Ottawa likes to call it “crossing the floor.” That phrase makes it sound like a Member of Parliament (MP) is simply changing desks.In real life, it is a voter’s seat being rebranded without permission.On November 4, Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont left the Conservative caucus and joined Mark Carney’s Liberal caucus. .OLDCORN: ‘Singh Hortons’ has become a national disgrace, no longer ‘Canada’s coffee shop’.On December 11, Ontario MP Michael Ma did the same. Those moves pushed Carney’s Liberals to within one seat of majority control in the 343-seat House of Commons.That is the key point. .In a minority Parliament, one defection is not a “personal choice.” It can change who runs committees, which bills survive, and how long the government lasts. It can also hand the governing party a near-majority it did not win on election day.There is an easy fix, which is to make floor-crossing MPs trigger an automatic byelection. Every time. No exceptions.No “independent” detours. No “cooling-off” period. No clever workaround where an MP resigns a caucus on Friday and joins another on Monday, while claiming to be “listening” in between. If you were elected under Party A and you want to sit with Party B, you vacate the seat and run again. Full stop..BROOKS: Behind the scenes of the BC Conservatives' leadership debacle.That standard fits how Canadians actually vote.Party labels have been on federal ballots since the 1972 election, after changes to election rules. It was a turning point that helped party brands dominate local races. Political scientist Alex Marland has argued that Canadian campaigns now treat many local candidates as background, while party leaders and national messaging do the heavy lifting.The research is even more blunt. A 2019 study on Canadian elections found that when all voters are considered together, local candidate evaluations are decisive for only about four percent of voters..To put that in language Canadians can easily understand, most people are voting for the hockey team jersey, not the jersey number.That reality matters in Markham–Unionville, where Ma won in April 2025 with 27,055 votes (50.7%) versus 25,133 (47.1%) for the Liberal candidate. That’s a difference of 1,922 votes. In that context, “the riding chose Michael Ma, regardless of party” is not a serious claim. The contest was close, polarized, and clearly party-driven..RUBENSTEIN: Ten years later, neither truth nor reconciliation.Now consider what Ma told Canadians when he flipped.In the Liberal Party statement announcing his move, Ma said he was joining the government caucus “after listening carefully to the people of Markham–Unionville in recent weeks.”Recent weeks? How many people could he have actually talked to? Enough to add 1,922 votes?.Let’s give Ma a month to talk to 1,922 voters. In 30 days, that would average just over 64 people per day. Did every single one of the 1,922 voters tell him they would now vote Liberal? Did Ma do that? I doubt it.A busy MP can do meet-and-greets, make calls, attend cultural events, and knock doors. Even then, you are talking about dozens or hundreds of conversations, not tens of thousands of ballots. Markham–Unionville had 53,414 valid votes in the most recent federal election. There is no plausible way to canvass a riding that size on an issue this big, in that little time, and then claim a moral mandate to hand the seat to a different party..SLOBODIAN: No coffee for you — Ottawa’s DEI Ramadan rules crossed the line.That is why the only honest test is a vote.Canadians are not naive about floor-crossing, either. An Angus Reid Institute survey in 2018 found 42% of Canadians said politicians leaving one party and joining another between elections should not be allowed, with 41% saying it is acceptable. Even when the country is split, the democratic answer is not to let MPs decide for everyone. It is to ask the voters..Parliament has seen proposals along these lines before. Private member’s Bill C-210 (41st Parliament) would have vacated a seat and triggered a byelection when an MP changed party affiliation. But it also included a loophole that it would not have vacated the seat if the MP chose to sit as an independent.That loophole should be closed.If the principle is that voters elected a party banner, then abandoning that banner should always reset the mandate. The seat belongs to the riding, not to the MP’s career plan, and not to the backroom math of a minority government trying to inch toward majority power..OLDCORN: Minister sworn in on Quran backs bill criminalizing Bible, other religious texts.Floor-crossing will always be dressed up in noble language of “unity,” “pragmatism,” “getting things done.” Fine. Run on it. Put it on a flyer. Debate it at the local community centre. Then let the people decide.Anything less is not courage. It is a mid-term switch that many voters will rightly see as a betrayal.
