Dimpee Brar is the Director of Engagement of Allies for a Strong Canada.Another day, another floor crossing. Canada is becoming so accustomed to the spectacle that it hardly even qualifies as news, more like the political equivalent of a maintenance alert. “Notice: our democracy will be temporarily unavailable while your elected representative updates their career prospects.”This time, the turncoat is Marilyn Gladu, formerly of the Conservative Party, now the latest ornament on Mark Carney’s Liberal Christmas tree. The timing is choice, less than a week before Monday’s three by-elections, nudging Carney’s Liberals to within a single seat of a majority. A majority that is, in the most important sense, false. It does not represent a change in the will of the electorate, but an expropriation of it.Most Conservatives will howl “undemocratic!” and not without reason. But I confess to a sentiment that will scandalize some of my compatriots. I am delighted to see these floor crossings. We do not want such people in the Conservative Party. It is better to know who we are not than to pretend we are what we are not.We should recall how Carney’s ascension occurred. It was the result of two converging collapses. First, the NDP imploded, ideologically exhausted, organizationally hollow, morally confused, its remnants absorbed into the Liberal Party, which now performs the strange trick of calling itself “progressive” while governing as the party of Bay Street with a conscience outsourced to HR departments. Second, the so-called “Red Tories,” clustered chiefly in Ontario, decided they preferred Mark Carney to Pierre Poilievre.These Red Tories, remember, are the self-appointed custodians of “moderation,” whose chief political passion is neither liberty nor justice but respectability. They were terrified of Donald Trump, mortally afraid of what they perceived as his tyrannical tendencies, a willingness to circumvent institutions, contempt for the will of the electorate, and a lack of reverence for the constitutional architecture that makes a republic possible.Very well. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that this fear was sincere. What, then, is Mark Carney doing now?.By their own stated standards, he is behaving precisely as the tyrant they claimed to dread. These floor crossings, deeply unpopular with the Canadian electorate, signal undisguised contempt for the electoral process. Voters sent Gladu to Ottawa as a Conservative. She now sits, without ever facing them, as a Liberal. This is not a change of mind; it is a confiscation of mandate. The citizens’ ballot has been repossessed by the political class.The Red Tories told us they feared a strong man who would bend institutions to his will, who would treat formal processes as inconveniences to be managed rather than obligations to be honoured. Yet when Carney treats Parliament like a chessboard and MPs like movable pieces whose purpose is to secure him a majority he did not earn, these guardians of institutional virtue nod gravely and call it “realism.” The great fear of tyranny was apparently not fear of tyranny as such, but fear of the wrong tyrant.For genuine Conservatives, the lesson ought not to be despair about how unfair all this is. Politics is always unfair; that is its nature. The lesson is discrimination. Those who bolt at the whiff of pressure, who exchange their party label like a necktie, are not unfortunate losses but overdue purges. If the Conservative Party is to mean anything more than “not Liberal,” it cannot be a holding pen for politicians who see it as a temporary parking spot in their career trajectory.There is another danger on the horizon, and it comes not from Liberals but from some within our own ranks: the not-so-hidden “conservatives” who would be happy to see Mr. Poilievre fail. They hope that, out of the rubble, a more “Conservative,” more “winnable,” and above all more pliable leader will emerge. Someone who will be admired at Toronto cocktail parties and never raise his voice on behalf of people who shop at Canadian Tire.What they do not grasp, captive as they are to their illusions, is that Poilievre represents the best possible leader of the Conservative Party under present conditions. Not in the sense of perfection, no politician is perfect, but in the sense of actuality: there is no viable alternative. To abandon him now is not simply to end his leadership; it is to liquefy the party’s coherence as such. No hidden saviour is waiting in the wings, only an assortment of mediocrities whose chief qualification is that they have never frightened anyone important.And here we come to the most elementary principle of politics that the respectable Right never seems to learn. It is never wise to take one’s political cues from one’s political enemies. The Liberals understand, with cold clarity, that there is no one “after” Poilievre who poses them anything like the same threat. Their entire strategic posture reflects this. Every defection they secure, every whisper campaign they sponsor, is aimed at encouraging Conservatives to do the one thing that would guarantee Liberal dominance for a generation: tear down their own leader..Yet for all the choreography, what strikes me most about Carney’s behaviour is not strength but weakness. This is not how a confident victor conducts himself. A man certain of his majority does not need to improvise one through defections. The desperate hunt for one more seat, one more converted MP, is the move not of a statesman building a durable coalition but of a manager trying to pad the quarterly numbers.The real anxiety behind Carney’s maneuvers lies elsewhere: in the looming renegotiation of the USMCA. He is under the pleasant illusion that he will outmaneuver Donald Trump at the bargaining table. Canadian elites never tire of this fantasy. They imagine themselves as the clever tutor to the American barbarian, the prudent technocrat who, with just the right briefing note, will guide the vulgar titan to enlightened policy.History is not on their side. Ask Greenland, Iran, Venezuela, the European Union, and NATO. Trump does not blink. He does not care about our editorial pages, our think tanks, or our moral disapproval. He cares about power, leverage, and advantage. Canada, with an economy already on life support, will not impress him by sending forth a central banker in a good suit mouthing the jargon of international finance.And as if that were not enough, Carney is staring down the barrel of something even more explosive at home: two potential provinces seeking independence. Alberta and Quebec are both now closer to independence than at any point in our history. Whether those independence movements actually succeed is not the point. The point is that, for the first time, two provinces are simultaneously flirting in earnest with the idea of leaving the Confederation. That is not a routine policy problem. That is a crisis of the regime..These are not storms that a fragile, cobbled-together Liberal coalition can easily endure. Carney was elected as the reassuring manager, the worldly technocrat who would steady the ship and impress foreign capitals. Instead, he finds himself facing a hostile superpower at the negotiating table and two sullen provinces wondering whether continued membership in Canada is worth the price of admission. He is the wrong man for a moment that demands conviction, clarity, and a willingness to confront hard truths about what this country is and what it wishes to be.What is likely to happen is brutal but simple. Carney will go into the USMCA negotiations promising Canadians that he will secure “a good deal” with Trump, something that both preserves access to the American market and flatters our self-image as an equal partner. He will promise national unity as well, soothing Quebec with constitutional language and Alberta with technical committees on resource development. He will fail on all three fronts. Trump will dictate terms suited to American interests, as he understands them, and Canada will accept, because the alternative is economic dislocation on a scale our pampered political class is incapable of imagining. At the same time, independence sentiment will grow, nourished by economic pain and contempt for Ottawa’s impotence.When that reckoning comes, the electorate will not rally around Carney in gratitude. He was elevated, explicitly, to manage Trump and to manage the federation. Not to preside over a managed divorce from the United States or a slow-motion unravelling of the country, but to avoid both. Once it becomes clear that he cannot deliver what he promised, the demos, fickle, yes, but not stupid, will turn. They will seek someone who did not delude them with technocratic fairy tales.That is where Poilievre will be waiting, if, and only if, Conservatives do not foolishly dispose of him now in a fit of elite panic. This is not the time to abandon our leader, but to hold the line. To do otherwise is to signal not only the end of his leadership but the death of the Conservative Party as a serious national force, and to hand Mark Carney a triumph unlike anything seen in Canadian political history: the spectacle of a ruling party that not only vanquished its opponents, but convinced them to commit suicide on its behalf.Dimpee Brar is the Director of Engagement of Allies for a Strong Canada.
