a hydroelectric project by saying that, “Carney has pitted Indigenous nations against each other and infringed on Indigenous rights and title,” and said she was “disgusted by the Carney government’s response to Nunavut.”

To be fair, Idlout may have concluded that she would have more influence over policies that affect her territory from inside the government than she did with a party that couldn’t manage to garner enough votes to gain official party status. And indeed, in a statement announcing her defection, she said that, “We need a strong and ambitious government that makes decisions with Nunavut — not only about Nunavut.”

But less than a week before she jumped ship, she implicitly endorsed extremist NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis by speaking highly of him at his campaign event in Ottawa on March 5, after previously calling him “the strongest out of all the other leadership candidates.”

It’s hard to square the idea that anyone could see Carney and Lewis as interchangeable leadership options. Carney is too left-wing for my tastes, but looks like Attila the Hun compared to Lewis, whose election platform reads like a parody of a socialist agenda, including promises such as, “heat pumps for all,” “powerlines not pipelines,” “a public option for groceries” and “a public pharmaceutical manufacturer.”

The ideological crevasse between Carney’s pragmatism and Lewis’ socialism is simply too gaping to give Idlout the benefit of the doubt. What we have here is an elected official who places her own career above any principles she might once have had. And she is by no means the only one to do so.

In recent months, three Conservatives — Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma and Matt Jeneroux — have also crossed the floor. Ma had so little shame, he made an appearance at the Tory Christmas party, where he posed for a photo with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, before attending the Liberal holiday celebration the next day.

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The ideological hypocrisy of these floor-crossing MPs is matched only by Mark Carney, who is clearly trying to widen the party’s tent to piece together the majority he was denied in last year’s election and cement the Liberals as the “natural governing party” they always believed themselves to be.

Yet as Carney attempts to build energy infrastructure and diversify trade, he must now manage a caucus that includes two longtime Conservatives in d’Entremont and Jeneroux who made a career of criticizing the Liberals, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, who previously served as CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada, and Idlout, who tacitly endorsed one of the primary authors of the Leap Manifesto, which calls for a moratorium on fossil fuel infrastructure and increased restrictions on international trade.

At the very least, this should make for some interesting caucus retreats. But Canadians would be right to wonder whether their votes have any meaning at all, if those they entrust them to are so quick to abandon their principles and move to a party with a sometimes radically different agenda.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think crossing the floor is in any way illegitimate. In our Westminster-style parliamentary system, we vote for people, not parties, to represent us, and they must have the ability to do what they think is in the best interests of their constituents.

But it is sleazy, in a way that only politicians could pull off without any shame. And for that, voters would be well within their rights to send them packing when the next election eventually rolls around — and to look at other candidates with a more skeptical eye, to determine whether they are in this to build a better country, or simply to further their own careers.

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