By-election wins confirm right wing Liberal majority

Liberal wins in three April 13th by-elections—University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, both in Toronto, and Terrebonne, a suburb of Montreal—have given Carney's Liberals a razor thin majority in Parliament. This continues their momentum: since last November, four Conservative MPs and one NDP MP have crossed the floor to join the Liberals. 

 

The most recent Tory turncoat is Marilyn Gladu, who has maintained far-right convoy connections and espouses extremely social conservative views. This shows how right-wing the Liberals are under Carney. With a majority, the Liberals will be able to push their agenda through more rapidly, though there is no real opposition to military spending increases or increasing racist border controls from the Tories. The Liberals also enjoy Tory support for ramming projects through on Indigenous land without consent, cutting federal public service jobs and privatizing public services.

 

As Liberal policies push farther right, the far-right will gain ground among those remaining with the Conservatives. There is a clear choice ahead for the NDP. If the new Lewis leadership continues to allow the NDP to drift rightward in their wake, they will continue to wallow. If they forge a clear push leftwards, standing up for public healthcare and building workers' resistance to the Carney agenda, they can begin to turn the tide. But rather than building momentum by mobilizing in the base of the party amongst activists pushing for change, Lewis said during the by-election campaigns that he will be meeting with provincial NDP leaders to work on their differences.

 

Now that Carney has a majority, will he prorogue Parliament so that the Liberals can force their majority into the Parliamentary committees? 

 

University-Rosedale

 

In this Toronto riding, Liberal candidate Danielle Martin won over 64% of the vote on Monday night, with the NDP's Serena Purdy in second with over 18% and the Conservative candidate coming in third. Martin has been an active opponent of healthcare privatization as a family doctor and founder of Canadian Physicians for Medicare. Her election demonstrates that her constituents oppose the healthcare privatization agenda exemplified by Doug Ford and Danielle Smith. But it is clear that the Carney Liberals will not enforce the Canada Health Act and defend public healthcare. Martin will not be able to turn the tide against healthcare privatization on her own in a Liberal caucus that is allowing the Ontario and Alberta attacks to happen.

 

The NDP's Purdy did well, doubling her vote percentage from the 2025 election and tripling the overall NDP percentage. Her credentials as a community activist in Kensington Market and on fighting healthcare privatization clearly won her votes and there may have been a bump from the new NDP leadership. But the NDP will need to do much more to be seen as a credible left alternative.

 

Scarborough Southwest

 

While the outcome of the race in this riding was unsurprising (barring a brief orange stint by Dan Harris from 2011-2015, Scarborough Southwest has been solidly red since its formation in 1997), the path to last night’s result was anything but.

 

Doly Begum, the newly-minted Liberal candidate, finished with a strong 70% of the vote, with Conservative Diana Filipova in second at 18% and the NDP’s Fatima Shaban a distant third at only 6%. Begum, who grew up in Scarborough, has long been a popular politician in the riding, though under a notably different banner. She was first elected as a member of the Ontario NDP in 2018, and remained as the riding’s MPP through the next two elections as Ford tried to consolidate power.

 

A member of Scarborough’s large Bangladeshi community, many saw her as representing a strong voice for the majority working-class and immigrant population of the riding, which was reinforced when she was appointed the critic for citizenship, foreign credentials, and immigration services in 2021 as part of the official opposition. She spoke out early on in the Gaza genocide when one of the ONDP’s staff members lost 18 members of her family in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis, and continued to strongly criticize Canada’s role in arming and providing rhetorical cover for Israel’s war crimes. (Notably, however, she also supported Marit Stiles’ expulsion of Sarah Jama from the party over her statements in support of Palestinian resistance.)

 

Begum served as the co-deputy leader of the ONDP since 2022, which made it all the more striking when in February she announced her resignation from the party and stated she would seek a seat with the federal Liberals in the upcoming by-election. Given both the provincial and federal NDP’s overall lackluster commitment to its foundations of working-class solidarity and support of marginalized communities in recent years, the defection should come as no surprise. It is yet another marker of the party’s capitulation and drift to the center, highlighted also by Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout’s floor-crossing just one month ago.

 

It is difficult to see how Begum will square her past commitments to the people of Scarborough with the decidedly anti-immigrant and right-wing trajectory of Carney’s government (exemplified by Bills like the recently-passed C-12), though like many politicians she may hand-wave away these concerns under the assimilating force of “elbows up”. One thing is for certain: this election has solidified the Liberals’ grip on the country, and the pressure to conform to their agenda will likely override any principles of its new, supposedly left-leaning, members.

 

Terrebonne

 

Carney got his majority with two Toronto by-elections on April 13. The third by-election in Quebec became a “nice to have” instead of a “must-have.”

 

But the close race in Terrebonne, Quebec could be a lens for how federal politics may impact local sentiment with the fast-approaching Quebec election in October.

 

First, the race was a rematch between the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, where the Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste won by a single vote and the Bloc successfully challenged the result at the Supreme Court, allowing Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné to run again. The Bloc Québécois had won the riding in almost every vote since the party’s formation.

 

The rematch took place in the context of a sharp collapse in support for the ruling Quebec CAQ party—a party which is neither pro-independence nor federalist—and the rise in support for the Parti Québecois (PQ). The disaffection with the right-wing CAQ grew at the same time as a rise in support for Quebec independence amongst Quebec youth; conversely, the trade war with Trump has also produced a bump in Quebec support for Carney in the polls. There are a wide range of views about what these shifts mean.

 

Carney followed his “mid-power strong” speech in Davos with a speech in Quebec City to bring Quebec into the fold. The fact that he spoke on the Plains of Abraham, the place where Britain imposed its dominance over the colonies, made the PQ believe he had handed them the election.

 

But at the moment of the Terrebonne by-election, the Quebec Liberals were actually climbing in the polls, pointing to a possible PQ minority next October. What happens in that Quebec election, especially given the PQ’s promise to hold another referendum, matters to the federal Liberals.

 

The Terrebonne Liberals put Carney front and centre in their by-election campaign. It was Carney’s face—and not the face of Tatiana Auguste, the young Black francophone woman candidate—that was plastered on posters across the riding with the slogan “Un Canada fort” (“Canada Strong”). Melanie Joly, federal Industry Minister, visited Terrebonne five times during the campaign. They took this race seriously.

 

But whether federal Liberal or provincial Liberal, Bloc or PQ, these aren’t real choices for Quebecois people who want to be free from governments that embrace horrific politics of climate chaos, militarism, and racism.    

 

Quebec unions have never parked their allegiance with the NDP. They became linked to the Parti Quebecois, which was never a labour party but pretended to be one in the high point of workers’ struggle, bringing in some of the best labour legislation in the Canadian state. But the PQ was pushed to do this because of the high level of independent union struggle, which had seen the largest general strike in North American history in 1972, and the growth of a huge revolutionary left in Quebec.

 

Since the late 80s the Quebec ruling class, including the PQ and sharpened by the CAQ, has fought to channel national feeling in Quebec towards narrow “identity” politics designed to fuel anti-immigrant racism. The 20-year old party Quebec solidaire is a recent attempt to push back against this, to be a voice of social movements in electoral politics, to be a party of the ballot and a party of the street at the same time. 

 

But in by-elections, it’s even more about the non-choices. The real story is yet to come.

 

Carney’s Liberals are the most right wing government we’ve seen in decades. They are committed to military spending, public sector cuts, attacks on Indigenous rights and cutting environmental regulations. These three new Liberal seats will only increase their confidence to attack our living standards in order to boost corporate power and profit. Only mass movements against militarism, austerity and in support of Indigenous sovereignty can stop them.