Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

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The next election in Quebec is still the Parti Québécois’s to lose, but that has become increasingly likely the closer the province gets to the October 5 vote.

Two new polls over the last week showed the PQ and the Quebec Liberals neck-and-neck, with newly-installed premier and CAQ leader Christine Fréchette giving her party only the smallest of bumps (if any).

The polls come from Léger for Québecor and Pallas Data for Qc125. I wrote a little about the Pallas poll last week but want to delve into it a bit more deeply today.

Pallas, which was done immediately after Fréchette’s victory, gave the Liberals a three-point lead (31.8% to 28.5%, rounded off to 31% to 29%) with the CAQ still stuck at 14%. The Léger poll, conducted a few days later, put the PQ at 31%, followed by the Liberals at 28% and the CAQ at 17%.

Since the beginning of the year, Pallas has the Liberals up eight points, with the PQ down five points and the CAQ down two points. Léger, meanwhile, has less movement — the PQ down one point and the Liberals up two, with the CAQ unchanged. The more recent trend for Léger has shown the Liberals catching up, and then taking a hit following the arrival of Fréchette at the helm of the CAQ. But until we see a sustained trend, it’s perhaps safer to say that the PQ and Liberals have moved into a tie.

A tie benefits the PQ, as shown by the party’s support among francophones above. The Liberals dominate among non-francophones, but these voters are concentrated in a limited number of ridings. It’s unlikely the PLQ can really compete for government without being closer to at least 23% or 25% among this part of the electorate. While they are currently below that mark, they are a lot closer to it then they were just a few months ago.

The potential for a PQ minority or a Liberal win changes the game not only in Quebec but in the rest of the country, as the former would likely put a referendum on Quebec independence on hold (and, of course, the latter would take it off the table entirely).

But the polls continue to show that a referendum would likely not go the PQ’s way. Pallas finds support for independence at just 31%, the lowest it’s been in Pallas’s tracking, while opposition is at 63%, the highest it’s been. The poll also found that 70% of Quebecers do not want to see a referendum held in the PQ’s first mandate, which means there are some Quebecers who would vote YES in a referendum but would prefer not to have to make the choice.

It does put PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon in a bind, as his promise to hold a referendum in a first mandate puts a low ceiling on his party’s support. It might not be low enough to prevent the PQ from forming a government, but it might put a majority out of reach. Léger found that the promise to hold a referendum is indeed the obstacle to a clear PQ election win. When respondents were asked how they would vote if the PQ promised not to hold a referendum, the PQ’s narrow three-point lead ballooned to a 14-point stomping, 39% to 25%.

St-Pierre Plamondon has already ruled out backing down on his pledge, but that is an easier thing to do while he is still ahead than it might be if he falls behind. The Liberals’ Charles Milliard might have lost a step according to the latest Léger poll, but if that’s just a blip and this election remains a horse race, the next few months could have some surprises in store.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on how First Nations feel about the removal of Indigenous names from three ridings. Plus, a new candidate joins the Ontario Liberal leadership race, rejected ballots played little role in Terrebonne byelection and the Supreme Court makes a ruling that will impact the next provincial election in Quebec.

• Polls show the status quo federally, but not so status quo within Conservative ranks when it comes to Pierre Poilievre’s leadership. Plus, some polling numbers out of Ontario before the ‘Gravy Plane’ took flight.

• #EveryElectionProject: PCs hope for a PEI harbinger in 1979.

• Upcoming milestone for Obby Khan.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Indigenous riding name changes opposed in two of three cases

Earlier this month, I wrote about the name changes coming to 19 federal ridings across the country, including the removal of newly-added Indigenous names from three ridings: Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga and Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. At the time, I reached out to the three MPs who proposed the name changes to their own ridings, as well as the three First Nations whose names were being removed.

Of my six inquiries, I only got two responses: one from Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong MP Marilyn Gladu and the other from the Six Nations of the Grand River. The latter said they approved of the removal of ‘Six Nations’ from the riding as they had never approved of its addition in the first place. Gladu said the First Nations in her riding were fine with the removal.

Thanks to some further inquiries from The Hill Times, it turns out that, while the Six Nations repeated to The Hill Times what they said to me, the story in Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong does not seem to align with what I was told.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

Byelection results are easy to dismiss when they don’t go your way. They’re referendums on the government! They’re safe seats for the incumbent! Turnout is low! Local dynamics are at play!

There are some kernels of truth there. But that doesn’t mean the Conservatives shouldn’t be worried about the results of the byelections in Terrebonne, University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, in which they put up their worst byelection performances in over a decade.

By now, you’ve probably already pored over the results in these three seats. (And if you didn’t, you can check out the hot takes from early Tuesday morning that Philippe and I shared on The Numbers).

The Liberals won a close fight in Terrebonne, taking 48.4% of the vote to the Bloc’s 46.8%. The Liberals haven’t had this much support in this part of Quebec since the 1980 federal election, when Pierre Trudeau won 74 of 75 seats in the province.

University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest were landslide Liberal wins, with the party increasing its vote share in both. In Scarborough Southwest, the Liberals’ 69.9% of the vote was their best result since at least the 1960s when a riding somewhat resembling today’s Scarborough Southwest was first created. The NDP managed to work its way to second place in University—Rosedale, though its respectable nine-point gain represented only half of the support the party lost here between 2021 and 2025.

The Conservatives, however, tanked. They dropped 11 points in University—Rosedale and 12 points in Scarborough Southwest, taking their smallest share of the vote in these seats ever. And in Terrebonne, the Conservatives absolutely collapsed by 15 points to just 3.3%. The only time the Conservatives have ever done worse than this in the area that is now Terrebonne was when the Liberals won by acclamation in 1917 and 1953 and there wasn’t a Conservative on the ballot.

In the context of these three ridings, these were worst-ever results for the Conservatives. But even more remarkable is that the losses the Conservatives suffered in these three byelections were the largest they’ve suffered in any byelection in over a decade.

Inspired by a social media post by Dan Arnold (credit where credit is due), I’ve compiled below the Conservatives’ performances in byelections since the 2015 election. Ranked from greatest losses to biggest gains, you can see that the top three worst performances for the Conservatives out of the 35 byelections held over the last 10 years all occurred on Monday night.

It’s not even that close. Before Monday, the Conservatives hadn’t lost more than 8.3 points in any byelection since 2015.

In fact, you have to go back to 2014 to find a byelection where the Conservatives lost more support. In the last years of Stephen Harper’s government, the Conservatives were routinely losing huge chunks of their vote share in byelections. It’s no coincidence that these big byelection losses were followed by Harper’s defeat in 2015.

If you look at the bottom of this list, you can see that five of the seven best performances took place in 2023 and 2024, when the Conservatives were riding high in the polls. Those byelections presaged what was supposed to happen in 2025 — the defeat of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Those byelections were a reflection of the big swing that was taking place in public opinion.

This week’s byelections, then, might also be a reflection of what is happening in public opinion now. And they act as a corroboration of the Conservatives’ worst polling numbers, rather than of their best ones. Simply put, the Conservatives should not be dropping 11 to 15 points in these ridings if they are truly running only a few points behind the Liberals. Instead, these byelections suggest the double-digit leads we’ve seen in most polls just might be on to something.

One could counter-argue that, since the Conservatives were not in contention in any three of these ridings, it is natural that their voters didn’t bother to show up. Turnout was only around 33% in the Toronto ridings and was 51% in Terrebonne. But we’ve seen them show up in other ridings where Conservative chances were equally dim and where turnout was equally down.

In LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the Conservatives had just 7.5% of the vote in the 2021 election. The byelection in 2024 was known to be a three-way race between the Liberals, Bloc and NDP (the Bloc won). But that didn’t stop Conservatives from going out to the polls. The party increased its vote share in this Montreal riding by four points to 11.5%. Similarly (and also in Montreal), the Conservative vote slid only marginally from 14.1% to 13.6% in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount in 2023.

One could then argue that these byelections occurred when Justin Trudeau’s government was unpopular and in a minority context, where an election could be around the corner and voters were engaged and motivated to send a message. But in the 2017 byelection in Ottawa—Vanier, when the Liberals were safely ensconced in majority territory and were still quite popular, the Conservatives only lost four points. On the same night in Saint-Laurent, where the Conservatives had zero chance of winning, their vote held unchanged at 19.5%.

If the Conservatives could manage to get their voters out and supporting them in these past byelections, why were they unable to do so on Monday?

Yes, the byelection in Terrebonne was polarized between the Liberals and the Bloc. The one-vote margin in 2025 might have hammered the point home to voters that they couldn’t waste their vote on a party that wasn’t contending to win. But that was not the case in either University—Rosedale or Scarborough Southwest. The polarization in Terrebonne might have further depressed the Conservative vote, but the results in the two Toronto ridings suggest that polarization was not the only factor at play. The Conservatives simply lost support, and to an extent that we last saw when the party was on its way out of power.

Of course, none of these ridings were particularly good ones for the Conservatives in the last election and would not be expected to be among those the Conservatives would win when forming government. The share of the vote the Conservatives received in the last election in Scarborough Southwest ranked the riding 246th out of the 342 ridings where the Conservatives ran candidates. University—Rosedale ranked 279th and Terrebonne ranked 311th. Even had Pierre Poilievre become prime minister last year, these three seats would have almost certainly been represented by opposition MPs.

But these byelection results, if they had occurred in the general election, would have ranked these ridings 311th, 337th and 342nd — dead last. The 3.3% the Conservatives obtained in Terrebonne would be the worst result the party had anywhere in Canada in April 2025. Their actual worst result, in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, was a towering 6.9% by comparison.

These byelection results should set off alarm bells within Conservative Party HQ. The circumstances of the byelections might have exaggerated the negative trend for the party, but they strongly suggest that the Conservatives are not competitive at the moment and that the polls that indicate the Liberals could win 200+ seats today are indeed an accurate reflection of where things stand.

Dismissing these results would be like denying the reality the Conservatives find themselves in. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t recognize there is a problem to fix.

Now, to what else is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• Brief news out of the CAQ and B.C. Conservative leadership races.

• Polls show the status quo at the federal level, though a new trend might be developing in Atlantic Canada. Plus, we have new provincial polling numbers out of Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta.

• #EveryElectionProject: An unexpected result in the 2000 Yukon election.

• Upcoming milestone for Tony Wakeham.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

The addition of yet another Conservative MP to the Liberal caucus has made a majority government all but assured for Prime Minister Mark Carney once Monday’s byelections are completed, but these contests will nevertheless matter more than most byelections do.

For one, they will act as mid-term barometers of support for each of the parties and a rough accuracy check for the polls — if a party is up or down in the polls, we should expect them to be up or down in the byelections, even when the differences don’t change who wins or loses.

But, more importantly, these three byelections will change the complexion of the House of Commons and the control that Mark Carney’s Liberals have over it.

With Gladu, the Liberals now have a majority in the House of Commons. There are currently 171 Liberals in the House, with one of them (Francis Scarpaleggia) acting as the Speaker. This gives the government 170 votes, with Scarpaleggia able to cast a tie-breaking vote when required. But since the Speaker is bound by convention to vote in certain ways, Scarpaleggia’s vote can’t always be counted upon to be in the government’s favour.

There are currently 169 opposition MPs in the House, meaning the government technically has a majority as of this moment (though the House isn’t sitting this week). This is where the three vacancies being filled on Monday come in.

If the Liberals fail to win any of these three byelections (which is unlikely, as we’ll see), the Liberals will once again be outnumbered in the House. If they win one of the three byelections, the government and opposition benches will be tied at 171 votes apiece, with that tie being broken by Scarpaleggia. As the Speaker votes to maintain the status quo, that means the government would be safe from defeat in the House (assuming every MP votes). But it would also mean that the government would not get to do something like re-constitute the membership of committees, where the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois hold majorities.

If the Liberals win two or all three byelections, they will have 172 or 173 votes to 170 or 169 for the opposition and the Speaker would have no ties to break. In this scenario the Liberals would not only be safe from defeat but should also be able to pass a motion to change the make-up of committees and pass any legislation they like that would not put the Speaker in an awkward position.

In other words, going two-for-three would be good enough for the Liberals, even if it means only winning the two seats that should be safe for them. Going three-for-three would be icing on the cake — and give something extra for the Liberals to brag about when the House returns next week.

Take a look at the results from the last election. Terrebonne was famously close — it was decided by a single vote, a margin so insignificant that the Supreme Court ruled to annul the results because of errors Elections Canada made with some mail-in ballots. But Scarborough Southwest and University—Rosedale were not close at all. The Liberals should win them, so going two-for-three is the least they should expect.

The margins in the two Toronto ridings were enormous in the last election and there is nothing in the polls to suggest they should be competitive today. Failure to win either of them would be a tremendous upset and blow to the Liberals, regardless of the implications for the House. The Liberals have held at least part of what currently makes up University—Rosedale since 1993 and, with the exception of the 2011 election, the Liberals have held Scarborough Southwest and its predecessor ridings since 1988. Losing them in the current context would be bizarre, especially since the party has put up two good candidates in high-profile physician Danielle Martin in University—Rosedale and former Ontario NDP MPP Doly Begum in Scarborough Southwest.

But Terrebonne was close last time and should still be close this time. My own projections classify Terrebonne as a toss that favours the Liberals by a single percentage point. That’s effectively unchanged from the overturned result of the general election. Monday will be a re-match between the Liberals’ Tatiana Auguste and the Bloc’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, and if the result is anything other than a nail-biter it would reflect some local dynamics at play that swung it one way or the other.

(Because of the presence of the Longest Ballot Committee, who have put up more than 40 candidates in Terrebonne, voters will have a special ballot where they will be required to write-in the name of the candidate.)

A win for the Liberals in Terrebonne would signal that Carney’s appeal in Quebec has endured, and that voters in this particular riding did not bristle at the thought of handing the prime minister a majority government. It would give Liberals reason to hope that, if they went into an early election campaign, they could count on winning a lot of seats in Quebec once again.

A loss here, however, would put into question the security of ridings in Quebec that they won by narrow margins. While the polls look promising for the Liberals elsewhere, uncertainty about their holdings in Quebec would force the Liberals to make good in an election on some of the very high (and perhaps unsustainable) numbers they’ve been putting up in places like British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. It would be folly for the Liberals to take for granted that they will gain a dozen seats or more between Vancouver and Winnipeg.

There are implications for the other parties as well. The Bloc’s standing as the main alternative and opposition to the Liberals in Quebec will be diminished if they don’t win back this former stronghold, especially in light of the help the party has gotten from the Parti Québécois as it prepares for an important provincial election in October.

Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have just suffered another blow with the loss of their fourth MP. Plus, they need some sign of a comeback after months of bad polls. They are not competitive in any of these three ridings. But can they improve their vote share, put some doubt in the polling numbers and give a discouraged and disgruntled caucus some much-needed good news?

The New Democrats are even more uncompetitive in these ridings, having finished in third place in the two Toronto seats and taking just 2.6% of the vote in Terrebonne. But they have a new leader in Avi Lewis. It would be a good start for him if he could show at least some improvement over the abysmal 2025 results, especially in Toronto where his message should have more appeal.

These three ridings, however, are quite different from one another — which will make it a little tricky to draw conclusions about broader trends.

While 83% of the population of Terrebonne does not belong to a visible minority community as defined by Statistics Canada, 43% of the population of University—Rosedale and 63% in Scarborough Southwest does. University—Rosedale has a significant Chinese community (18%) and a sizable Jewish one (6%), while Scarborough Southwest has a large South Asian component (26%) and is 19% Muslim. About 10% of the population in Terrebonne and 13% in Scarborough Southwest is Black, while it’s just 4% in University—Rosedale.

The vast majority of residents in Terrebonne speak French at home. The vast majority of residents in the other two ridings, of course, do not. University—Rosedale is right downtown (it’s where Queen’s Park is located), while Scarborough Southwest is an inner suburb of Toronto and Terrebonne is an outer suburb of Montreal. One of the only things tying these three ridings together is that they aren’t rural.

But the variation in these three ridings will make the results all the more fascinating to dissect. So, join me and my podcast co-host Philippe J. Fournier for a livestream of the byelection results starting at 8:30 PM ET on Monday night. You’ll find the livestream right here 👇

Have any predictions for what the outcome of the three byelections will be? Let us know in the comments!

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Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• Where things stand in the CAQ leadership race, plus I hear back from the Six Nations on the removal of that name from the riding of Brantford—Brant South. We also have some numbers on advance turnout from the byelections and some news on political fundraising out of Newfoundland and Labrador, where everything is legal.

• Only a couple of federal polls this past week, plus some numbers on how provincial opposition leaders are viewed and where things stand in Ontario.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 1954 Ontario Liberal leadership.

LIBERAL CONVENTION - I’ll be on CPAC from Montreal over the next few days as part of their coverage of the federal Liberal party convention, so tune in! And, if you’re there, come say hello!

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

New Quebec premier, CAQ leader to be decided Sunday

This weekend, some 20,000 members of the Coalition Avenir Québec will choose the next leader of their party and the 33rd premier of Quebec. While the winner of the race between Christine Fréchette and Bernard Drainville will receive what is, on paper, a glittering prize, the reality is that the winner will also face a steep, uphill and perhaps insurmountable challenge when Quebec goes to the polls in October.

That being said, what does the data say about who is most likely to win?

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

We’re going to dive directly into what’s on deck in this edition of the Weekly Writ. Here’s what’s on the docket for today:

• News on the ridings that will see their names changed and other amendments the Liberals are making to the Canada Elections Act. Plus, a B.C. Conservative MLA is booted from caucus and two endorsements are made in the B.C. Conservative leadership race.

• An update on the federal polls and a look at a new Léger poll that puts the PQ and Liberals neck-and-neck ahead of this year’s provincial election in Quebec. Plus, some new B.C. provincial polling numbers.

• #EveryElectionProject: The Ontario CCF chooses its first leader.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

19 ridings to change names, Indigenous names to be dropped in three

Is your federal riding about to change its name? If you live in one of 19 ridings across the country, that could very well be the case. Some of the changes are arguably good, some are quite plainly bad, and some others raise some questions.

The name swaps were included in a package of changes to the Canada Elections Act being proposed by the Liberal government. The text of the bill can be found here.

The bill includes a series of amendments regarding misinformation, foreign interference and privacy protections. For example, the amendments would make it illegal to knowingly spread false or misleading information intending to impact an election (with exceptions for parody and satire) and adds the use of “deepfakes” that impersonate an electoral official or candidate to the list of prohibited acts.

Also included are measures to protect the personal information gathered by parties and changes to the reporting requirements for fundraising events. For safety and privacy protections (the government’s claim), parties will no longer be required to give five-day advance notice of fundraising events or to post the exact address of the event. These requirements were put into place during the “cash-for-access” controversy during the Trudeau years.

Of particular note to readers of this newsletter (and anyone who tunes into our livestreams of byelection nights), a proposed change will limit constituents to signing the nomination papers of only one candidate, as well as requiring different official agents for each candidate in a riding. This is an attempt to head-off the Longest Ballot Committee. The imposition of unique agents will likely not have that much of an impact — the LBC did this for the Terrebonne byelection and still managed to recruit over 40 candidates — but the signature limits could make it much harder to ever get the list of candidates to the 200+ that we saw in Battle River–Crowfoot last year.

But the riding name changes caught my attention. In all, 19 ridings across the country will have their names changed when the bill passes. Some of the changes are good. Some of them are bad. And some of them are ugly.

First, some general comments on these changes.

We have an entire non-partisan process in place to name these ridings. The electoral boundaries commissions consult widely and go through a multi-stage process of proposing riding boundaries (and riding names), hearing feedback from constituents about the proposals, coming up with new proposals, hearing objections from MPs and then settling on the final map.

It seems against the spirit of this process for MPs to then decide to override the commissioners’ decisions and change the names of their ridings via an act of Parliament. Some of these changes might be good and might be the result of consultation with constituents, but it undermines the non-partisan process if, in the end, the elected MP can change the name of their own accord.

I also can’t help but lament that the net effect of these changes has been that these names got even longer. These 19 ridings contained 446 characters before and they contain 529 now. The changes in Quebec were responsible for most of the increase.

Lastly (and, yes, this is niche), the changes make working with riding data more cumbersome. Ridings are assigned an ID by Elections Canada after the redistribution and that ID never changes. The IDs of ridings are by alphabetical order within each province. Now, the riding names and IDs will no longer be in the same alphabetical order, which can get very annoying when you’re working with different datasets where some are ordered by the ID and others are ordered alphabetically. Won’t someone please think of the spreadsheets!

Alright, let’s get into some of these name changes.

• The Good

  • Cape Spear—Mount Pearl—Paradise

    • Cape Spear is a headland where no one lives, so it was a little odd to have the entire riding named after it, especially since the riding stretches from Cape Spear on the Atlantic coast to Conception Bay. Mount Pearl and Paradise are the two largest communities in the riding, so elongating the name to include them is fine by me.

  • The Eastern Peninsulas

    • Shortened and the vague “The Peninsulas” removed. Any shortening of riding names is generally for the better.

  • York—South Simcoe

    • There’s York—Durham and Simcoe North, so perhaps York—Simcoe South would have had greater symmetry, but I’m happy not to have to pronounce New Tecumseth—Gwillimbury.

  • Saskatoon East

    • Reasonable people may disagree, but I prefer simple, geographically-understandable names. There’s a Saskatoon South and Saskatoon West, so a Saskatoon East makes more sense than did Saskatoon—University.

  • Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent

    • Mercifully much shorter than its predecessor, describes the riding quite well and is a nice-sounding name (Upper St. Lawrence Valley in English).

  • Longueuil—Greenfield Park

    • Greenfield Park is a defined area in this riding, while Charles-LeMoyne isn’t, even if lots of stuff in the riding is named after the founder of Longueuil, Charles Le Moyne. I prefer actual locations to riding names honouring historical figures, but your view may vary.

• The Bad

  • Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame

    • Was Central Newfoundland all that bad? It matched up pretty well with the Central region. Now we have the return of this long name. Though “Coast of Bays” has a Game of Thrones quality to it.

  • Halifax West—Peggy’s Cove

    • One of the unfortunate attempts to seemingly make a riding’s name help with tourism. Only a few dozen people live in Peggy’s Cove.

  • New Brunswick Southwest

    • Half of Saint John is in this riding, so including it in the name had some symmetry with Saint John–Kennebecasis. There is an argument to be made that St. Croix was not the right name to tack on to it, but New Brunswick Southwest is just so bland, and ignores that Saint John represents a big chunk of its population.

  • Cariboo—Prince George—Omineca

    • This one is a bit of a puzzle to me. The Omineca River and Omineca Provincial Park aren’t in this riding, but the riding forms part of the Omineca Region of the B.C. Interior — as so do some other ridings. Why add it?

  • Argenteuil—Papineau—Des Collines

    • The new additions refer to regional municipalities that make up the riding, so it isn’t an egregious change. But it’s a lot longer than it was and we already have a riding named Papineau which is in an entirely different location.

  • Saint-Augustin—Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier

    • Points docked for lengthening the name of the riding that has had the same name for more than 20 years just to include a town that isn’t in the regional municipalities of Portneuf or Jacques-Cartier and has always been in the riding.

  • Richmond—Arthabaska—Val-des-Sources

    • Another lengthening of the name of a long-standing riding to include a left-out town. At least this one won’t change the alphabetical order of the ridings like Saint-Augustin—Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier will.

• The Ugly

  • North York

    • Maybe it should initially have been North York Centre (though that’s weird) but the new riding of North York only includes a small portion of the old city of North York. It would be like calling one of the six Mississauga ridings “Mississauga” and letting you figure out which one it is.

  • Jonquière—Hébertville—Pays-des-Bleuets

    • We had a lovely, short riding name in Jonquière and now we have this. Hébertville is a town of less than 7,000 and, as far as I can tell, most of the actual things named the Pays-des-Bleuets are located in the neighbouring Lac-Saint-Jean riding. Is this another attempt at tourism-through-riding-name?

  • Rimouski-Neigette—Mitis—Matapédia—Les Basques

    • This part of the Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie has long been plagued by overly-long names that try to include as many different locations as possible in them. Rimouski—La Matapédia was an elegant solution, highlighting the two major features of the riding. Now we’re back to this 13-syllable monstrosity.

That leaves me with the three ridings of Brantford—Brant South, Hastings—Lennox and Addington and Sarnia—Lambton, which have been shortened by removing the Indigenous names of Six Nations, Tyendinaga and Bkejwanong, respectively.

The addition of Indigenous place names to a series of ridings was one of the new additions of the last redistribution. Some of them name Indigenous towns or reserves within the riding’s boundaries, some of them use historic names for a location and others include the name of an Indigenous nation. It seems to have largely been the brain-child of the commissioners in Ontario and Quebec as a way to honour Canada’s Indigenous people, and not something that originated from the Indigenous people in question, though their input was sought after the fact.

But I was surprised to see three ridings have their Indigenous place names removed. Not knowing the exact circumstances of all of the changes, however, I don’t want to be flippant about them.

On Tuesday, I reached out to the offices of the three Conservative MPs who represent these ridings (Larry Brock in Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Marilyn Gladu in Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong and Shelby Kramp-Neuman in Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga) as well as the First Nations in these ridings (Six Nations of the Grand River, Walpole Island First Nation and the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, respectively).

As of writing, I have only heard back from Marilyn Gladu.

Gladu says that, during the redistribution process, she “consulted with the chiefs at that time from Walpole Island as well as the Aamjwinaang and Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations. Since the Aamjwinaang had been part of the riding for over 100 years, I thought they might want to choose a more inclusive or different name. However, they chose not to participate in the public input sessions and written inputs, and so the proposed name remained.”

Prior to the prorogation of Parliament and the calling of the 2025 election, Gladu says “there was a new chief elected for Walpole Island, and he had a huge problem with Bkejwanong being used, so I told him I would have it taken out” but she was unable to do so because of the election. She says that, since the election, there has “been a new chief elected at Walpole Island and when I updated her about the change she was not concerned.”

If I hear back from the other MPs and any of the three First Nations, I will update this in future newsletters.

Once the bill is passed by Parliament, the new names will come into effect after 90 days.

Round-by-round data from the NDP leadership

In case you missed it earlier this week, I was leaked some data from the NDP leadership vote showing how supporters of each candidate ranked the other candidates. The results show that Avi Lewis had broad support across the spectrum, but also that there was a divide between the Lewis camp (more closely aligned with Tanille Johnston and Tony McQuail) and the Heather McPherson camp (more closely aligned with Rob Ashton).

You can read the story and see all the data at the link above.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

B.C. CON MLA BOOTED - Hon Chan, the MLA for the B.C. riding of Richmond Centre, has been booted from the B.C. Conservative caucus after being charged with assault. Chan intends to stay on as an MLA while he fights the charges.

ELLIOTT, FULMER GAIN ENDORSEMENTS - More movement in the B.C. Conservative leadership race took place this past week, as Caroline Elliott earned the endorsement of Darrell Jones, who is withdrawing from the contest. Meanwhile, Yuri Fulmer announced an agreement with OneBC leader Dallas Brodie that would reserve 88 seats for the B.C. Conservatives and five for the right-wing splinter party. Brodie was elected under the Conservative banner but was removed from caucus over her statements on residential school survivors.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Liberals lead in new holding pattern

As discussed in this week’s projection update, the federal parties appear to have hit a new holding pattern in national voting intentions.

New surveys were published this week by Abacus Data, Léger, Liaison Strategies, Nanos Research and Spark. They don’t show any big changes in support for either the Liberals or the Conservatives with four of the five pollsters giving the Liberals a double-digit lead.

The Liberals have between 44% and 48% support in these five polls, with the Conservatives at 30% to 37% and the NDP between 6% and 11%. That’s a pretty broad consensus of the current state of the race with some healthy variation between individual polls.

There aren’t many consistent trends between these five polls, which suggests stability for the Liberals and Conservatives. However, the NDP is up, if marginally, in four of these five polls.

Here are a few other highlights from these polls:

• Abacus polled on Pierre Poilievre’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, finding that the Conservative leader’s performance was a net positive. The poll found that, among those familiar with Poilievre’s appearance, 39% had a positive reaction to it against 24% who had a negative one. Those under the age of 60 had an especially net positive reaction, while those over the age of 60 had a net negative reaction. On the whole, it seems like Poilievre going on the podcast won’t hurt him and will likely help a bit, though not among the electorate where he has the most ground to make up.

• On the top three issues in Abacus’s polling, the Liberals are either tied with the Conservatives (rising cost of living), hold a small lead (economy) or have a huge advantage (Donald Trump and the U.S. administration). No other issue among those tested by Abacus registered as a top three issue for more than a third of Canadians.

• Mark Carney’s positive or approval rating averaged 57% against 32% negative or disapproval in polls by Abacus, Liaison and Léger. Pierre Poilievre’s positive or favourable ratings averaged 38.5% in the Abacus and Liaison polls against 47.5% negative/unfavourable.

• Nanos continues to give Carney a lead of 30+ points on the preferred prime minister question at 54.5% to 23%. Avi Lewis should be added to Nanos’s four-week rolling poll starting with next week’s release, but it will take a month before Don Davies is entirely cycled out of the sample.

• Liaison found that 22% of respondents had a favourable impression of Lewis, while 17% had an unfavourable one. The majority of respondents were either unfamiliar with Lewis or did not have an opinion. Léger, meanwhile, found that only 32% of Canadians think that the NDP is relevant in Canada’s national political scene, while 43% said it was not.

Quebec’s election turning into nail-biter

A new poll from Léger amps up the potential drama that Quebec’s politics has in store as the next provincial election is just six months away.

The survey shows the Parti Québécois and Quebec Liberals in a tie at 33% apiece, the first time the Liberals have been tied for the lead in a poll in Quebec since 2018. The Liberals have gained 13 points since mid-December, nearly all of it coming at the expense of the CAQ, which now sits at just 9% support. That puts the governing party behind the Quebec Conservatives (15%) and tied with Québec Solidaire.

The PQ still has an advantage due to its 18-point lead among francophones, but the Liberals have been making themselves more competitive among francophones over the last few months. The party was at just 11% in Léger’s mid-December survey, but now stands at 23%. While that doesn’t put much pressure on the PQ in terms of winning the most seats, it does make a majority government less likely — regionally, the PQ is only decisively ahead outside of the Montreal and Quebec City regions.

The collapse of the CAQ is what has caused this tightening race. If you look at the long-term tracking chart from Léger, you can see how the CAQ’s decline first benefitted the PQ and is now benefitting the PLQ.

In other words, the CAQ first lost its nationalist vote to the PQ in 2023 and 2024 and then lost its federalist vote to the PLQ in 2025 and 2026. Throughout this time period, the Conservatives have hardly budged while QS has dropped a bit. It’s possible that QS has lost some of its federalist vote to the Liberals and some of its sovereignist vote to the PQ while the Conservatives have shaved off a bit of the CAQ’s more right-wing vote. But the biggest shifts have clearly been CAQ→PQ followed by the CAQ→PLQ that is happening now.

A second poll by Léger commissioned by Christine Fréchette’s campaign, reported by the Journal de Montréal, suggests that the CAQ’s ongoing leadership race could benefit the party once it is over. Fréchette, who is favoured over Bernard Drainville by a nearly three-to-one margin among CAQ voters in this survey, would boost the party to 16% — not nearly enough to save the party but enough to give the CAQ hope of surviving in some form after the campaign is over. Drainville would not boost the party, as under him it would be at 10%, virtually unchanged from its current standing.

Regardless of the outcome of this leadership contest, the march to a PQ victory and a Quebec independence referendum that seemed inevitable only a few months ago is no longer such a sure bet. This election will be important for both Quebec and Canada as a whole, but it’ll also be one to keep an eye on because it is up for grabs.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

TIGHT RACE IN B.C. - The Angus Reid Institute published more details from its mid-March quarterly poll, focusing on British Columbia. (Note, the sample is 499 so it is a bit smaller than your usual B.C.-only survey.) The poll found the B.C. Conservatives and NDP virtually tied at 44% to 42%, respectively, with the Greens in third with 9%. The poll found growing discomfort with the government’s approach to Indigenous issues, though it also found that this was not a top issue for many voters.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• April 12: Coalition Avenir Québec leadership

  • Candidates: Bernard Drainville, Christine Fréchette

• April 13: Federal byelections in University–Rosedale, Scarborough Southwest and Terrebonne

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• May 30: British Columbia Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer, Warren Hamm, Peter Milobar

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 19: Alberta referendum

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • PE - Cornwall–Meadowbank (to be called by September)

  • NS - Chéticamp–Margarees–Pleasant Bay (date TBD)

  • CA - Beaches–East York (potential resignation pending)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

The Ontario CCF’s first leader

April 3, 1942

This was originally published on April 3, 2024.

As the Second World War raged across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, Canadians sensed that things would not go back to where they were before the war had started — assuming the Allies could win, of course. The trauma of the Great Depression and the demands of the war demonstrated to Canadians that there was a need for a more activist central government, one that would ensure the well-being of everyone. If the government could mobilize massive resources to defeat enemies overseas, why couldn’t it do the same to guarantee a minimum standard of living at home?

This was the moment that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation had been waiting for, and accordingly the CCF started to surge in some of the first political polls ever conducted in Canada.

Already established in Western Canada, the CCF was having difficulty breaking through in Ontario. But a byelection in the riding of York South provided an opportunity for the party.

The Conservatives had yet to recover from the defeat of R.B. Bennett’s government in 1935. His replacement as leader, Robert Manion, had no success in the 1940 election and the Conservatives went back to the drawing board. Rather than look forward, however, the Conservatives looked back and acclaimed Arthur Meighen, leader and briefly prime minister during the 1920s, as their party chief in 1941.

Assailed on his war record, Mackenzie King was desperate to see his old and hated foe go down to defeat. When a byelection was called in the riding of York South to get Meighen into the House of Commons, the Liberals opted not to run a candidate. To avoid splitting the vote, they left the field open to Joseph Noseworthy, the seemingly long-shot candidate of the CCF.

With a little help from the federal Liberals — though not the provincial Liberals, whose leader, Premier Mitchell Hepburn, backed Meighen — Noseworthy scored an upset victory in February 1942. It spelled the end of Meighen’s comeback attempt, but also created some positive momentum for the Ontario CCF.

The Ontario CCF wasn’t in the best of shape. In the last provincial election in 1937, the party had failed to elect a single candidate and took just 5% of the vote. But with support for the national party rising and fresh off the stunning win in York South, it was decided that the Ontario CCF needed to get better organized. To mark the 10th anniversary of its founding convention, the Ontario CCF decided they would finally name something they hadn’t yet had: a party leader.

A convention was set for April 1942, where the party would decide on platform policy and name its new leader. A total of 17 candidates were nominated for the post, including Noseworthy, future federal NDP leader David Lewis, then-sitting Ontario CCF president Sam Lawrence and Agnes Macphail, the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons.

In the end, all but two declined the nominations. One was Murray Cotterill, the 28-year-old secretary to the Toronto labour council and a stalwart of the CCF Youth Movement.

The other was Edward (Ted) Jolliffe, the vice-president of the provincial council of the CCF. “Tall and slender,” according to media reports, Jolliffe was born in China while his Christian missionary parents were in the country. Also young at just 33, Jolliffe nevertheless had an impressive resume. He had been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford (where he had founded an Oxford branch of the CCF with David Lewis), a journalist and a lawyer, and had twice stood as a candidate for the federal CCF.

Between the two, it wasn’t much of a contest. The delegates gathered at the Carls-Rite Hotel in Toronto, more than 100 strong, and overwhelmingly selected Jolliffe as the first leader of the Ontario CCF. The detailed results were not announced, but “it was learned reliably, however, that the majority was so sweeping as to show almost complete endorsation by the 107 delegates” according to the Canadian Press.

In his victory speech, Jolliffe attacked the Hepburn government, both on the premier’s unpatriotic position on the war effort (he had dismissed the U.S. Navy and predicted that the Soviet Union would be defeated) and his unwillingness to create a social safety net for Ontarians.

“We believe the C.C.F. has the policy and the C.C.F. is the only hope in this province,” he said, citing a previous meeting he had with Hepburn where the fate of those on unemployment relief was discussed. “There was contempt and hatred in his tone of voice,” Jolliffe charged, “hatred and contempt for the unemployed.”

“The time has come, following C.C.F. successes in other provinces and in the federal field, to open a ‘second front’ here in Ontario. And with the help of the workers and the farmers we are going to do it.”

Jolliffe would deliver on his pledge. Before the convention, one of its organizers had confidently predicted that the Ontario CCF could elect 15 candidates in the next election. When it was finally called in 1943, the CCF won 34 seats and formed the official opposition. One of those seats was Ted Jolliffe’s. He ran, and won, in York South.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

The New Democrats are choosing their next leader on Sunday and one of that leader’s top priorities will be to re-connect with the voters the NDP lost to the Conservatives in the last election.

Sure, there’s been a broad recognition that the New Democrats have lost a lot of progressive voters to the Liberals who also need to be recovered. But there’s been a great deal of focus on that lost connection with the blue-collar, working-class vote that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have assiduously wooed over the last few years.

But just how key to the NDP’s current woes are those voters?

Whoever the next leader of the NDP will be (fundraising metrics point to Avi Lewis being the overwhelming favourite, but the answer will only be revealed this weekend), they will have a lot of work to do to get the party back to relevancy. With just seven seats and 6.3% of the vote in the April 2025 election, the New Democrats had their worst-ever result. Not even the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation’s first election in 1935 went as badly as Jagmeet Singh’s campaign in 2025.

So, any voters the NDP can get back into the fold will be welcome for the party. But results from the last election suggest that the pool of voters the NDP needs to recover is far more red-tinged than blue-hued.

By a margin of roughly four-to-one, the NDP lost more of its 2021 voters to the Liberals than it did to the Conservatives, according to polling conducted at the end of the 2025 campaign.

Three pollsters (Research Co., Abacus Data and the Angus Reid Institute) included voting intentions results by past vote in their final polls of the campaign. If we average those three polls together, we find that the NDP only retained 39% of their 2021 voter base, with 45% deciding to vote for the Liberals and just 11% voting for the Conservatives.

There was some variation between the three polls, which is understandable considering the smaller sample size of NDP voters and the problems poll respondents frequently have with recalling past voting behaviour. But the results from the three polls were broadly the same — the NDP retained between 32% and 47% of their 2021 vote, while between 37% and 56% was lost to the Liberals and just 7% to 17% went to the Conservatives.

New polling from the Angus Reid Institute points to the same phenomenon, even when we pull back a little further. Among Canadians who voted for the NDP at least once since the 2015 election, the Liberals currently have nearly five times as much support as do the Conservatives. The Liberals also have more support at the moment among these past NDP voters than does the actual NDP.

(I have more analysis on new polls delving into the NDP leadership race and the future for the party below.)

It’s a pretty clear indication of how, when it comes to the sheer number of raw votes at stake, the New Democrats have more to recover from the Liberals than they do from the Conservatives. A successful strategy that is aimed at getting votes back from the Liberals would pay greater dividends than one that prioritizes getting votes back from the Conservatives.

But when it comes to the seat math, things are a little more complicated.

The NDP dropped from 25 to seven seats on election night for a loss of 18. (One of those 18 is hard to place on the map because Northern Ontario lost one seat in redistribution, but for the purposes of this analysis we’ll consider Sudbury East–Manitoulin–Nickel Belt as the successor riding to Algoma–Manitoulin).

In eight of those 18 lost seats, the Conservatives gained a greater share of the vote (even after considering the losses suffered by the People’s Party, which we can presume largely went to the Conservatives) than did the Liberals. While we can’t assume a one-to-one transfer of vote between parties, it is reasonable to conclude that, in those eight seats, the NDP was defeated primarily because it lost votes directly to the Conservatives.

Those eight seats were Burnaby Central and Skeena–Bulkley Valley in British Columbia, Edmonton Griesbach in Alberta, Elmwood–Transcona in Manitoba and Kapuskasing–Timmins–Mushkegowuk, London–Fanshawe, Sudbury East–Manitoulin–Nickel Belt and Windsor West in Ontario.

With the exception of Burnaby Central, which went to the Liberals, the Conservatives won these seats.

In the 10 other seats lost by the NDP, it was the Liberals who gained more than the Conservatives (again, after accounting for the PPC vote). In these 10 seats, we can reasonably conclude that the main reason the NDP was defeated was because of votes lost to the Liberals.

These were Cowichan–Malahat–Langford, Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke, Nanaimo–Ladysmith, New Westminster–Burnaby–Maillardville, North Island–Powell River, Port Moody–Coquitlam, Similkameen–South Okanagan–West Kootenay and Victoria in British Columbia, Churchill–Keewatinook Aski in Manitoba and Hamilton Centre in Ontario.

It’s notable that so many of the NDP losses caused by Liberal gains were on Vancouver Island, with three of the five seats going to the Conservatives rather than the Liberals. It was a vote split that worked against the NDP that helped elect Conservatives in these ridings because the Liberals were working from too small of a base.

And while the Conservatives won seven of the eight formerly-NDP seats where Conservative gains were greater than that of the Liberals, the Liberals only won six of the 10 seats where their gains were greater than that of the Conservatives. Liberal gains from the NDP in the party’s lost seats were more likely to elect Conservatives than Liberals.

It’s a bit of multi-dimensional chess for the NDP. The NDP lost 11 seats to the Conservatives and seven to the Liberals, but the Liberal gain was greater than the Conservative gain in 10 seats against eight where the Conservative gain was greater. This means it isn’t necessarily the party-banner of the incumbent that should decide the NDP’s approach — more often, the NDP has more votes to get back from the Liberals in their lost seats, even in ones where winning means beating a Conservative.

It’s not cut-and-dry, however, so this argues for a multi-pronged approach from the New Democrats. As has been argued throughout the leadership contest, the NDP’s path back goes through both the Liberals and the Conservatives. But, it’s clear that the two parties don’t loom equally as large in the New Democrats’ comeback plans — for the NDP to return to relevancy, they need to take the Liberals down a peg most of all.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on a change to the ballot in the Terrebonne byelection and a change of political allegiance in Quebec’s National Assembly.

• An update on the federal polls, including some deeper looks at Manitoba and Atlantic Canada, and some insights on the challenges the NDP and its leadership contenders have ahead of them. Plus, provincial numbers out of Manitoba and Ontario.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 1930 Alberta Liberal leadership race.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

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Manitoba’s Wab Kinew remains the most popular premier in the country, and only one of three premiers with a net positive approval rating.

But his remarkable string of popularity since coming to office in 2023 is all the more impressive when you consider that he is the only premier with a net positive approval rating among those who have the strongest opinions.

The Angus Reid Institute published its quarterly premiers’ approval ratings report yesterday, covering nine of Canada’s 10 provincial premiers. (Because of the small size of Prince Edward Island, the ARI does not have a panel that is large enough from which to adequately poll on a quarterly basis.) The report shows that Kinew is once again the most popular premier with a 61% approval rating, an increase of three points over the last quarter.

Two other premiers have majority approval: New Brunswick’s Susan Holt at 54% and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe at 51%. Both of them saw their approval rating drop by an insignificant two points.

Alberta’s Danielle Smith ranked next with 46% (+2), followed by Newfoundland and Labrador’s Tony Wakeham at 42% (+1).

Nova Scotia’s Tim Houston had the biggest drop, as his approval ratings plummeted 11 points to just 39%. This comes in the wake of a provincial budget with cuts that the Houston government had to reverse when they were met with big protests.

Rounding out the list were B.C.’s David Eby at 37% (-3), Ontario’s Doug Ford at 31% (-3) and Quebec’s François Legault at 26% (+1), in what will be his last quarterly assessment by the Angus Reid Institute. Legault will be replaced in April when the CAQ chooses his successor.

While Houston’s slide was the only one of great significance compared to the ARI’s last quarterly assessment, the smaller shifts for some of the other premiers are part of an ongoing trend.

Eby has seen his approval rating drop over four consecutive quarters by a total of 16 points since March 2025. (Houston, too, has dropped over four consecutive quarters, but more than half of his total slide of 20 points has taken place in the last three months.)

With the exception of a small uptick last fall, Ford has also been sliding over the last year. But this is more of a regression to the mean — Ford jumped to 48% when he was taking on Donald Trump early last year, but throughout 2023 and 2024 his approval rating was usually in the 33% to 34% range.

At a net -31, Ford has the worst net approval rating among the premiers who aren’t on their way out (Legault, at -42, is at the very bottom). But most premiers have net negative ratings. Wakeham is -2, Smith is -6, Houston is -19 and Eby is -21. Only Moe (+6), Holt (+14) and Kinew (+26) have lower disapproval ratings than approval ratings.

But let’s look at this from another angle. A big chunk of respondents in all provinces say they either moderately approve or moderately disapprove of their premiers. In all but Alberta and Quebec nearly half or a majority of respondents have these mushy views. What if we strip them out and look only at those who strongly approve or disapprove of their premier?

When we do that, Kinew is the only premier that is still a net positive. The ARI finds that 27% of Manitobans strongly approve of their NDP premier, while just 19% strongly disapprove. Moe drops to a net -5 when focusing only on those who feel strongly, while Holt slides to -15 — the biggest shift of any premier.

Eby and Houston drop to -30 and -26, respectively, while Smith slides to a -17. Interestingly, Ford, Legault and Wakeham have identical numbers among all respondents and among only those with strongly-held views.

These numbers suggest which premiers might be facing deeper opposition within their provinces — but also that negative views tend to be more strongly held. Smith and Kinew have the highest strongly approve numbers at 27%. With the exception of Legault (at 46%), Smith also has the highest strongly disapprove numbers at 44%. Three other premiers (Eby, Ford and Houston) have strongly disapprove ratings at 35% or more.

There are fewer “gettable” voters for these premiers as a large proportion of their electorates have such strongly held views that they are unlikely to ever be brought over to their sides. It’s one of the reasons that Legault had to go — he had no path to re-election with such high levels of opposition (his successor also seems likely to find the way forward difficult).

Smith and Kinew face elections next year (or earlier, if they want). From this vantage point, it looks like Kinew will easily secure re-election, though Smith faces a more polarized electorate. For now, she’s on the winning side of that polarization. But, as Houston recently discovered, things can change quickly.

In case you missed it, earlier this week I launched The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projection model! You can check it out, along with riding-level projections, here:

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the CAQ and B.C. Conservative leadership races and a sad passing in Prince Edward Island.

• Polls continue to show the Liberals with a double-digit lead. Plus, what Canadians think of the war in Iran and where things stand in B.C., Ontario, Alberta and one riding in Toronto.

• #EveryElectionProject: Stephen Harper wins the 2002 Alliance leadership.

• Upcoming milestone for Danielle Smith.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

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A year ago this week, Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership and was sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister.

While he’s still prime minister today, a whole lot of other things have changed.

And that includes the standings in the House of Commons, which seems to be changing on any given day. Late on Tuesday night, NDP interim leader Don Davies announced that Nunavut MP Lori Idlout was crossing the floor from his party to the Liberals. More on that in a bit.

A year ago today, there were 153 Liberal, 120 Conservative, 33 Bloc, 24 NDP, two Green and three Independent MPs. Now, with Idlout’s crossing, there are 170 Liberals, 141 Conservatives, 22 Bloc, six New Democrats and one Green. With three vacancies in the House, the governing caucus is tied with the opposition caucus.

It seems likely that the Liberals will shortly secure their majority, thanks to the three byelections scheduled on April 13.

Another thing that has changed over the last year is the support for the Liberals — and that shift in support partially explains why there have now been four opposition MPs who have made the journey across the aisle.

Almost exactly one year ago, a poll by Léger taken around Mark Carney’s leadership victory awarded the Liberals 37% support, putting them in a tie with the Conservatives. The NDP trailed in third with 11%.

(Even that reflected a remarkable shift in support. Just two months earlier, Léger pegged the Conservative lead at 26 percentage points).

The most recent Léger poll now puts the Liberals at 49%, followed by the Conservatives at 35% and the NDP at just 5%. In one year, Léger has recorded a 12-point increase for the Liberals as the Conservatives have slid two points and the NDP has dropped six.

Satisfaction with Justin Trudeau’s government at the time of it being handed over to Mark Carney was 37%, with 57% dissatisfied. Now, Léger gives Carney’s government a 59% satisfaction rating, with just 33% dissatisfied.

Comparing these two Léger polls, we see that support for the Liberals has jumped dramatically across all regions and demographic groups.

The biggest increases have come among women (a gain of 18 points), those aged 18 to 34 (16 points) and people living in British Columbia (16 points). Smaller gains have occurred among people in the Prairies (seven points), men (eight points) and those aged 35-54 (nine points).

Léger records no big jump in Conservative support among any demographic. They have as much support today as they did in Léger’s poll a year ago among women, people under the age of 55 and those living in urban centres. But they are down four points among those over the age of 55 and are down five points in suburban areas — a big electoral problem for the Conservatives.

Perhaps the most problematic shift for the Conservatives, however, is in the head-to-head match up. Polling by Nanos Research has given Mark Carney a big lead over Pierre Poilievre on the preferred prime minister question since the election. But the gap has widened over the last few weeks.

The last iteration of Nanos’s four-week rolling poll now has Carney at 57% on preferred prime minister, the highest it has ever been and higher even than Trudeau managed in his post-2015 honeymoon. Poilievre has now dropped to 22%. The gap between them is 35 points, wider than it’s ever been and wider than the advantage Poilievre ever enjoyed over Trudeau.

A lot has changed in 12 months. A year ago, Carney presided over a minority government and faced an uncertain election ahead of him. Now, he might be days away from a majority — and years from needing to go back to the electorate.

In case you missed it on Monday, I broke down the latest fundraising figures for the NDP leadership race. They show Avi Lewis holding a wide lead over the rest of the field.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the floor-crossing in the House and the stakes of the three byelections set for April 13. Plus, the Manitoba PCs lose an MLA.

• Polls show a double-digit lead for the Liberals nationwide. Plus, new numbers on how Canadians perceive the Carney government, where things stand in Alberta and B.C. and whether anyone knows who is running for the leader of the B.C. Conservatives or Ontario Liberals.

• #EveryElectionProject: Ralph Klein’s third win in Alberta.

• Upcoming milestone for Mark Carney.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Floor-crossing, byelections put Carney on cusp of majority

The pieces that will push the Liberals to, and perhaps beyond, the threshold of 172 seats needed for a majority government were put into place this week with the calling of three byelections for April 13 and the crossing of Nunavut MP Lori Idlout from the New Democrats to the Liberals.

What does it mean for the next few weeks and months — and for the opposition parties?

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

With the polls continuing to look good for Mark Carney and the Liberals, a snap election call is certainly a possibility this year. But floor-crossers and byelections might secure Carney his majority, too. Whether or not the next election is this year, in the next two years or occurs on schedule in 2029, Carney’s Liberals will be looking for their fifth consecutive election victory.

Easier said than done.

While more common at the provincial level, only five times has a federal party been in power long enough to try to win five consecutive elections. The next election will be the sixth attempt.

The first occurred in 1896. John A. Macdonald had returned to power in 1878 after a brief Liberal interregnum and won re-election in 1882, 1887 and 1891 (as detailed below in this week’s edition of the #EveryElectionProject). Macdonald died shortly after the 1891 victory and the country went through three more prime ministers before Charles Tupper led the Conservatives to defeat in the 1896 election.

That defeat kicked-off the next attempt to win five elections in a row. After becoming prime minister in 1896, Wilfrid Laurier was re-elected in 1900, 1904 and 1908. He tried to win his fifth election in 1911 but lost to Robert Borden’s Conservatives.

It wasn’t until mid-century that the next attempt to win five elections occurred. Mackenzie King was back in office in 1935 and won re-election in 1940 and 1945 before handing over the reins to Louis St-Laurent, who won in 1949. St-Laurent increased the Liberals’ winning streak to five in 1953, making the Liberal victory that year the first time any party won five elections in a row at the national level.

The last successful attempt to win five elections in a row was in 1974, when Pierre Trudeau brought the Liberals back to majority status. The streak began with Lester Pearson’s two minority wins in 1963 and 1965, followed by Trudeau’s majority victory in 1968 and his narrow minority win in 1972.

The last try for five came in 2006. Jean Chrétien won elections in 1993, 1997 and 2000 for the Liberals, with Paul Martin winning a fourth in 2004. His attempt to win a fifth went down to defeat in 2006.

The record at the federal level, as thin as it is, is not glowing, with three defeats and only two victories. And in both successful attempts, the party went down to defeat in the subsequent election. But because it is so difficult to win four elections, just being in a position to attempt a fifth means that, win or lose, Carney will still be in good company.

Perhaps because it is more difficult to hold together a coalition of voters at the national level than it is provincially, where there is less regional variation, there have been longer stretches of one-party dominance at the provincial level. In all, there have been 36 attempts by a party to win five provincial elections in a row but, unlike at the federal level, some of those were part of far longer stretches in office. No party has won six consecutive elections federally, but several parties have pulled off that feat (and even added to the winning streak) at the provincial level.

The winning record at the provincial level is respectable, with 21 re-elections and 15 defeats when parties have tried to win five elections in a row.

(This considers the Liberal-Conservative coalitions of the 1940s in British Columbia as a continuation of the Liberal government first elected in 1933, and it also considers John Bracken’s victories first as a Progressive and then as a Liberal-Progressive as part of the same streak of victories. The 2017 election in B.C. is also considered a “successful” attempt at a fifth consecutive election victory, as Christy Clark’s Liberals technically did win the most seats, even if they were toppled by the NDP and Greens after the election.)

While the winning record is slightly worse than the general re-election record of incumbent governments, it is still above .500. But many of them were in the first century or so of Canada’s existence. There have been only 12 attempts to win five elections in row over the last 50 years, with just four election victories (or three if we consider Clark’s 2017 campaign a defeat).

So, over the last half-century there have been only 13 attempts to win five elections in a row at either the provincial or federal levels and only four (or three) victories. That’s not such a great record. Canadians aren’t as keen to keep parties in office for prolonged periods of time as they once were.

Each case is unique, though. That it’s been hard for other parties to win five in a row doesn’t mean that it will be hard for the Liberals. But, if they pull it off, it’ll be quite the achievement — simply because it’s become so rare these days.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the slate of candidates in the B.C. Conservative leadership race, the deregistration of a minor federal party and the creation of a new Acadian riding in Nova Scotia.

• Polls show the Liberal lead stabilizing, while in Quebec the provincial race is getting much tighter. Plus, Canadians’ views on the war in Iran, trade with India and the renegotiation of CUSMA, as well as the state of the race in B.C. post-provincial budget.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 1891 Canadian election, when annexation by the U.S. was on the ballot (or so Sir John A. claimed).

• Upcoming milestones for Mark Carney and Doug Ford.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

NINE BC CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES - The B.C. Conservatives have approved nine candidates for their leadership contest. They are MLAs Bruce Banman, Harman Bhangu and Peter Milobar, former MLA Iain Black and former MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Caroline Elliott, Yuri Fulmer, Warren Hamm and Darrell Jones, who have not held elected office before, have also qualified. The next important deadline for these candidates will be April 1, when the next fee instalment (worth $40,000) will be due. The candidates would have already paid the initial $15,000 fee to reach this point. MLAs Sheldon Clare and Steve Kooner withdrew from the contest after initially declaring their interest. The winner will be announced on May 30.

LIBERTARIANS FREE THEMSELVES FROM REGISTRATION - The Libertarian Party has been deregistered by Elections Canada after failing to file an auditor’s report for the last federal election campaign. Deregistration means the party can no longer provide tax credits for donations and is effectively no longer a party recognized by Elections Canada. The Libertarians ran only 16 candidates in the last election, garnering less than 0.1% of the vote. The party hit a recent high-water mark in 2015 when it ran 72 candidates and received nearly 1% of the vote in ridings where it was on the ballot, making it the largest of the minor parties in that election.

NEW ACADIAN RIDING IN NOVA SCOTIA - A new provincial riding will be added to the electoral map in Nova Scotia and a byelection will held to fill it in the next few months. A court ruling has spurred the Nova Scotia government to create a protected Acadian riding on Cape Breton, which will be called Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay. It will have the smallest population of any riding in the province but will serve as a means of representation for the Acadian minority. Nova Scotia has several “protected” ridings to represent Acadian and African Nova Scotian minorities. The riding will be carved out of the existing seat of Inverness, which the governing PCs currently hold.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Liberal lead stabilizing?

The gap between the Liberals and Conservatives appears to be holding as two new polls show stability, a third (lagging) poll catches up to the pack and a fourth we haven’t heard from in awhile returns.

Polls from Abacus Data and Liaison Strategies show the Liberals leading by six and 10 points, respectively. For Abacus, this is a reduction in the Liberal lead by a single point from its early-February poll, while Liaison’s two-week rolling poll has had the lead go from nine points two weeks ago to 12 points last week before settling at 10 points this week.

Nanos Research, meanwhile, has the Liberals enjoying a lead of nearly 11 points, a nine-point swing compared to where the four-week rolling poll was just two weeks ago. As the Nanos poll was one of the last to show the big swing to the Liberals, and because each weekly poll release has a lot of old data in it, it would seem that this recent swing is more about catching up to the other surveys than it is a sign that the Liberals are continuing to surge forward.

It’s also a bit difficult to discern any recent trends from a new Ipsos poll, which gives the Liberals a lead of eight points, 44% to 36%, over the Conservatives. The last poll from Ipsos was published in mid-December. That survey had the Liberals leading by three points, so this would again suggest another poll re-affirming the consensus view of where things stand, rather than a new indication of Liberal growth.

Last week, I highlighted an emerging trend in Alberta, where the Liberals were actually surging forward. Nanos doesn’t have any Alberta-specific results, but Liaison shows the trend it picked up holding. Last week, the Conservatives were leading in Alberta by a margin of 48% to 37%. This week, the margin is largely unchanged at 48% to 38%, indicating that Liaison’s finding wasn’t a one-off fluke.

Abacus showed a 35-point lead for the Conservatives in early February. This latest Abacus poll has the gap at 25 points, 57% to 32%. While it isn’t as tight as some other recent surveys, that is nevertheless a net 10-point swing between the poll ending on February 10 and the poll ending on February 23.

And Ipsos, new to the pack has the Conservatives leading in Alberta by just 13 points, 49% to 36%.

With these new polls out, the seat projection average has the Liberals leading with 205 seats, followed by the Conservatives at 102, the Bloc at 23 and the NDP at 11.

I’m moving closer and closer to the publication of The Writ’s official seat and vote projection model. I’m now at the stage of inputting old data to get some trend lines going back to the 2025 election. Stay tuned!

Quebec’s election looking closer

A new poll from Léger suggests the outcome of Quebec’s provincial election in October is becoming less certain as the gap between the Parti Québécois and the Quebec Liberals shrinks to just one point.

The PQ is effectively tied with the Liberals at 31% to 30%, the latter number representing a four-point gain for the Liberals since Léger’s previous poll conducted at the end of January, before Charles Milliard was acclaimed as the new leader of the PLQ.

There has been a significant shift in voting intentions over the last three months. In early December, the PQ was leading with 39% against just 21% for the Liberals, according to Léger. Since then, the PQ has dropped eight points and the Liberals have picked up nine.

The poll found the Quebec Conservatives in third place with 15%, followed by the governing Coalition Avenir Québec with 13%. This is the first time Léger has put the CAQ in fourth. Québec Solidaire brings up the rear with 9% support.

The PQ holds a 20-point lead over the Liberals among francophones, which is electorally decisive and potentially enough to keep the PQ in majority territory — despite being at just 31% across the province. But the Liberals appear to be making serious inroads in the Montreal region. If that isn’t all concentrated on the island of Montreal (which last week’s Pallas Data poll suggested wasn’t the case), then the PLQ could put some pressure on the PQ in the suburbs surrounding the island. It wouldn’t be enough pressure to put a PQ victory in doubt, but it could raise some questions about the PQ’s ability to secure a majority.

If the party does secure a majority, leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised to hold a referendum on Quebec independence in his first mandate. But support for sovereignty has hit a new low, with only 26% saying they would vote OUI in a new referendum against 65% who would vote NON. Removing the undecideds shows a 29% to 71% split, which has to rank among the lowest numbers ever recorded for Quebec independence in the last 50 years.

While the sovereignty issue has the potential to weigh down the PQ’s election chances, the ongoing CAQ leadership race looks unlikely to boost the governing party’s fortunes. Earlier polling found that front runner Christine Fréchette made her party far more competitive, but this survey finds that Fréchette would only boost the CAQ to 15%. Still, that’s better than the 8% that Bernard Drainville would get for the CAQ, putting the party dead last.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

CANADIAN VIEWS ON IRAN WAR - Nearly half of Canadians oppose the air strikes against Iran that were launched by the United States and Israel this past week, with opposition concentrated among Liberal voters. The poll by the Angus Reid Institute finds support for the strikes at 34% among Canadians, with 49% opposed, while among Liberals opposition rises to 69%. By comparison, support stands at 64% among Conservative voters. This could put the prime minister in an awkward spot, as his government’s stated support of the strikes (with “regret”) appears to put him at odds with his own voter coalition.

CUSMEH? - Polling by Abacus Data suggests the stakes for Mark Carney in the CUSMA negotiations are not as high as one might think when it comes to public opinion. The survey found that 45% of Canadians think the end of CUSMA would be bad for Canada but just 28% think it would be bad for them personally. And, if our trade agreement with the United States and Mexico did come to an end, only 20% would blame Carney for it, compared to 58% who would blame Donald Trump. Of course, if the end of the trade deal has a negative impact on the Canadian economy then, sooner or later, the government will bear the brunt of voters’ discontent. But an end to CUSMA this year, at least according to these numbers, might not shift the dial much when it comes to support for Carney and the Liberals.

TRUMP MAKES CANADIANS MORE OPEN TO INDIA - Canadians have mixed views regarding India and attempts to improve relations between our two countries, according to new polling by the Angus Reid Institute (conducted before Mark Carney’s trip to India concluded). While 53% of Canadians said this was the right time for Carney to visit the country (just 23% said it was too soon or shouldn’t take place), only 33% said that Canada should approach India on friendly terms or as a valued partner and ally. The majority said Canada should approach India cautiously or as a potential threat or enemy. However, while 58% of Canadians took this wary approach to India, that was still lower than the 71% who said Canada should take this approach with the United States. On balance, while Canadians do not seem to be ecstatic about closer ties with India, the climate with the U.S. has made it far more palatable.

BRITISH COLUMBIANS SOUR ON BUDGET - New polling by Pallas Data shows the B.C. NDP narrowly leading over the Conservatives with 42% to 40%, followed by the Greens at 11% and OneBC at 5%. The poll suggests that British Columbians have reacted poorly to the provincial budget, with 52% saying they oppose the direction of the budget, compared to just 33% who support it. The survey also found that Caroline Elliott continues to lead among Conservative voters for the party leadership with 15%, followed by Peter Milobar at 9% and Iain Black, Kerry-Lynne Findlay and Darrell Jones at 7% apiece. Still, 47% of Conservative voters say they are undecided.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• March 29: Federal NDP leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Tony McQuail

• April 12: Coalition Avenir Québec leadership

  • Candidates: Bernard Drainville, Christine Fréchette

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• May 30: British Columbia Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Bruce Banman, Harman Bhangu, Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer, Warren Hamm, Darrell Jones, Peter Milobar

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 19: Alberta referendum

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • CA - University–Rosedale (to by called by July)

  • CA - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • CA - Terrebonne (to be called by August)

  • NS - Chéticamp–Margarees–Pleasant Bay (date TBD)

  • CA - Beaches–East York (potential resignation pending)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

Should Canada become the 45th state?

March 5, 1891

Canadian fears of annexation by the United States are nothing new. Indeed, they were one of the contributing factors that led to Confederation in 1867. Elections won or lost over Canada’s relationship with the United States are also nothing new.

But the issue was perhaps never more front and centre — or more contentious — than in the federal election of 1891.

As the Dominion of Canada approached the 20th century, its prime minister was still a figure who was very much of the 19th. John A. Macdonald was Canada’s first prime minister and by 1891 had served in that role for all but five years since the country’s foundation. Since returning to office after the 1878 election, Macdonald had led his Conservatives (also known as Liberal-Conservatives) to victories in 1882 and 1887, defeating the Liberals under Edward Blake.

But things were beginning to change in Canadian politics. Macdonald was 76 years old and in ill-health as his years of heavy drinking were catching up to him. He knew that he likely only had one more campaign in him and it would be against a new opponent who represented a major shift all on his own.

Wilfrid Laurier had taken over as leader of the Liberals after the 1887 defeat, the first time a French Canadian led a national party. It was an open question whether the age-old divides between English and French, Protestant and Catholic would prevent Laurier from even being given a hearing outside of his home province of Quebec.

The Liberals needed a bold new policy to take to voters to grab their attention. The country’s economy was flagging and the Liberals eyed a potential solution south of the border.

Since 1878, Macdonald had boasted the benefits of his “National Policy”, which essentially amounted to protective tariffs. The National Policy assured that Canada’s manufacturing industry could grow and prosper, safe from competition from the far more dynamic economy of the United States. It also ensured that the agricultural sector wouldn’t be swamped by American goods. For Macdonald, the National Policy was the cause of Canada’s prosperity when things were going well and the solution to its problems when they weren’t.

Ahead of the 1891 election, the Liberals decided to go in another direction: “unrestricted reciprocity”, or free trade with the Americans. Not only would this open up America’s huge market to Canadian products, it would lower costs for farmers who were forced to buy more expensive tools and equipment produced by tariff-protected Canadian manufacturers. It would be the jolt that Canada’s economy needed to get out of the doldrums.

It would also have the benefit of protecting Canada from the increasingly protectionist United States, which had just recently adopted the McKinley Tariffs.

But if the Liberals thought this was the policy that could bring them to power, Macdonald spied an election-winning wedge issue. Reciprocity was not the solution to Canada’s economic malaise. Instead, it was simply the first step toward economic and then full political union with the United States.

The United States was an expansionist power in the 19th century. Through deal-making and war-making, the country had grown from one that was penned in along the eastern seaboard to one that stretched from sea to sea. In 1890, Idaho and Wyoming had been made the 43rd and 44th states.

By the 1890s, fewer American eyes were being cast on the vast Canadian territories as before. But there was still much discussion about annexation and there were advocates on both sides of the border who voiced their support of a continental union. Could Canada become the 45th state?

It was easy to cast the Liberal project as the stepping stone to eventual union — which meant breaking ties with the British Empire. Those old ties with the old country were still strong in large parts of the Dominion, and Macdonald knew how to play on that emotional connection.

“A British subject I was born — a British subject I will die,” he said in a campaign speech in Toronto. “With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, I oppose the veiled treason which attempts by sordid means and mercenary profit to lure our people from their allegiance.”

This “veiled treason” involved allegations Macdonald levied against the Liberals, and in particular Richard Cartwright, the foremost Liberal in Ontario, who he said was conspiring with American annexationists. Macdonald would have none of it.

“During my long public service of nearly half a century,” he went on, “I have been true to my country and its best interests, and I appeal with equal confidence to the men who have trusted me in the past, and to the young hope of the future, with whom rests its destinies for the future, to give me their united and strenuous aid in this, my last effort, for the unity of the Empire and the preservation of our commercial and political freedom.”

There was a lot of nostalgia in Macdonald’s appeal — not only to the old colonial connections to Great Britain but to Macdonald himself. He knew, as did Canadians, that he didn’t have long for this world. He was asking Canadians to stick by him one more time. The Conservatives leaned hard into these appeals to nostalgia, most famously in a campaign poster bearing the slogan “The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The Old Leader.”

The old flag was, of course, the Union Jack (or the Red Ensign, in this case). The old policy was the National Policy. And the old leader was him. To hammer the poster’s point home, Macdonald was held aloft on the shoulders of a farmer and an industrial worker — in other words, rural and urban male voters (women did not have the franchise) — as he flew the flag one last time.

Macdonald was an old warhorse of a campaigner. This was his seventh campaign as national leader of the party, in addition to his pre-Confederation campaigns. Despite his advanced age (and the cold February winter), Macdonald was touring southern Ontario holding two rallies per day.

Wilfrid Laurier, on the other hand, kept quiet in the first week of the campaign, holed up in his headquarters in Montreal. He let Richard Cartwright in Ontario and Premier Honoré Mercier in Quebec lead the charge in the early days.

When he did finally venture out, he met Macdonald’s charges of disloyalty in a speech in Quebec City, where he was running as a candidate. But he didn’t have the tubthumping, populist style of his wily old opponent.

“No, gentlemen; as of yore we are still true and loyal to our Sovereign Lady the Queen,” he said. “But if our interests were in opposition to those of England, we would stick to ours by all means. We are Canadians and we will watch Canada’s welfare before all.”

This was the contrast between the two parties and the two men. Macdonald’s view of Canadian success was an economy protected from American competition and which maintained its close ties with the British Empire. Laurier’s view was of a Canada more self-confident, ready to take on competition with the Americans and willing to chart its own course, independent of Great Britain (and the United States). It was the old vs. the new.

At 49 years old at the time of the election, Laurier was not exactly a very young man. But Macdonald was more than 25 years his senior. And both men took ill with the pressures of the campaign. But while Laurier would recover, Macdonald never would.

Before long, Macdonald had to reduce his schedule to one rally per day. But in the final stretch of the campaign, he was induced to hold two rallies one day in eastern Ontario, riding in an open carriage in the late February air on both occasions. His strength collapsed and his secretary, Joseph Pope, had to cancel all further events for the rest of the campaign. Macdonald wouldn’t hit the hustings again, heading to bed on election night without knowing whether had had won or not.

But his appeal to Canadians’ loyalty to the old connection prevailed — if only just. The Conservatives won 117 seats and 48% of the vote, enough to secure another majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives swept all of B.C.’s six seats and the four seats in the Northwest Territories (which then included what is now Alberta and Saskatchewan). They dropped seats in Ontario and Quebec, but gained six in the Maritimes.

Overall, however, the Conservatives had lost six seats from the 1887 election and their majority had been reduced. The Liberals took 45% of the vote, putting them just behind the Conservatives, and won 33 of Quebec’s 65 seats. While it wasn’t much of a surprise that Quebecers had embraced a native son, the Liberals’ breakthrough in Ontario with a gain of seven seats, putting them nearly even with the Conservatives, was significant — and a sign that English-speaking Protestants could indeed vote for a French Canadian Catholic. It bode well for Laurier’s future.

But the Conservatives paid a steep price for one more election victory. Pope believed that Macdonald never fully recovered from the “chill” he suffered that cold day on the campaign trail. In May, Macdonald suffered a series of strokes. He passed away on June 6, 1891, nearly three months to the day after his last election win.

The Conservatives wouldn’t fully recover from the loss of Macdonald. After cycling through four successors, the Conservatives would finally go down to defeat in 1896 when Laurier, who had dropped his policy of unrestricted reciprocity, had learned not to test Canadians’ appetite for closer ties with the United States.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

MILESTONE WATCH

• On Monday, Mark Carney marks a year since he won the 2025 Liberal leadership contest with 86% of the points on offer, crushing his rivals for the job. Since becoming leader of the Liberals a year ago, Carney has led the party to its fourth consecutive electoral victory and appears poised to secure the majority he failed to win last April, either through byelections and floor-crossers or, just maybe, another election.

• Then, on Tuesday, Doug Ford will mark eight years as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. Ford defeated Christine Elliott for the leadership of the Ontario PCs in 2018 thanks to the vagaries of the points system — he won neither the most votes nor the most ridings. Despite that inauspicious start, Ford has been one of the more successful leaders the PCs have ever had. The only other party leaders to win three consecutive majority governments were James Whitney, Howard Ferguson and Leslie Frost.

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

There are no more holdouts as some of the last pollsters that were showing a tight (or tightish) race between the Liberals and Conservatives have now swung over to a wide Liberal lead.

And one of the places that has seen the most movement is … Alberta?!

The latest national polls come from the Innovative Research Group and the Angus Reid Institute. We also have updated rolling polls from Nanos Research and Liaison Strategies. Innovative and Nanos have the Liberals ahead by seven points, while Liaison has the gap at 12 points and the Angus Reid Institute puts it at 13.

While Liaison has been giving the Liberals a comfortable lead for a few weeks and we’ve recently seen similarly sizable margins in polls from Research Co., Mainstreet Research, EKOS Research and Léger, the swing recorded in the Innovative, ARI and Nanos polls is notable.

Since the end of January, the ARI has the Liberals gaining four points and the Conservatives falling by six. In just one week, the four-week rolling poll by Nanos has the Liberals three points up and the Conservatives three points down. Innovative has the Liberals up four points since its previous late-January, early-February poll, with the Conservatives down one, while Liaison has the Liberals up three points and the Conservatives down two points since last week.

It’s a big change. If we only looked at these four pollsters, their previous surveys averaged 40.5% for the Liberals against 36.6% for the Conservatives. Now, the average from these four pollsters is 43.8% to 33.9%. That’s a total net swing of six points between the two parties. To this list we could add Abacus Data, which about two weeks ago gave the Liberals a seven-point lead after showing a two-point gap as recently as mid-January.

The polls have certainly shifted — and the uncertainty about what a snap election would produce has reduced. A few weeks ago, the Liberals could have been cautioned that a few pollsters were still indicating a close race, even if others were showing the party in majority territory. Now, all the polls are showing the Liberals in majority territory. The only caution is the uncertainty in how public opinion could shift over the course of a five-week campaign.

There might also, however, be a question about how real or sustainable these numbers are — particularly when one of the biggest shifts has occurred in Alberta.

Before we get into that, and what kind of seat numbers each of the parties could expect with these polls, here’s a rundown of what else is in this week’s edition of the Weekly Writ:

• A look at the byelection results in the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi and what it means for the upcoming provincial election. Plus, Danielle Smith sets the date for a referendum and Alexandre Boulerice has been given the green light to run in Gouin.

• Polls on the provincial scenes in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta. Is Doug Ford losing ground in Ontario, and have the Liberals caught up in Quebec?

• #EveryElectionProject: Christy Clark’s outsider upset win in 2011.

No regional results were publicly available from the Innovative or Nanos polls, but the numbers from the Angus Reid Institute and Liaison surveys, in addition to an Alberta-only poll conducted by Mainstreet Research, point to significant movement in Alberta that could swing as many as a dozen seats (or potentially more) to the Liberals — if the numbers are indeed the real deal.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

As Matt Jeneroux’s floor-crossing puts a Liberal majority within Mark Carney’s grasp, the NDP’s last redoubt in Quebec might also be about to fall.

Le Journal de Montréal reported on Tuesday that Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP’s only MP in Quebec, is interested in jumping ship and running for Québec Solidaire in the next provincial election. Ruba Ghazal, the co-leader of QS, has only confirmed that the party will vote on an exception to its own rules to allow a man to run as their candidate in the Montreal riding of Gouin.

(As Québec Solidaire’s caucus is two-thirds male, the party has instituted rules to limit nominations in seats they hold to non-male candidates to try to correct the imbalance.)

Part of Boulerice’s riding of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie overlaps with the provincial riding of Gouin, which will be without a candidate in the next election as former co-leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is not running for re-election. One complicating factor for Boulerice is that QS is an officially sovereignist party, while the NDP is very much not, and he will have to make an expression of support for Quebec independence if he is going to run under the provincial party’s orange banner.

Boulerice first won Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie in the Orange Wave election of 2011. He was re-elected in 2015 and then was the lone survivor when the New Democrats were reduced to a single seat in Quebec in 2019. He won again in 2021 and 2025.

The last election was the tightest margin for Boulerice since he was first elected. He took 41% of the vote against 31.6% for the Liberals. The Bloc finished third with 18.3% of the vote.

Nevertheless, that 9.4-point margin would make this one of the safer seats the NDP currently holds — only Edmonton Strathcona was won by a wider margin. But Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie is more of a Boulerice seat than it is an NDP seat. He has consistently outperformed New Democratic candidates in neighbouring ridings.

Every time Boulerice has faced re-election, he has lost less or gained more support than NDP candidates did in the neighbouring (and somewhat similar) ridings of Papineau, Outremont, Laurier–Sainte-Marie and Hochelaga–Rosemont-Est (formerly just Hochelaga).

In the first pullback for the NDP in Quebec in 2015, Boulerice lost only 1.8 percentage points while his neighbours lost an average of 10.1 points. In 2019, he lost 6.7 points while his neighbours lost 13.3. A small bounce back in 2021 boosted his vote share by 6.1 points while his neighbours were up only four. And in the last election, Boulerice lost 7.6 points to his neighbours’ 10.8 points.

So, the New Democrats look likely to face a real challenge holding Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie without Boulerice as they could struggle to find a candidate with enough profile to hold enough of his vote to win. The Liberals haven’t won in this part of Montreal since the 1980s, but if the vote is divided enough (and if the Liberals find a high-profile candidate) Mark Carney’s party could pick up the seat — a chance to secure and/or pad the Liberals’ majority following Jeneroux’s floor-crossing. The Bloc Québécois, which held this riding from 1990 to 2011, would also be a contender to win it back.

If the speculation turns out to be true and if QS approves the change to its nomination rules, then the New Democrats will lose the last vestige of Jack Layton’s Orange Wave when Boulerice resigns. They would also face a high likelihood of losing the seat as well, with few prospects of winning it back in the future. For nearly 20 years since Tom Mulcair’s breakthrough byelection win in Outremont in 2007, the New Democrats have had some representation in Quebec — the culmination of a long-held dream for the party. Is the dream about to end?

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the upcoming Terrebonne byelection, the third floor-crossing to the Liberals, the acclamation of Charles Milliard as PLQ leader and Conservative election preparations.

• Polls show some disagreements, but the consensus points to a big Liberal advantage. Plus, some new polls out of Ontario, Nova Scotia and Quebec.

• #EveryElectionProject: The B.C. Liberals hit rock-bottom in 1979.

• Upcoming milestone for David Eby.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

After floor-crossing, Carney’s majority could hang on Terrebonne

Last week, Canada’s Supreme Court annulled the election in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, meaning a federal byelection will have to be held within the next six months. It’ll mark the first big electoral test for Mark Carney’s government since the April 2025 vote and could prove to be what clinches the Liberal majority.

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My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones, as well as with the entire community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., after this week’s horrible tragedy.

Early election speculation has been in over-drive over the last few weeks in Ottawa — which is how things usually are during a minority government.

The latest bout has been supercharged by a series of polls that have put the Liberals solidly in majority territory (though not every poll, as we’ll get into in a little bit). Prime Minister Mark’s Carney bump in the polls after his Davos speech hasn’t yet abated and no floor-crossers appear to be in sight. Why not call an election in the short term when the Liberals’ chances of securing a majority are probably as good as they’re going to get?

The chatter was energized when The Globe and Mail reported that Ontario Premier Doug Ford — who himself called an early snap election last year — had suggested to Carney that he might want to go to the polls sooner rather than later.

It’s certainly possible the Liberals are considering a snap call (it would be political malpractice to not have it as an option) but they’ve done a little over the last few days to tamp down the speculation. Carney has said he isn’t thinking about an early election and he has some important international travel scheduled for the coming weeks and months that would be pre-empted by a dissolution. The Liberals and the Conservatives have also been discussing greater co-operation in the House of Commons. In the end, the threat of an election might be as useful for Carney as an actual writ drop.

Because a writ drop is serious business. It would kick-off an election campaign that would last at least five weeks. That’s a long time in politics. The Liberals were only leading the Conservatives by a point or two, on average, five weeks ago. That lead is now somewhere around seven points. There’s no guarantee what the polls will show in another five weeks.

That’s been the challenge for past governments that have considered going early. Not all have been successful. In fact, over the last century more than one-in-five governments that pulled their own plug early have gone down to defeat.

The chart below shows every early federal or provincial election call over the last 100 years. For the purposes of this analysis, I’ve looked at any election called within three calendar years of the previous election. This would exclude, for example, Carney’s snap call last April. But prior to the institution of fixed election date laws some 20 years or so ago, there’s no exact measure of when an election was “early” or not. Generally, elections were expected every four years, but could legally be pushed off to five years. Any election called within three years of the last one was usually considered an early call. (Though, in some provinces, it became the norm. W.A.C. Bennett, for example, liked calling elections in B.C. roughly every three years.)

The chart shows whether the election was called by the governing party on its own (“snap”) or if it was defeated in the legislature on either a money bill or a motion of non-confidence (“defeat”). The chart also shows what the status of the governing party was at dissolution, what it was after the election and how many seats it gained or lost.

History suggests that a snap election can be a 50/50 call — especially when it comes to seat gains. That would be the goal of Carney’s Liberals, as they only need a handful of seats to gain their majority. But in the 83 cases I’ve identified since 1926, only 41 times did the governing party gain seats. In the other 42 cases, the governing party either won the same number of seats or lost some.

The record is slightly better when the governing party called the election on its own, but there are actually very few cases of governments falling on budget bills or non-confidence motions.

In the case of minority governments, 15 times an early call upgraded the party to a majority, five times another minority was returned and nine times the government was defeated. That’s roughly a 2:1 margin in favour of re-election vs. defeat, but minority governments have been just about as likely to be defeated or returned with another minority as they have been to use an early call to win a majority.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be something to taking matters into your own hands. The win rate of governments that called an early election of their own accord is 78%, compared to a win rate of 67% in elections held at the four-to-five year mark. Governments defeated in the legislature have only won re-election 36% of the time.

In the end, surviving to fight another day can be enough of a win. On last week’s episode of The Writ Podcast, Dan Arnold (who was Justin Trudeau’s pollster) argued that the 2021 snap call was the right decision because the Liberals would have struggled to win re-election if the vote had taken place as scheduled in 2023. The party didn’t get its majority, but its tenure in office was prolonged long enough to get Mark Carney in at the right time.

The problem for Carney is that the future is hard to predict. John Diefenbaker in 1958 knew he could win his majority when he called a snap vote. Pierre Trudeau manoeuvred the New Democrats into defeating his government in 1974 because he liked his chances, too. Going to the polls was the right call for David Peterson in Ontario in 1987.

But then it was the disastrously wrong call for Peterson to go back to the polls in 1990. It was another big miscalculation for Jim Prentice to chase his own mandate a year early in Alberta in 2015. Elections have a funny way of not always going according to plan.

Maybe that’s why we love speculating about the next one so much.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the Ontario Liberals’ leadership race, plus the PCs in PEI have a new leader and premier, while the race for the PC leadership in New Brunswick finally gets a second candidate.

• Polls show the Liberal lead is holding but that the post-Davos surge might have stabilized. Plus, new numbers on Albertans’ views on independence.

• #EveryElectionProject: The time when Peter MacKay almost became the premier of Nova Scotia.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Ontario Liberals set rules for leadership race

The Ontario Liberals are in no great rush to name their replacement for Bonnie Crombie, who announced she’d be stepping down as leader last September. Instead, her successor will be announced more than a year after her leadership review vote, kicking off a leadership campaign that will conclude in more than nine months.

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Despite losing the election in April and trailing in the polls throughout most of the year, the Conservatives nevertheless continued to be a fundraising behemoth in 2025.

But, since the election, the Liberals have closed the gap.

Fundraising data published by Elections Canada last week shows just how much money the four major parties raised in 2025. (The Greens and People’s Party, because they failed to obtain at least 2% of the vote, are no longer required to file quarterly.) The Conservatives led the way, raising the most money for the 16th consecutive quarter and 21st consecutive year, going back to when the fundraising rules and reporting requirements changed in 2005.

The Conservatives raised $6,415,000 in the last quarter of the year from 42,000 individual contributions. This was their lowest Q4 since 2021 which, not coincidentally, was also the last Q4 in an election year. For the year as a whole, the Conservatives raised $48.1 million. That is a record high for the party, which beats their previous record of $41.7 million set in 2024.

The Liberals raised $5,995,000 in the fourth quarter from 41,000 contributions. That is the party’s best Q4 since 2020. With $29.7 million raised throughout the year, the Liberals set a new record. Their previous high had been $21.7 million in 2015.

The gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives has shrunk over the last three quarters. Over that time, the Conservatives raised only $3.1 million more than the Liberals. By comparison, the Conservatives were out-fundraising the Liberals in the last three quarters of 2023 by $15 million and of 2024 by $18.9 million.

The New Democrats raised $1,640,000 from 14,500 contributions in the fourth quarter. That brings their annual haul to just $6.3 million, roughly on par with where the party has been for the last four years.

While the NDP’s Q4 performance represents its worst fourth quarter since 2011, the contestants for the party’s leadership also raised another $1.5 million over the same period. Combined, the party and the leadership contestants raised $3.1 million. The party hasn’t raised that much money in a fourth quarter since 2014.

I broke down the NDP leadership fundraising in greater detail last week:

That makes these numbers look better for the NDP — but the central party will not get to touch most of the money raised by the contestants. Unless they’re able to run surpluses that are returned to the party, the leadership contestants’ fundraising does not quite help the NDP’s own financial crunch.

The Bloc Québécois raised $652,000 from 4,500 contributions in the fourth quarter. That is the party’s worst fourth quarter since 2021 — the previous election year. Despite the poor showing in the quarter, the Bloc set its own fundraising record for the year at $2.2 million.

This means that three of the four major parties had record-breaking fundraising years. In all, the four parties raised $86.2 million, far surpassing the previous record of $70.3 million set in 2015. A lot of money was sloshing around in party coffers in this past election year.

There’s usually a big drop-off in post-election years. Since 2006, the year following an election has seen an average drop-off of about 33% in total fundraising, all parties put together. But if repeated in 2026, that would still represent roughly $57 million in party fundraising — enough to rank as the sixth-highest in the last 22 years. Part of that is inflation, but only a small part. The $33 million raised in 2006 would be the equivalent of $49 million today, according to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator.

Simply put, the main reason for the record-breaking fundraising in 2025 is that parties have gotten better at raising cash. Whether they’ve gotten any better at spending it is another question.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on a series of federal and provincial byelections we should expect to see in Toronto over the next 6-to-12 months. Plus, leadership news from Calgary, Quebec and PEI.

• Polls show the Liberals widening their lead over the Conservatives and moving deeper into majority territory. Plus, new provincial polls out of Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta.

• #EveryElectionProject: Quebec premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau drops the writ for a winter election in 1923.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Byelections! Get your byelections here!

It seems like Toronto is going to experience a series of rolling, cascading provincial and federal byelections over the next six-to-12 months.

And, of course, we’re here for it.

We already knew the federal byelection in University–Rosedale was on the docket following Chrystia Freeland’s resignation last month. The window for calling that byelection is currently open and will stay that way until July 8.

However, it seems likely that the Liberals will not wait too long to drop the writ. The Liberals are only a few seats shy of a majority in the House of Commons and so have a pretty strong incentive to fill their vacancies as soon as possible. The nomination on Saturday of Danielle Martin, a family physician with a high profile in the medical world, suggests the byelection call is relatively imminent — it’s rare for a governing party to announce nominations well in advance of a byelection, particularly when it is a seat where they are the incumbent. They won’t want to leave Martin in future-candidate limbo for too long.

The resignation of Bill Blair on Monday, however, adds a few more days to the time table. Blair is off to be the high commissioner to the United Kingdom and has vacated his seat of Scarborough Southwest. There’s a small delay between the vacancy of a seat and the earliest a government can drop the writ, which means the window for calling the byelection in Scarborough Southwest opens on February 13 and closes on August 1.

That the Liberals plan to call that byelection soon was made plain on Tuesday when it was announced that Doly Begum, one of the deputy leaders of the Ontario New Democrats and the MPP for the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest, was resigning her seat at Queen’s Park to run as the federal Liberal candidate in Blair’s old riding. Here again, the Liberals will not want to leave Begum idling on the sidelines for very long.

This means we have at least two federal byelections likely to be called in a few weeks (assuming the Liberals intend to have University–Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest vote on the same day).

Begum’s resignation means that Scarborough Southwest will also have to hold a provincial byelection within the next six months.

And when that byelection is called, the clock will start ticking on another byelection.

Nate Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Beaches–East York, has declared his intention to run as the Ontario Liberal candidate in the provincial Scarborough Southwest byelection, whenever that is called. The runner-up in the 2023 Ontario Liberal leadership is preparing for another run for the leadership of the party. Should he get the OLP nomination in Scarborough Southwest, he will have to resign his seat in the House of Commons when the writ is dropped on the provincial byelection.

So, to sum up, Blair’s resignation will cause a byelection in the federal riding of Scarborough Southwest, which, because Begum has resigned to run as the Liberal candidate, will cause a byelection in the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest, which will then cause a byelection in the federal riding of Beaches–East York, assuming Erskine-Smith secures the OLP nomination.

It’s a fun little game of byelection dominoes.

The three federal byelections are unlikely to be very competitive. The Liberals won Scarborough Southwest by 30.9 percentage points, University–Rosedale by 40.5 points and Beaches–East York by 44.2 points. On the list of ridings the Liberals won by the biggest margins in 2025, Scarborough Southwest ranks 43rd, University–Rosedale ranks 20th and Beaches–East York ranks eighth. In other words, only in a 2011-style catastrophe would the Liberals be expected to lose even one of these three ridings.

Undoubtedly, that’s why the Liberals have been able to attract candidates of the calibre of Martin and Begum for these seats — they’re shoo-ins to win.

The provincial byelection in Scarborough Southwest, however, could prove interesting.

The Ontario New Democrats won the seat with 42.9% of the vote in the last election, beating the Progressive Conservatives by 12.2 points. The Liberals finished third with 22.9%.

The NDP’s incumbents really bucked the trend in the last election, maintaining far more of their vote from the 2022 election than did candidates in other parts of the province.

In Scarborough Southwest’s four neighbouring ridings, for example, the NDP lost an average of 11.4 points. Begum’s support, by contrast, dropped by just 4.8 points. With Begum no longer on the ballot, the NDP might struggle to maintain their 42.9% of the vote from the 2025 provincial election. In the Toronto riding of Parkdale–High Park, where the NDP’s Bhutila Karpoche did not run for re-election last February, the NDP’s support dropped by nearly nine points. If the same thing happens in Scarborough Southwest, the NDP could drop to around 34% support — a number that would puts them in range of being overtaken by the PCs or Liberals.

That possibility could become more likely if the resignation of Begum causes the Ontario NDP to take a broader hit. The loss of a deputy leader (to the federal Liberals, no less) does not reflect well on leader Marit Stiles, who herself only squeaked by with a 68% vote of confidence in last year’s leadership review. A downward spiral for the ONDP could make it harder to recruit a quality replacement for Begum and open up the seat for either the PCs or the Liberals.

The drama from these byelections could thus come at the provincial level rather than at the federal scene. But one way or another, voters in Toronto will have their fill in 2026.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

POILIEVRE LEADERSHIP REVIEW - In case you didn’t see it already, Pierre Poilievre earned 87.4% on his leadership review at the Conservative convention in Calgary on Friday. This surpassed the 84% that Stephen Harper received at the party’s previous leadership review in 2005. It’s a number that suggests that Poilievre’s leadership faces no serious threat from within his own party’s membership base.

MILLIARD TO BE ACCLAIMED? - Mario Roy, the only other candidate to declare his intention to run for the Quebec Liberal leadership, was not yet been ruled eligible by the party to run as a candidate, which seemingly leaves the path open to Charles Milliard to be acclaimed as leader later this month. Milliard finished a very close second to Pablo Rodriguez in the PLQ’s leadership race last year. Roy finished last in that contest with just 0.8% support while accruing a campaign debt that he has yet to pay off, the sticking point that seems to be blocking his official entry into the race.

NEW PREMIER INCOMING - On Saturday, the PEI Progressive Conservatives will choose their new leader and the next premier of Prince Edward Island. The two contestants in the race are Rob Lantz and Mark Ledwell. Lantz stepped in as premier and interim PC leader after Dennis King’s resignation in early 2025 and had to vacate the premier’s office to run for the permanent leadership. Ledwell, a lawyer, does not hold a seat in the legislature and lags behind Lantz in caucus support. The next election in PEI is not scheduled until October 2027.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Liberals widen lead over Conservatives

Polls published over the last week have shown a significant amount of divergences for some of the parties, but the general picture is the same: the Liberals are leading over the Conservatives, and by a wider margin than in the last few weeks and months.

The polls come from Abacus Data, Léger, Liaison Strategies, Nanos Research, Mainstreet Research and EKOS Research.

All six polls show the Liberals leading, though the margins vary from as few as four points to as many as 15 points. The Liberals have between 39% and 51% in these six polls, with the Conservatives scoring between 30% and 39% and the NDP between 4% and 14%. Those are some pretty big spreads.

But the trend is pretty clear across these polls. The Liberals are up in all of them compared to when these pollsters were last in the field prior to Mark Carney’s Davos speech in January. There is no consensus on where that gain has come from, however, with both the Conservatives and NDP up, holding or down in these polls.

The two polls that stand out in this group come from EKOS and Mainstreet — and for different reasons. EKOS has the Conservatives quite a bit lower than everyone else, while Mainstreet has the Liberals quite a bit higher. There are some asterisks that come with both of these polls.

The last time we heard from EKOS in mid-November, it had the Conservatives at just 33% at a time when other pollsters had the Conservatives between 36% and 41%. So, it isn’t surprising to see that EKOS is again on the lower side for the Conservatives. The trend is more important than the individual number. As with the other pollsters, the margin between the Liberals and Conservatives has widened for EKOS.

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For Mainstreet, there has been a change in methodology between this poll and its previous release in mid-December. That previous poll included both IVR (interactive voice response) and SMS text-messaging for the sample. This new poll did not include an SMS component. That change could explain the huge swing between this poll and the previous one (the Liberals are up 10 points and the Conservatives are down 6.5 points). Another factor could be the rather Herculean weighting that has been applied to this poll to account for the very small sample of young voters. Mainstreet’s release suggests the sample of 18-to-34 year olds was just 55 respondents (MOE +/- 13%) and was weighted up to 231. That kind of weighting has the potential to amplify errors that are more likely when demographic sub-samples are small.

But, again, the broader signal from these polls is pretty clear — the Liberals are up and doing better than they were doing just a few weeks or months ago. It’s not so much that the Conservatives are slumping (Léger even has them up two points) but that the Liberals are enjoying a bump. It’s enough of a bump to push them safely into majority territory.

Notably, with the sole exception of the Nanos poll, each of these polls would produce a Liberal majority if their results were reflected at the ballot box. On average, these numbers give the Liberals 188 seats to just 115 for the Conservatives. The Bloc and NDP trail with 26 and 12 seats, respectively.

Much of this majority is built on Ontario, where the Liberals have made the most gains since last week’s projection. In fact, the Liberals have actually dropped seats in the projection in B.C. and the Prairies, but had those losses more than compensated for by significant gains in Ontario (and, to a lesser extent, Atlantic Canada).

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

IS THE CAQ BACK? - Polling by Léger suggests that the next election in Quebec could be far more competitive than expected if Christine Fréchette becomes the next leader of the CAQ. The poll found the Parti Québécois leading with 32% support against 26% for the Liberals, 17% for the CAQ, 14% for the Conservatives and 7% for Québec Solidaire. With Fréchette as CAQ leader, however, the CAQ leapfrogs into second with 25%, with the PQ and Liberals nudged down to 30% and 21%, respectively. If Bernard Drainville instead wins the CAQ leadership, the CAQ would fall further behind. The poll suggests that Quebecers have favourable views of Fréchette and unfavourable ones of Drainville, and that CAQ voters overwhelmingly prefer Fréchette to Drainville. The poll also finds low support for Quebec sovereignty at just 29%.

UCP LEADS IN ALBERTA - Léger also had some new numbers out of Alberta, where the United Conservatives were leading with 50% support against 37% for the New Democrats. Compared to October, this represented a six-point bump for the UCP. Only 18% of Albertans said they think Alberta should become an independent country, while another 5% said it should join the United States. Fully 71% said it should remain a part of Canada.

NDP LEADS IN B.C. - Léger was in the field in British Columbia, too. The B.C. NDP led in the poll with 44%, followed by the B.C. Conservatives at 38%, the Greens at 9% and OneBC at 6%. Compared to October, this represented a four-point drop for the NDP. The Conservatives were unchanged. The poll found that no candidate for the leadership of the Conservatives was very or somewhat familiar to more than a fifth of British Columbians. No more than 3% of respondents to the poll said that any of the candidates were “very familiar” to them.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• February 7: PEI Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Lantz, Mark Ledwell

• February 23: Quebec provincial byelection in Chicoutimi

• March 14: Quebec Liberal leadership

  • Candidates: Charles Milliard

• March 29: Federal NDP leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Tony McQuail

• April 12: Coalition Avenir Québec leadership

  • Candidates: Bernard Drainville, Christine Fréchette

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• May 30: British Columbia Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Bruce Banman, Iain Black, Sheldon Clare, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer, Warren Hamm, Darrell Jones, Peter Milobar

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • CA - University–Rosedale (to by called by July)

  • CA - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • CA - Edmonton Riverbend (resignation pending)

  • CA - Beaches–East York (potential resignation pending)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

  • Ontario Liberals (Bonnie Crombie announced on September 14, 2025)

ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

Taschereau’s first win and a Conservative comeback

February 5, 1923

When Louis-Alexandre Taschereau replaced Lomer Gouin as premier in 1920, the Quebec Liberals had already been in power since before the turn of the century. Taschereau had some big electoral shoes to fill, as Gouin had won four consecutive elections. But, then again, beating Conservatives in Quebec wasn’t all that tough at the time.

The imposition of conscription during the First World War by Robert Borden’s Union (but largely Conservative) government poisoned the well for Conservatives in Quebec. The party only managed five seats in the 1919 provincial election and was entirely shutout in the 1921 federal vote.

While crippling for the federal Conservatives, that sweep in 1921 was actually a godsend for the Quebec Conservatives and their leader, Arthur Sauvé. With the federal Conservatives now so weak, Sauvé was able to take control of the provincial organization of the party. The Quebec Conservatives built up their own organization and detached control of the party from Ottawa. It gave the Quebec Conservatives a distinct voice and some much-needed separation between themselves and Arthur Meighen, who had succeeded Borden as federal party leader. He had also been one of the central figures in the push for conscription.

Taschereau and the Liberals observed the rehabilitation of the Quebec Conservatives with some apprehension. Problems were starting to pile up on Premier Taschereau’s desk. Labour discontent and unemployment was growing in Montreal and Taschereau’s government had mishandled a few files and controversies in 1922. Sauvé and the Conservatives, despite forming a tiny opposition of five in the legislature, were making lots of noise.

The Liberals decided not to wait any longer. Constitutionally, they didn’t need to go to the polls before 1924 and would normally be expected to call an election for May or June in 1923. But Taschereau didn’t want to give the Conservatives more time to get off the mat. A winter election would make it all the more difficult for the Conservatives to organize outside of Montreal, where they already had some strength. The harsh winter climate would make it difficult for opposition candidates to tour the rural and remote ridings that made up the vast majority of seats in Quebec. If they couldn’t get better known locally, the incumbent Liberals would have the advantage. The election was set for February 5, 1923.

After nearly 26 years in office, the Liberals didn’t have much new to present to the electorate. But they still managed to publish a 300-page manifesto lauding their achievements, believing that it would make the case for re-election. Especially when contrasted to the Conservative platform, which Taschereau said was “made up of nothing but malevolent criticisms and of meaningless administrative reforms.”

For the first time in decades, the Liberals had some reason to be concerned. They knew the Quebec City region was solid for them — Taschereau was from the area — but that didn’t prevent the premier from being heckled at his first major rally in the city. Opponents snuck into the crowd at the event, making noise only when Taschereau finally made it to the stage. (They didn’t want to get thrown out early by heckling the warm-up acts.) But the patrician Taschereau could give as good as he got. When the hecklers began chanting “We want cheap liquor!”, the premier responded with “it’s obviously cheap enough for you now!”

If Quebec City was relatively solid and the winter snows could be expected to hobble the Conservative campaign in the regions, Montreal was another matter. The city was Sauvé’s territory. Newspapers, including English-language ones, were more hostile to the Liberals in Montreal than the were in Quebec City. The working classes in the city were hostile to the Liberals and had lined themselves up behind the Conservatives (who had under their banner some labour candidates). The business community was peeved at Taschereau’s creation of a Liquor Commission that funnelled alcohol profits to government coffers. And municipal leaders were annoyed that the Liberals had decided to build a boulevard that would cross the entirety of the island but left the bill with the local municipal authorities.

Though taken by surprise, the Conservatives were still in better shape than they had been in for years. Unlike some past elections, they were able to run a nearly-full slate that included some impressive new recruits, including future leaders Camillien Houde and Maurice Duplessis. Their campaign denounced the timing of the election, what they argued was the waste in Taschereau’s administration and the premier’s autocratic tendencies.

But supporters of the party understood that defeating the Liberals probably wasn’t in the cards. Henri Bourassa, editor of Le Devoir and one of the chief critics of the Liberal government, assailed Taschereau in the pages of his newspaper. But he still only asked his readers to elect a robust opposition.

The Liberals lost 10 seats in the expanded legislature, taking 64. Their share of the vote held up at 51.5% but was concentrated primarily outside of Montreal.

The Conservatives increased their vote share by 22 points, winning 39.3% of the vote. They picked up 15 seats and elected 20 overall, though only four of them were outside of the Montreal area — and 13 were on the island itself.

(The National Assembly of Quebec, from which these results were sourced, provides a simplified accounting of the results of the election in 1923. The “Others” above included those running as Independents, Independent Liberals, Labour or Farmer candidates, among other partisan banners.)

The province’s politics had become competitive once again, but the Liberals were able to withstand the Conservative comeback and avoid the fate of many governments in the rest of the country that went down to defeat in the aftermath of the First World War.

Taschereau won his first electoral test. It would be far from his last. And while the Conservatives had built themselves back up into a viable political organization, they’d never win more seats than they did in 1923 — at least, not under the Conservative banner.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Pierre Poilievre is slated to learn the result of his leadership review at the Conservative convention in Calgary tomorrow night. Technically, he only needs 50%+1 to stay on.

In reality, he has to do much better than that.

While there are no concrete rules when it comes to what leadership score is good enough (beyond the pass-fail), history suggests there are some thresholds leaders must cross in order to keep their leadership secure.

And 50% is not nearly enough. Alberta premier Jason Kenney resigned the leadership of the United Conservative Party in 2022 after receiving the endorsement of only 51% of members. Bonnie Crombie, who got 57% in her review last year, resigned the leadership of the Ontario Liberals shortly thereafter.

The next threshold is where things get murky. Leaders who score between 60% and 80% tend to have to keep an eye over their shoulder. Last year, Marit Stiles scored 68% in her review and appears to be safe in her leadership of the Ontario New Democrats. John Rustad, who managed 71% in his leadership review, was unable to silence his critics or keep the turmoil within his party from boiling over, and was forced out.

Joe Clark, then leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives, famously called a leadership race (in which he ran again and lost) after securing only 67% support in 1983. Bernard Landry resigned as leader of the Parti Québécois (a decision he later regretted) when he got just 76% in 2005. Alberta premiers Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford initially stayed on as leader with 77% in their respective leadership reviews but that result was not good enough to paper over their weaknesses and they were both out before the next elections.

Under 80% can be a problem — even if it is a healthy majority in any other context it usually signals that there is serious discontent within a party that, sooner or later, will catch up to the leader. Over 80%, on the other hand, is usually good enough.

It was good enough for Stephen Harper in 2005. At the Conservative Party’s first convention following its defeat in the 2004 federal election, Harper secured 84% in his leadership review. It was enough for Harper, who lost his first election as leader, to stay on and fight another day. He’d be prime minister within a year.

This was the last time a formal leadership review has been held by the Conservatives. Both Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole were out as leaders before they faced a vote from members, while 2005 was the last convention during the Harper era in which he wasn’t prime minister. That 84% score, even if it was 21 years ago, appears to be the only historical benchmark for Poilievre to meet tomorrow.

We don’t have a lot of other precedents to work with. The Liberals haven’t bothered with a leadership review in nearly 40 years. The New Democrats hold them far more frequently — Jack Layton managed between 89% and 98% in his leadership reviews, while Tom Mulcair saw his 92% in 2013 cut nearly in half to 48% in 2016. Jagmeet Singh’s score kept dropping, from 91% in 2018 to 87% in 2021 and finally 81% in 2023.

Though 2025 was a rough year for Rustad, Crombie and Stiles, other provincial leaders did far better. Scott Moe, David Eby, Naheed Nenshi and Carla Beck all scored between 80% and 90%.

So, something in the 80s would seem to be the minimum target for Poilievre. A score above 90% would allay any doubts about his control over the party — those kinds of results are usually reserved for leaders who won an election, are poised to win an upcoming election or are just coming off a historic breakthrough. Pierre Poilievre is not any of those things at the moment, so a 90%+ result would be a flex.

We don’t have any strong indications what the number will be. No polling of party members has been published and the best we have are party insiders saying Poilievre should have no trouble passing the review (though, notably, none are suggesting he should get 90%+).

Polling of the general public by Abacus Data finds that 76% of the Conservative base (Canadians who would not consider voting for another party) would vote to keep Poilievre in his job, while 14% would vote to replace him. If we exclude the 10% of undecideds, that puts Poilievre’s support at 84% among the Conservative base — exactly matching Harper’s score in 2005.

That’s the bar for Poilievre. It was a bar that was good enough for Stephen Harper after his first electoral defeat and it’s the bar that has been set in polling of dedicated Conservatives. If he clears it, he should be fine. At least for the time being. Prolonged struggles in the polls could cause problems down the line.

But if he doesn’t clear or at least approach the bar of 84%, 2026 could prove to be a tough year for Pierre Poilievre — even if he survives the weekend.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on how the Coalition Avenir Québec leadership race is shaping up.

• Polls show a big bump for Mark Carney and a little one for the Liberals — enough to put them back in majority territory. Plus, a look at the Conservative voter base and new numbers out of Alberta and Ontario.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 2001 Saskatchewan NDP leadership race.

• Upcoming milestones for Scott Moe and Marit Stiles.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

CAQ leadership contest becomes B-Team duel

The Coalition Avenir Québec has settled on the rules for its leadership contest. The second-ever leader of the CAQ, and the next premier of Quebec, will be named on April 12.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Pierre Poilievre faces his leadership review next weekend at the Conservative Party’s convention in Calgary. With that vote just around the corner, a big shift in his personal ratings picked up by Abacus Data in its latest poll captured my attention.

Abacus found that 48% of Canadians polled reported having a negative impression of the Conservative leader. That was a jump of five points since Abacus’s previous poll conducted in early December. His positive rating dropped four points to 35%.

That is a big swing. Poilievre’s negative ratings have never been higher than 46% before. Apart from a few polls conducted during the election campaign Poilievre has always maintained a negative score of 44% or lower. His positive rating of 35% is the lowest it has been since mid-2023.

As Philippe and I discussed in this week’s episode of The Numbers, this could turn out to be a blip — just a statistical anomaly that gets reversed the next time we hear from Abacus. But it’s rare to see Abacus swing as significantly as this from one poll to the next, especially considering that the poll found virtually no change in voting intentions or the personal ratings of Mark Carney. All the movement was largely limited to how respondents viewed Poilievre.

We’ll have to wait until the next survey from Abacus to get a better idea of whether this is something real or not. But in the meantime I wanted to take a deeper look at this drop.

Before we get into that, here is what else is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the rules of the B.C. Conservative leadership race and a byelection call in Quebec. Plus, we get confirmation of where Poilievre won’t be running, a clearer picture of the nascent CAQ leadership contest and a third kick at the can for John Fraser.

• Polls give the Liberals a narrow lead but they remain in a minority position. Plus, where Quebecers stand on sovereignty and a referendum.

• #EveryElectionProject: A trailblazer becomes PEI Liberal leader.

Now let’s get into Poilievre’s poll numbers.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

François Legault’s resignation yesterday came as a surprise. Even when the announcement went out that the premier would be holding a news conference only a few hours later in the morning, it wasn’t known for certain what he would have to say.

In the end, though, his resignation was all but inevitable. The only surprise was that it took this long.

Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government looked unbeatable only a few years ago. His opposition was divided and weak, while Legault had ensconced himself in the centre of Quebec’s politics — not too federalist, not too sovereignist. Focused on the economy and the protection of Quebec’s culture and the French language, his party was the porridge that was just right.

But then the bottom fell out. The CAQ hasn’t led in a single poll in Quebec since October 2023 and the numbers just kept getting worse. A Pallas Data published this week put the party at only 11% support, tied for fourth with the small left-wing party, Québec Solidaire. Only 12% of Quebecers said they had a favourable opinion of Legault, while 75% said they had an unfavourable one. The CAQ was on track to being potentially wiped off the electoral map in Quebec’s provincial election in October.

Not even Justin Trudeau’s numbers were that bad when he threw in the towel a year ago.

At some point, a change of leadership becomes the only option available to a governing party. The CAQ had reached that point a long time ago. Legault has left only a short amount of time for his successor before the scheduled fall election. But now that Legault is stepping aside the CAQ might have some hope that it could survive the vote.

Though he is leaving at the very lowest point of his premiership, Legault nevertheless has been an impactful premier in Quebec. The Coalition Avenir Québec is a party he created in 2011. Within seven years (and three elections), he took the CAQ from birth to government. That’s no small feat.

His victory in the 2018 election demonstrated that a third way between the old federalist-sovereignist divide in Quebec was viable. That win was the first by any party other than the Quebec Liberals or the Parti Québécois since 1966. Legault and the CAQ was successful in threading the needle between the two options without sparking a backlash — though the CAQ is currently deeply unpopular, its option is not. Support for sovereignty hasn’t risen over the course of Legault’s government. If anything, it has slipped.

Legault’s record in government is mixed. He led Quebec through the pandemic relatively well, maintaining high levels of personal popularity throughout 2020 and 2021 and winning a landslide victory in 2022. Quebec’s economy improved over his time in office as well.

But Quebecers grew tired of the messager. The comforting father-figure tone that Legault adopted during the pandemic became condescending and arrogant after it, and the CAQ’s reputation as a party of economy-focused business managers was tarnished after a series of gaffes (such as paying the Los Angeles Kings millions of dollars to play two exhibition game in Quebec City) and outright failures (Northvolt, SAAQclic) blew up in the government’s face. It wasn’t long before Quebecers started tuning out Legault, and started tuning in to the Parti Québécois, the only opposition option that seemed like a viable alternative.

So now the CAQ is about to embark on its first-ever leadership race. Founded by Legault, the CAQ has had no other leader and the party’s constitution even mentions that Legault is its leader. The parameters of this race should be settled upon shortly (if they haven’t been already by the time you’re reading this, as the party’s executive was slated to meet last evening).

The rules of the game will be determinative in deciding how it will be played, but the choice that the CAQ’s members have ahead of them will be a fascinating one to watch. Will Legault’s replacement be someone from within the government — such as high-profile cabinet ministers like Simon Jolin-Barrette, Sonia LeBel, Christine Fréchette or Geneviève Guilbault, to name a few — who has links to the party’s existing membership base (but also carries the government’s existing baggage), or will it be someone from the outside — like former ADQ leader Mario Dumont? Maybe even someone from Ottawa?

The job is not without its perks. Even if it might only be for a few months, being premier puts one in rare company. If the next leader is not able to save the government, they might still be able to save the party and hope to make a comeback in the future.

There is certainly an opportunity for the next leader of the CAQ, even if the odds of success are slim.

The Pallas poll suggests that Quebecers are not showing any particular enthusiasm for the options on the table. While Legault’s personal ratings were abysmal, none of the other leaders were above water. Conservative leader Éric Duhaime was a net -41, while QS co-leader Ruba Ghazal was a net -26. Charles Milliard, the presumed next leader of the Quebec Liberals, was a net -13. Even Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whose PQ leads in the polls, was a net -8.

This suggests that the CAQ’s low polling numbers reflect more of a rejection of Legault (and the CAQ government) than they do an embrace of the Parti Québecois, Liberals or Conservatives. With a change of leadership, voters who were unsatisfied with their options — but certain that they didn’t want to see Legault re-elected — might give the CAQ another look.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The federal Liberals looked doomed until Mark Carney stepped forward. It’s doubtful that there is someone within the CAQ’s ranks that could pull off a Carney-esque rehabilitation for the party, but it is possible to imagine that Legault’s successor could save enough of the furniture for the CAQ to ensure the party’s continued survival and prevent the Parti Québécois from winning a majority government.

The next election could prove to be far more competitive and unpredictable than expected. Of course, the successor to Legault might do no better. But it is hard to imagine they could do much worse. The Quebec political scene in 2026 just got much more interesting.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on Chrystia Freeland’s resignation and what it could mean for the Liberals’ upcoming byelection schedule, as well as some changes to the governing caucuses in Alberta and Quebec and a trio of leadership races.

• Polls suggest Mark Carney’s Liberals might be getting blocked by the Bloc in Quebec. Plus, new numbers on Doug Ford’s handling of U.S. relations, Canadians’ views on Venezuela, Albertans’ views on separation and where things stand in Nova Scotia.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 1966 Alberta Liberal leadership contest.

• Upcoming milestone for Yves-François Blanchet.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Freeland vacates seat, with more to come?

On Friday, Chrystia Freeland officially resigned her Toronto seat of University–Rosedale. The clock has now started ticking on when the byelection to fill the vacancy can be held.

Freeland’s resignation was foreseen ever since she announced she’d become the warden of Rhodes House and the CEO of the Rhodes Trust this summer. It became more pressing when she was also named an economic advisor to Ukraine. While the Liberal government is very supportive of Ukraine, having a sitting MP in the House of Commons also advise a foreign government was simply untenable.

But now the math in the House has become a bit trickier for Mark Carney. Prior to Freeland’s resignation, he was one seat shy of a majority government with 171 votes (including the Speaker) against 172 on the opposition benches. Another floor-crosser would have put the House into a tie that would be broken in the government’s favour by the Speaker. Now, one floor-crosser wouldn’t cut it.

So, unless we’re about to see multiple opposition MPs move across the floor, the Liberals will want to get the University–Rosedale byelection done with as soon as possible. The writ could be dropped as early as January 20 (as there is an 11 day waiting period from resignation-to-writ drop) and the vote held as early as March 2.

We could be into a byelection campaign within a few days time.

Except Freeland’s seat might not be the only one to be vacated in the short term.

There are three other vacancies that we expect to occur within the next few months. Jonathan Wilkinson (North Vancouver–Capilano) and Bill Blair (Scarborough Southwest) have long been rumoured to be headed to the diplomatic circuit, while Matt Jeneroux (Edmonton Riverbend) — who hasn’t cast a vote in the House since the brouhaha around the budget and Chris d’Entremont’s floor-crossing — has indicated he will resign by the spring.

The Liberals don’t have any particular need to worry about Edmonton Riverbend if Jeneroux continues to be a no-show on votes, as it is effectively one less vote against the government whether or not it is vacant. But vacancies in University–Rosedale, North Vancouver–Capilano and Scarborough Southwest will be worth worrying about. If the Liberals want to have them filled as soon as possible — assuming Wilkinson and Blair won’t hang around through to the summer — then we might expect some resignations from these two very soon. By my reckoning, it should already be too late to try to bundle all three of these byelections into one day of voting on March 2.

While the Liberals shouldn’t take anything for granted, all three of these seats are very safe. Yes, we all remember what happened in Toronto–St. Paul’s and LaSalle–Émard–Verdun in 2024, when the Liberals lost what were supposed to be strongholds. But the polling trends indicated losses in these two seats were at least within the realm of possibility at the time. There’s nothing in the polls that suggests the Liberals should be overly worried in any three of these seats.

What will be interesting to see, however, is who the Liberals nominate. There weren’t a great deal of candidates who ran in the last election that were obviously hand-picked by Mark Carney. He didn’t have a lot of time to recruit high-profile candidates. And the prospects that any candidates he did recruit would certainly find themselves on the government benches and potentially around the cabinet table weren’t nearly as good as they are right now, and especially in these three ridings.

Once we know the date in University–Rosedale and the situation in these other seats, we can delve a little bit more into the electoral stakes for each of the parties. But, for now, the thing to watch might simply be when any new vacancies will emerge — and who will step up to fill them.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

LEADERSHIP NEWS - Since the Weekly Writ last went out, there have been a few developments on the provincial leadership front. We still don’t have any dates for the B.C. Conservative leadership contest, but we know that Conservative MP Aaron Gunn will not be running. Declaring their intention to run, however, are businessman (and former Conservative candidate) Yuri Fulmer, commentator Caroline Elliott and Conservative MLA Sheldon Clare. We also don’t have a date for the Ontario Liberal leadership, but we have updates from three of those who ran last time. Liberal MP (and runner-up in 2023) Nate Erskine-Smith is readying a team for another potential run, while Liberal MPP (and fourth-place finisher) Ted Hsu is out. Also out? Bonnie Crombie, who officially resigned her position on Wednesday. Finally, the Quebec Liberals will choose their next leader on March 14. Charles Milliard, the close runner-up to Pablo Rodriguez, has officially launched his campaign, while Mario Roy, who had a whopping 0.8% of the vote last year, also intends to run again.

SCHULZ TO RESIGN - Rebecca Schulz, Calgary Shaw MLA and environment minister in Danielle Smith’s UCP government, resigned from cabinet just before the new year and will resign her seat in the spring.

CAQ LOSES ANOTHER MNA - François Tremblay, the MNA for Dubuc, has quit the CAQ caucus and will sit as an Independent after being arrested for drinking and driving last week. He was driving nearly twice over the legal limit and ran into a fence. There are now 10 Independent MNAs in the National Assembly, most of them former caquistes.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Does Carney have a Quebec problem?

There have only been a few polls published over the holidays. They were the trackers being run by Liaison Strategies and Nanos Research. They showed little real change over the last few weeks, with both giving the Liberals 39% and the Conservatives 36% support, followed by the NDP at between 11% and 12%.

But both polls also show something that other surveys were picking up before the holidays: a bump for the Bloc that could cause some trouble for Mark Carney.

On average, the Liberals are scoring around 38% support in Quebec. The Bloc Québécois is not far behind at 35%, with the Conservatives pulling up the rear at around 17%. Compared to the last election, this represents a drop of five points for the Liberals and six points for the Conservatives, with the Bloc up seven points.

As a result of this shift, the Liberals are projected to win 35 seats in the province, with the Bloc taking 34 and the Conservatives being reduced to just eight.

This means the Liberals would lose nine seats in Quebec and the Conservatives would drop three, boosting the Bloc by 12. The party is projected to be within only one of winning the most seats in Quebec, something the Bloc hasn’t done since the 2008 federal election.

There’s lots of talk about how the Carney Liberals could secure a majority with just a couple of more floor-crossers. But a new election would potentially put them much further back of the 172-seat threshold — and a lot of that is due to Quebec.

This isn’t just a few polls picking up a new trend. With the exception of the last Pallas poll of 2025 (which had the Liberals at 40%), the most recent poll from every major pollster has the Liberals below 40% and the Bloc above 30% in Quebec. The result in April 2025 was 43% for the Liberals and 28% for the Bloc. That’s an impactful shift.

What is driving it is not entirely clear. This isn’t just disappointment with the Carney government as the Conservatives have also taken a hit. But the shine has come off of Carney a little in the province. In its most recent poll, Liaison found Carney’s approval rating sitting at 54% in Quebec. His disapproval was at 36%. Those are good numbers and Carney is polling well above his own party, but Liaison’s pre-budget poll in early November had Carney’s approval at 63% in Quebec.

In the run-up to Pierre Poilievre’s leadership vote at the end of January, there will be a lot of focus on the Conservatives’ polling numbers. But we should also be keeping an eye on what’s happening with the Liberals in Quebec — if the Liberals can’t engineer a majority in the House, the polls in Quebec could be determinative of whether the Liberals try to win a majority at the ballot box in 2026.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

FORD V. TRUMP - New polling from Nanos Research suggests that 42% of Canadians give Ontario Premier Doug Ford good or very good ratings on how he has handled the “U.S. trade dispute”. Only 27% give him a poor or very poor rating. But his numbers are better outside of Ontario than in it — Ford was a net +8.5 in Ontario, compared to +11 in Quebec, +12 in Alberta and the Prairies, +33 in Atlantic Canada and +35 in British Columbia. Abacus Data, meanwhile, shows the Ontario PCs continuing to lead in the province with 48%, followed by the Liberals and NDP at 22% and 19%, respectively.

CANADIANS ON VENEZUELA - A new poll by Léger shows that only 23% of Canadians think the U.S. military operation in Venezuela was a good thing “as Maduro was a corrupt dictator and his government was hurting ordinary Venezuelans”, while 53% feel that it was a bad thing “because it is a serious violation of a country’s sovereignty and sets a terrible precedent for other countries to do the same”. There was a partisan divide on this, with around 70% of Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc supporters thinking it was a bad thing, twice the percentage of Conservative supporters. A plurality of Conservative voters (46%) think it was a good thing. A majority of supporters of all parties, however, believe the primary motivation was oil.

ALBERTANS KEEN ON CANADA - Polling by Pollara and Research Co. suggests support for Alberta independence remains relatively low in the province. Pollara put support for separation at just 19% (75% against) and concentrated among UCP voters (40% for, 53% against). Research Co. showed that just 17% of Albertans strongly support Alberta becoming an independent country, with another 14% saying they moderately support the idea (49% strongly oppose, 13% moderately oppose). Research found the same partisan split on this question as Pollara.

HOUSTON HOLDING - According to a new poll from Liaison Strategies, Tim Houston’s governing PCs continue to lead in Nova Scotia with 50% support. The NDP under Claudia Chender is second with 31%, followed by the Liberals at 18%. The poll gives the NDP 40% support in Halifax, a gain of six points since the 2024 election. The PCs have dropped 10 points to 31% in the provincial capital. In the rest of Nova Scotia, however, the PCs have gained four points and lead with 65% to the NDP’s 23%. Liaison gives Houston a 56% approval rating, with 38% of Nova Scotians polled disapproving of the premier.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• February 7: PEI Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Lantz, Mark Ledwell

• March 14: Quebec Liberal leadership

  • Candidates: Charles Milliard, Mario Roy

• March 29: Federal NDP leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Tony McQuail

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • QC - Chicoutimi (to be called by March)

  • CA - University–Rosedale (to be called by July)

  • CA - Edmonton Riverbend (resignation pending)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

  • Ontario Liberals (Bonnie Crombie announced on September 14, 2025)

  • B.C. Conservatives (John Rustad resigned on December 4, 2025)

  • Coalition Avenir Québec (François Legault announced on January 14, 2026)

ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

Alberta Liberals choose a leader — for a little while

January 15, 1966

This was originally published on January 10, 2024.

Politics was changing in the 1960s. Quebec was in the midst of the Quiet Revolution and the United States was reeling from first the election, and then the assassination, of John F. Kennedy. Student-led protests and calls for change emanating from south of the border were being heard in Canada, too, and before the decade was over the country would have its own youthful-seeming, mould-breaking prime minister.

But one place where politics was still very old-fashioned, at least for the time being, was Alberta.

The province had been governed by the Depression-era Social Credit Party since 1935. Since 1943, the premier had been the unflashy, deeply Christian and solidly conservative Ernest Manning. It didn’t seem like that was going to change anytime soon.

The Socreds dominated Alberta politics, leaving little room for any real opposition. The tiny opposition that was elected in the 1963 election was led by Dave Hunter and the Liberals. They won all of two seats, taking 20% of the vote. The Socreds, by comparison, won 55% of ballots cast and 60 seats.

The extent of Manning’s dominance was so great that, in 1965, Hunter felt he had better prospects as a federal Liberal — even in Alberta. He resigned his provincial leadership and ran for Lester Pearson’s Liberals in the 1965 federal election, placing a distant second in his riding of Arthabaska.

But with the Alberta Liberals now searching for a leader, there was a bit of optimism around the party’s chances. Social Credit was increasingly showing its age, and when the Liberals mounted their leadership convention the Ottawa Citizen’s correspondent, James H. Gray, noted that “greying heads were notably absent from the convention platform and the convention floor”. This was a more youthful, forward-looking party than it had been before. It was certainly more youthful than the Socreds.

Alberta was changing. Another party had an opportunity to be the vehicle of that change, according to Gray.

“The Alberta population has changed drastically in the past 15 years,” he wrote. “The Socred proportion has been drastically reduced by the huge influx of outsiders and by the attrition of time. A good half the population knows nothing and cares less about the economic conditions that spawned Social Credit.”

There were two front runners for the Alberta Liberal leadership, which would be decided on January 15, 1966.

There was Calgary alderman Adrian Berry, who had ran for the federal Liberals in the last election, finishing a respectable (but still distant) second in Calgary North.

His main rival was Robert Russell of Edmonton, the former executive secretary of the provincial party. According to the Calgary Herald, he hadn’t “cut his chances any by having corsages handed out to the female delegates” of the Women’s Liberal Association, who gathered to hear from the contestants in the days ahead of the vote.

Also on the ballot was Richard Broughton of Ponoka and Wilbur Freeland of Peace River.

A farmer and a veteran of the Second World War, in a couple years Freeland would become the grandfather of Chrystia, the future federal finance minister. For now, though, he was an also-ran in this contest, an “outspoken advocate of left-wing policies, such as public ownership of power”, according to the Herald. Broughton also had little shot and it probably didn’t help that he spent the final days of the campaign on vacation in Mexico.

The convention in Calgary was well-attended, with some 1,000 voting delegates and observers present. The Alberta Liberals wanted to spice up the contest a little and adopted a voting system reminiscent of the American primaries — delegates would choose leaders from within their groups, and have those leaders announce which candidate their group would be backing.

Drawing a queen of spades from a deck of playing cards, Berry spoke first to the convention. He sharply criticized the Social Credit government but he didn’t spare the Liberal Party either, saying “I’m not impressed with our organization in this province.”

The voting system, meant to create excitement, instead sparked confusion, delays and recounts, taking some energy out of the event. The presence of the youth delegates was felt, however, when they voted to add lowering the drinking age to 18 and legalizing birth control to the party platform.

The first ballot ended in a tie, with both Berry and Russell taking 231 votes, each heavily backed by their respective Calgary and Edmonton bases. Freeland took just 78 votes, while Broughton had only 15.

On the second ballot, Freeland’s support was cut nearly in half as most of his and Broughton’s backers went over to Berry. On the final ballot, Russell wasn’t able to pick up more than two votes to Berry’s 16, and that settled matters. Adrian Berry would be the new leader of the Liberals and the standard bearer for change in the province.

It wouldn’t last. Citing divisions with the party executive that made his position “untenable”, Berry resigned in November 1966. Michael Maccagno, who led the opposition in the legislature and who had been interim leader after Hunter’s resignation, resumed that role and kept it, leading an unprepared and divided party into the 1967 election held in May.

The unsteady Liberals weren’t able to become the vehicle of the new Alberta. Instead, it was Peter Lougheed and the Progressive Conservatives who displaced them, finishing second in the 1967 election with more seats than they had ever won since the formation of Social Credit. In 1971, the PCs would finally break the Socreds’ strangle-hold on the province — and the Liberals, now finally under Robert Russell, fell to just 1% of the vote.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

MILESTONE WATCH

• On Saturday, Yves-François Blanchet marks seven years as leader of the Bloc Québécois. He took over the then-moribund party in January 2019, leading it back to relevancy in the federal election later that year. In his three elections as leader of the party, the Bloc has averaged 28.7 seats and 30.7% of the vote in Quebec.

That’s it for the Weekly Writ this week. The next episode of The Numbers will be dropping on Tuesday. The episode will land in your inbox but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps. If you want to get access to bonus and ad-free episodes, become a Patron here!

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

It’ll be hard to top 2025 as a year of sheer political craziness.

Justin Trudeau resigned. Mark Carney replaced him. Pierre Poilievre lost his lead. Mark Carney won an election. Jagmeet Singh lost his seat and stepped down. Pierre Poilievre also lost his seat and had to win one back. He then lost one floor-crosser. And then another.

At the provincial level, Doug Ford called and then won a snap election and Tony Wakeham scored a surprise upset. The Quebec Liberals chose a new leader and will now have to choose another one. John Rustad and Bonnie Crombie tried to hold on to the leaderships of their parties until they couldn’t.

So, 2025 will be a hard act to follow. But there’s still plenty of potential for drama in 2026. Here’s what to watch in the year to come:

• Will Mark Carney get his majority, one way or another?

  • The defection of Michael Ma (more on that below) has boosted the Liberals to 171 seats, just one shy of a majority government. Ma’s floor-crossing came just after the House of Commons adjourned for the holidays and there is rampant speculation that there will be others. While one more floor-crosser would do the trick for Carney, a majority of one is hardly a majority at all — especially with a series of resignations expected in the coming months. So, will Mark Carney and the Liberals be able to lure some more MPs over to their side to give them a majority with a little cushion? Or, if not, will the Liberals try to force the matter by going back to the polls and securing a majority government the old-fashioned way?

• Opposition parties settling their leadership issues

  • Somewhat related to the potential for a 2026 federal election will be the leadership questions facing the Conservatives and the New Democrats. The NDP will settle its leadership issue on March 29 by choosing the successor to Jagmeet Singh. That will mark a change of direction for the New Democrats regardless of who wins. The dynamic for the NDP in the House if one of the seatless contestants (Avi Lewis or Rob Ashton, most likely) wins will also be something to keep an eye on. Would a Lewis or Ashton try to gain a seat in the House through a byelection, or push to get one in a general election?

  • The thornier question revolves around Pierre Poilievre’s leadership. Losing two MPs (three, if we count Matt Jeneroux) is hard for any leader to bear. Losing more than that could be the end for him. Members at the January convention in Calgary might be more forgiving than his own caucus mates, but even that vote can’t be taken entirely for granted. And if Carney does get his majority through floor-crossers, it could be asking a lot for Conservative MPs to continue to show loyalty to Poilievre through to 2029. The leadership question surrounding the Conservatives might get settled soon enough — but it could also drag on for all of 2026.

• Byelections, byelections, byelections!

  • We love a good byelection at The Writ, and it seems likely we’ll be blessed with several of them in 2026. Liberal MPs Jonathan Wilkinson and Bill Blair are still rumoured to be heading off to diplomatic posts, while Chrystia Freeland has accepted a new post of her own that starts in the summer and will presumably involve her resigning her seat. On the Conservative side of the aisle, there’s Aaron Gunn, who is mulling a run for the B.C. Conservative leadership, and Matt Jeneroux, who has already said he’ll resign in the spring. There could very well be more. With the numbers in the House being so tight, these vacancies and byelections will carry more weight than they usually do, and will also provide us with some clear barometers of where public opinion stands.

• Quebec goes to the polls

  • The only election scheduled for 2026 is in Quebec — and it’ll be an important one. Five parties are in the running to win some seats, but at the moment the only party with a serious chance of winning the most is the Parti Québécois. The PQ promises to hold a referendum on independence within its first mandate, so if the PQ is able to keep its lead in the polls it’ll deeply impact not only the politics of Quebec but the politics of the entire country, starting us off on the path to another difficult debate on national unity. The resignation of Pablo Rodriguez yesterday (more on that below, too) throws a significant amount of uncertainty — and intrigue — into how next year might play out.

• Early elections elsewhere?

  • Alberta might want to get in on the sovereignty debate, too. A petition calling for Alberta to stay within Canada has already gotten the requisite signatures and a campaign to get signatures for a petition calling for Alberta’s secession is getting started. A referendum on it could be held in 2026, and Danielle Smith’s UCP government might not want to stay entirely on the sidelines. Could she take advantage of the sovereignty issue, as well as decent-enough polls, to call an election a year early in Alberta?

  • What about in Manitoba, where Wab Kinew is riding high, or in British Columbia, where David Eby has suggested he might need to call an election if the legislature (where he has a one-seat majority) becomes unworkable? A year with only one election on the calendar could quickly get filled up.

• Provincial party leaderships and their federal implications

  • Three leadership contests in particular could have some federal repercussions. The Quebec Liberals will need to have an accelerated leadership race ahead of the October election and it’s possible some MPs might try to follow in Rodriguez’s footsteps. The B.C. Conservatives look set to choose their new leader in the first half of 2026 and already one Conservative MP has expressed interest. There could be others. And the Ontario Liberals haven’t yet set a date, but the start of their leadership contest could see some Liberal MPs kick the tires, including 2023’s runner-up, Nate Erskine-Smith.

  • Leadership contests will also fill vacancies for the PEI and New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives and the Nova Scotia Liberals. These are unlikely to have broader repercussions, but will be important moments in their respective provinces’ politics.

The next year has all the ingredients needed for another fascinating 12 months of Canadian politics, with choices and decisions that will impact our lives and the country for the foreseeable future. The Writ, of course, will be covering it all with enthusiasm. So, stick around and stay tuned!

Programming note: This is the final Weekly Writ of 2025. It’ll return to your inboxes on January 15. In the meantime, keep an eye out for new podcast episodes and the second instalment of the Model Development Diary. I’ll also announce the winner of the 2025 Prediction Contest as well as kick-off the 2026 edition!

Thanks for all of your support throughout 2025. Here’s to another great year! 🎉

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on the floor-crossing of Michael Ma, the resignation of Pablo Rodriguez and the start of a leadership race in Prince Edward Island.

• Why cherry-picking polls is not a good idea. Plus, where the federal parties stand today and where Quebec politics stood before Rodriguez’s departure.

• #EveryElectionProject: “They promise … generally, to behave themselves” — the 1874 Nova Scotia election.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Liberals approach majority with another floor-crosser

It’s been a week since the bombshell news that the Conservative MP for Markham–Unionville, Michael Ma, was crossing the floor over to the Liberals. After the crossing of Chris d’Entremont and the (pending?) resignation of Matt Jeneroux, following reporting that he was also mulling a move, this makes three MPs that have quit Pierre Poilievre’s caucus since the beginning of November.

Will there be more?

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Finally accepting that the turmoil within his caucus was untenable, John Rustad resigned last week as leader of the B.C. Conservatives, a party he took from nearly-nothing to nearly-government in little more than two years.

But it was inevitable that the rise of the Conservatives from a fringe party to a government-in-waiting would come with a change at the top. Because, for all his accomplishments in the whirlwind year that was 2024 in B.C. politics, Rustad was in many ways a leader who was installed by default.

Before he took over the Conservatives, the party had no MLAs in the legislature and no reason to believe they’d soon elect one. Rustad had been ejected from the B.C. Liberal caucus and was offered the leadership by a party that was only registering in the polls thanks to the power of the federal brand. In the 2020 election, the B.C. Conservatives had managed 1.9% of the vote. They hadn’t hit double-digits in vote share or elected a single MLA since the 1970s. Fundraising was anemic. They didn’t have anything to lose in offering the job to Rustad at the time.

Now that the party has not only a lot more to lose but a whole lot to gain, the question that it faces is who it will choose to take the party forward — and, just maybe, bring it back to the halls of power.

Before we delve into what this race means for British Columbia (and the federal scene), here’s what’s in this instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• More on the B.C. Conservative race, plus news on a near-upset in Monday’s byelection in Prince Edward Island. There’s also more trouble on the horizon for the Quebec Liberals and some leadership changes in Nova Scotia and Alberta.

• Polls show little change in voting intentions from where things stood on election night, though seat projections suggest the Liberals could lose a few in B.C. Plus, we have polling numbers for premiers and opposition leaders from coast to coast, a quartet of federal riding polls and a duo of new polls on the pipeline.

• #EveryElectionProject: “Pint-sized” Steuart wins the 1971 Saskatchewan Liberal leadership.

• Upcoming milestone for Mark Carney (already!).

There’s no doubt that the Conservatives under Rustad had an impressive showing in the 2024 election. They won 44 seats and 43.3% of the vote, coming only a few thousand votes short of winning outright themselves. It was the party’s best result in nearly a century.

Read more

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Last week’s announcement of an agreement between the Alberta and federal governments that could see a new west coast pipeline built certainly captured people’s attentions and could have political, economic and environmental repercussions for years (and potentially decades) to come.

But the early signals suggest that it hasn’t had much impact on public opinion — yet.

From an electoral perspective, the Liberals would be taking a real gamble if the memorandum of understanding (MOU) boiled down to a choice between seats in British Columbia and seats in Alberta. The Liberals won 20 seats in B.C. in the April election but just two in Alberta. Not only that, but the Liberals have far more to lose in B.C. than they have to gain in Alberta.

Of the Liberals’ 20 seats in B.C., 11 of them were won by a margin of nine points or less. A small loss of support for the Liberals in British Columbia could lose them many of these seats — largely to the Conservatives.

By comparison, the upside for the Liberals in Alberta is very low. An uptick in support could solidify their hold on Calgary Confederation, but they would need to see a big swing toward them to have a shot at winning anything more than the three seats they lost by a few percentage points.

It goes without saying that the Liberals should be able to make these calculations themselves. It’s unlikely that the party seriously believes that they could entirely make up for losses in British Columbia with gains in Alberta.

Instead, the Liberals have probably concluded that either the pipeline issue won’t lose them much support in B.C. or that the benefits they could gain in the rest of the country outweigh the risks.

New polls conducted by the Angus Reid Institute (pre-MOU and post-MOU) and Abacus Data suggest that could indeed be the case.

Both surveys show that a majority of Canadians, including people who live in British Columbia, support the idea of building a pipeline from Alberta through northern B.C. to the west coast. It was 60% support to 25% opposition nationally according to the ARI, while Abacus puts it at 55% for to 18% against. In B.C., support was 53% in both polls, with opposition sitting between 30% and 37%.

The ARI survey included a more detailed regional breakdown, showing that opposition was higher in Metro Vancouver and especially on Vancouver Island and the North Coast — the regions that would be most impacted by any potential spill. But, nevertheless, a plurality of respondents in both regions were supportive.

The risk for the Liberals is not where these voters live but who they are. The ARI found that a majority of British Columbians who voted for the Liberals are opposed to a pipeline (32% support to 54% opposition). That stands in contrast to the 49% support, 35% opposition among their voters across the country. This suggests that Liberals in B.C. view the pipeline issue differently than Liberals in the rest of the country.

But there’s no clear evidence that this difference of opinion has impacted Liberal support (not every issue is a ballot box issue). The ARI found that Mark Carney’s personal ratings in B.C. (52% approval, 41% disapproval) were no different after the MOU than they were in early November. Instead, the ARI has found improvement in Carney’s ratings in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

And while the ARI found Liberal support sliding five points in British Columbia, the Conservatives were the net beneficiaries (primarily due to the increase in undecideds). Compared to a pre-MOU survey, Abacus found the Conservatives holding steady and the Liberals up one point in British Columbia. Suffice to say, there is no consensus here — especially considering that all of these shifts, including the Liberals’ drop in B.C. in the ARI survey, would be within the margin of error of a probabilistic sample.

But what about the rest of the country? The resignation of Steven Guilbeault from cabinet was big news in Quebec, where the former environment (and, until recently, culture and identity) minister is well-known. There has been speculation that this alone could cause a drop in support for the Liberals.

The ARI did find a seven-point slide in Mark Carney’s net approval rating in Quebec, though this appears to have largely been due to a drop in support among Bloc voters. That probably has little electoral implications. Indeed, Abacus gave the Liberals the same nine-point lead over the Bloc in Quebec post-MOU as they had recorded pre-MOU.

Abacus also found that Guilbeault is far from a superstar in Quebec. While 25% of Quebecers have a positive view of Guilbeault (far higher than his single-digit scores in B.C. and Alberta), another 19% have a negative view. Those numbers are far worse than Carney’s own 48% to 23% split in Quebec. Carney could lose a little shine in the province as a result of Guilbeault’s departure, but his former minister has not gone scorched-earth on Carney, saying on Tout le monde en parle on Sunday night that he still has his vote.

While there is risk for the Liberals in B.C. (and perhaps in Quebec), there is also some potential for gains elsewhere. Abacus found that 54% of Canadians agreed with the statement that the deal represents a “worthwhile compromise that could bring major economic gains for Canada” while only 24% agreed that instead it was a “betrayal of the progress Canada has made on environmental policy and contradicts Mark Carney’s own previous positions on energy and the environment”. In Ontario, the split was 54% to 20%. Generally speaking, the Liberals are fishing for votes in the much larger pool of supporters of the pipeline project, trade diversification and compromise with Alberta.

Much will depend on where things go from here. The building of a pipeline is not in and of itself a controversial or risky proposition — Canadians are in favour of it. The Liberals have some reason to believe they can mitigate their risks in B.C. while adding to Mark Carney’s reputation in the rest of the country as a sound economic manager. But if things do not unfold smoothly, the Liberals could not only lose the support in B.C. that helped them win an election, but they could also see Carney’s image tarnished by a very public failure.

Bold moves can pay off big time. They can also blow up in one’s face. For now, we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

Here’s what’s in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on an upcoming byelection in Prince Edward Island, a successful petition in Alberta, a leadership debate for the NDP, a new electoral map for Quebec and more trouble for John Rustad.

• Polls give Mark Carney’s federal Liberals a narrow lead as 2025 comes to a close, while new numbers show that the provincial Liberals’ problems in Quebec have had an impact on Pablo Rodriguez and his party’s support. Plus, a newly-released survey shows the value of choosing your words carefully.

• #EveryElectionProject: The Alberta Social Credit League’s first (and most colourful) leadership race in 1968.

• Upcoming milestone for Pierre Poilievre.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

PEI byelection will test PCs, Liberals

A provincial byelection worth watching is taking place in Prince Edward Island on Monday, as the governing Progressive Conservatives aim to hold the district of Georgetown–Pownal.

Under normal circumstances, the outcome of this byelection would not be in any doubt. Steven Myers won it for the PCs with 69.8% of the vote in the 2023 provincial election. The Greens and Liberals finished well back with 12.5% and 12.1%, respectively.

But ridings with small populations can swing pretty wildly — as we’ve seen in PEI in the last two years.

In 2024, there was a total swing of 36 points between the PCs and Greens in Borden–Kinkora, enough to flip the district from blue to green. Earlier this year there was a 30-point swing between the PCs and Liberals in Brackley–Hunter River and a massive 58-point swing between the two parties in Charlottetown–Hillsborough Park, which the Liberals were able to flip.

That swing in Charlottetown–Hillsborough Park is notable because the PCs beat the Liberals by about 58 points in Georgetown–Pownal in the 2023 provincial election. If the Liberals can pull off that huge swing again, they might be able to take the seat.

That’s what Robert Mitchell is hoping. He won the Liberal leadership earlier this year and is standing as the party’s candidate in Georgetown–Pownal. It’ll be a very tall order for Mitchell to do the same thing here as his party did in Charlottetown–Hillsborough Park, as the district is not nearly as Liberal-friendly. The Liberals had won what is now Charlottetown–Hillsborough Park as recently as the 2015 election, but they haven’t won the district containing Georgetown since 1993.

Regardless of who wins, the byelection will be a useful for barometer for where things stand in PEI. We haven’t seen a poll out of the province since 2024, though numbers from a Narrative Research survey conducted in August that were referenced by the PEI Liberals suggested that the PCs and Liberals were in a virtual tie. If true, this would mark the first survey to show the Liberals in a competitive race with the PCs since before the 2019 election.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

RUSTAD OUSTED? - After a majority of B.C. Conservative caucus members signed a letter calling for John Rustad’s resignation as leader, the board of directors of the party has removed Rustad (claiming he is “professionally incapacitated”, as incapacitation is one reason the party’s constitution would allow the board to remove the leader) and has endorsed MLA Trevor Halford as his interim replacement. As of writing, it was not clear whether Rustad was actually leader or not, as he and some of his caucus have refused to recognize the board’s decision, while Halford admitted to reporters he wasn’t sure if he was actually going to lead the opposition in the legislature. It’s going well.

NDP LEADERSHIP DEBATE - The New Democrats held their first official leadership debate last week in Montreal, as Rob Ashton, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Tony McQuail and Tanille Johnston faced off in a debate that was supposed to be conducted mostly in French. Only Lewis and McPherson were able to go beyond laboriously reading prepared statements in the language, and both were the only ones who were able to take and respond to questions in French in the post-debate scrums. Of the two, Lewis was more comfortable in speaking off the cuff but if he wins the contest he would still be the weakest of the four leaders at the next election’s French-language leaders debate (yes, behind Mark Carney). While the ability of the contestants to speak French is unlikely to be the most important factor for a party membership that is overwhelmingly from outside of Quebec, the debate served as a demonstration of how far the NDP has drifted away from the Orange Wave of 2011. You can watch the debate (and the post-debate scrums) on CPAC.

ALBERTA REFERENDUM PETITION - A petition organized by the “Alberta Forever Canada” group led by former PC MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, successfully got enough signatures to be passed along to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. The petition calls for a referendum with the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?” Next steps would see it sent to a committee at the legislature, which could then recommend that a referendum be held during or before the next provincial election.

NEW QUEBEC MAP - A court has ruled that the National Assembly’s decision to put off a re-drawing of Quebec’s electoral map until after the 2026 provincial election is unconstitutional. The work of the commission tasked with designing the new map is starting again and should be implemented in time for next year’s vote. Controversy erupted when the commission proposed removing a seat from the Gaspésie region (as well as from the island of Montreal) and adding seats to faster-growing parts of the province. In its ruling, the court suggested that the National Assembly could act by simply giving the Gaspésie (and any other region with unique representation requirements) the same sort of special status enjoyed by the Magdalen Islands, which are represented by a single MNA despite their very small population.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Consensus close race, but Liberal lead

A series of new polls show little disagreement on the state of the federal race, with the Liberals and Conservatives within a few points of one another and, on average, the Liberals narrowly ahead.

In addition to the Abacus and Angus Reid Institute polls mentioned above, there have also been new numbers from Liaison Strategies and Nanos Research.

All four of these polls put the Liberals between 40% and 42% support, with the Conservatives sitting between 36% and 41%. The New Democrats trail with between 7% and 12%. On average, the Liberals are at 41%, followed by the Conservatives at 38% and the NDP at 9%.

Despite it being a rather momentous month — a floor-crossing, a budget, the MOU with Alberta and a cabinet resignation — there has been no movement in public opinion since early November. Compared to when these four pollsters were all in the field just around the budget, the Liberals and Conservatives have shown no change (on average), with the NDP down a little less than a point. Opinions are pretty solidly set.

Regionally, the Liberals have a lead of roughly seven points in Ontario, 10 in Quebec (over the Bloc) and 12 in Atlantic Canada. This would suggest a somewhat closer race in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while the Liberals have marginally improved their position in Ontario.

The Conservatives are ahead by an average of three points in B.C. (which they lost by 0.6 points in the last election) and have their usual big leads in Alberta and the Prairies, though the margins in Alberta are smaller than they were in April.

That’s the only reason the Liberals are up in the seat projection average from their current standings — their seat haul is nearly identical everywhere else. The Liberals are projected to be on the threshold of a majority with 172, while the Conservatives are down to 131, the Bloc up slightly to 25 and the NDP narrowly in recognized party status with 13.

A lot of seats are projected to be decided by less than a percentage point. The Liberals are leading in five of those tight races and are in second place in four of them, giving them a near-literal toss-up range of 167 to 176 seats. Similarly, the NDP is just as close to winning 11 seats, and falling short of recognized party status, as it would be to increasing its caucus to 15 seats.

What a difference a year makes, though. On December 2, 2024, my model was awarding 218 seats to the Conservatives, with the Liberals at 60, the Bloc at 39 and the NDP at 24. It’s been an eternity since then.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

QUEBEC LIBERALS SLIDE - Polling by Léger suggests the latest turmoil within the Quebec Liberal Party has severely sapped its strength. The PLQ has slid six points over the last few weeks down to just 21% as the Parti Québécois moves further ahead. The PQ leads with 39%, a gain of seven points. The CAQ, Conservatives and Québec Solidaire trail with 18%, 13% and 8%, respectively. The PQ has 48% support among francophones as the Liberals have fallen to fourth place with just 10%, pointing to a huge majority for the PQ if these numbers were replicated at the ballot box. The poll puts support for sovereignty at 33%, or 37% after the removal of undecideds.

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE - A fascinating survey by PoliSci shows the power of messaging (and poll question wording). Conducted in August, PoliSci asked respondents different versions of a series of questions. Among other things, it found a 19-point difference in support for “increasing the carbon tax on businesses” vs. “increasing the price on pollution on businesses” and a 12-point difference between support for “foreign investment” vs. “international investment”. Mentioning Trudeau instead of “the government” caused a 14-point drop in agreement that Trudeau’s/the government’s “affordable childcare program has been good for Canada”, while telling respondents that Donald Trump wants to make daylight savings time permanent caused a six-point slide in support for the idea.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• December 8: PEI byelection in Georgetown–Pownal

• March 29: Federal NDP leadership

  • Candidates: Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Tony McQuail

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • QC - Chicoutimi (to be called by March)

  • CA - Edmonton Riverbend (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • P.E.I. PCs (Dennis King resigned on February 20, 2025)

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

  • Ontario Liberals (Bonnie Crombie announced on September 14, 2025)

  • B.C. Conservatives (John Rustad forced out on December 3, 2026)

(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

Social Credit tries to turn a new leaf

December 6, 1968

The Alberta Social Credit League, which presided over one of Canada’s longest-tenured governments, was a bit of an oddity.

It was borne out of the desperation of the Great Depression, when an evangelical radio preacher named William Aberhart adopted an oddball monetary theory as his political platform and led Social Credit to an unexpected victory in the 1935 provincial election.

Aberhart’s time in office was cut short by death and Social Credit’s theories weren’t implemented — they tended to be unconstitutional — but his replacement, Ernest Manning, was able to adapt the Social Credit platform to Alberta’s political climate. During the Socreds’ time in office, Alberta went from a struggling agrarian province to a booming oil-fueled modern economy. The only problem was that Social Credit wasn’t modernizing as quickly.

Manning’s electoral success is unparalleled in Alberta. He led Social Credit to seven consecutive majority governments. By 1968, he had been premier for 25 years. He won another solid majority in the 1967 provincial election, but the party’s 45% vote share was the lowest ever for Manning. The premier recognized that something needed to change to block the rise of the Progressive Conservatives, now under the dynamic leadership of Peter Lougheed.

A new leader would have to take Social Credit forward. So, at the end of September, Manning announced he would resign as premier and leader of the party. His replacement would be named at a convention held between December 4 and 6, 1968.

The field of candidates was led by Harry Strom, the municipal affairs (and former agriculture) minister. An MLA from southern Alberta since 1955, Strom was one of the few cabinet minister who Manning told first about his retirement plans. Anders Aalborg, one of the heirs-apparent to Manning and one of the other ministers let in on the plan, declined to run. Strom was reluctant to throw his hat into the ring, but was convinced to put his name forward.

Strom’s two main opponents were fellow cabinet ministers. They were the “crisply efficient” Gordon Taylor, the longtime minister of highways and an MLA since 1940, and Raymond Reierson, the education and labour minister and an MLA from northern Alberta first elected in 1952.

Three other candidates also stepped up. There was the attorney general, Edgar Gerhart, also first elected in 1952 but only recently elevated to cabinet. Walter Buck, a dentist and rookie MLA, put his name forward, as did Alfred Hooke, the lands and forest minister and one of the original Social Credit MLAs first elected in 1935.

Despite the wide field, Strom was recognized as the clear front runner. He put forward a detailed policy platform and had the backing of a majority of caucus, several cabinet ministers and a circle of young reformers that included Preston Manning, the son of the premier.

The son had been suggested as a potential replacement for the father, but Ernest Manning thought the 26-year-old Preston wasn’t yet ready for the big job. The involvement of Preston in the Strom campaign and the rumoured support that Ernest Manning and the establishment of the party was giving Strom rankled with the other contestants.

While there was little broader enthusiasm for the leadership contest outside of party circles, the three-day convention at the Jubilee Auditorium was a raucous affair for the 1,700 voting delegates — and something quite unusual for a party that had never held a leadership race before (Manning was chosen by caucus in 1943).

According to The Globe and Mail, on the first day of the convention a group of “teen-age girls were in the basement of the auditorium rehearsing a ditty entitled ‘It’s Gerhart All the Way’ to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’”, in preparation of the rallies and speeches scheduled for the second day. John Barr, writing in Alberta Premiers of the 20th Century, paints a vivid picture of what that second day on the convention floor was like:

“A giant red and white Ray Reierson billboard had been parked next to the front door, and in the midst of the rotunda a rock band was thumping it out for Ed Gerhart. Incredulous convention delegates — small-town hardware merchants with steel-rimmed glasses, schoolmarms from Rocky Mountain House, and wind-burned farmers from Mundare — circled the bandstand like a group of villagers inspecting a crashed UFO. Inside the auditorium itself, barely audible, a German oompah band was trying to get a snake-dance going.”

The Edmonton correspondent for The Globe and Mail wrote that “Social Credit has always had a rather stuffy, high collared, Sunday-go-to-meeting image in Alberta but the leadership candidates will have changed that even if they don’t do much to change the kind of Government. Never has so much liquor been in evidence at any Social Credit gathering and never have the conventions been so noisy or colourful.”

Taylor organized his campaign team from a camp that was set up on the floor of the auditorium as a nod to the camp grounds his department built along Alberta’s highways. Reierson, whose portfolio included Alberta Government Telephones, had phones at his booth which played pre-recorded messages from the candidate, ending with a whispered “this message will self-destruct in five seconds”.

The speeches resulted in a little drama when Hooke, who had thrown his hat into the ring only a week before, closed his with an endorsement of Reierson — an attempt to build some momentum for someone else to take on Strom, who had by far the most well-oiled campaign.

On the day of the vote, the party organizers rehearsed the process by asking delegates to choose they favourite hockey team. They wanted things to go smoothly.

The first ballot played out as predicted, with Strom nearing but not obtaining a majority. He had 48% support of delegates, putting him well ahead of Taylor and Reierson, who had 17% and 15%, respectively. Buck finished fourth with 11%, followed by Gerhart and Hooke at 8% and 2%.

Hooke, who had already withdrawn when he endorsed Reierson, was automatically removed from the ballot. Gerhart also withdrew his name. Buck didn’t want to bow out, but Reierson made the decision to throw his support to Taylor, who was best positioned to block Strom (even if unlikely). Reierson’s attempt to announce his withdrawal and endorsement of Taylor, however, was blocked by party president Orvis Kennedy. Only after a shoving and shouting match did Reierson get to the stage.

It didn’t make much of a difference — though Taylor did indeed pick up a lot of support on the second ballot. By a greater than three-to-one margin, Taylor gained more votes than Strom on that second ballot. But Strom didn’t need many more votes to win, and prevailed on the second ballot with 55% to Taylor’s 36%.

On paper, Strom was taking over a party in pretty good shape. The Socreds controlled a commanding majority in the legislature and had done so for over 30 years. But the Social Credit League was a creaking old machine ill-prepared for modern political campaigns. It would turn out that the Socreds needed more than just a change at the top to keep up.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

MILESTONE WATCH

• Since it was first created from the merger of the PCs and the Alliance in 2003, the modern Conservative Party has had only four permanent leaders. And, on Tuesday, Pierre Poilievre will move up the ranks to be the second longest serving leader of that party, surpassing Andrew Scheer. On the table of leaders that includes all predecessor parties to the Conservatives, however, Poilievre ranks 15th.

That’s it for the Weekly Writ this week. The next episode of The Numbers will be dropping on Tuesday. The episode will land in your inbox but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps. If you want to get access to bonus and ad-free episodes, become a Patron here!

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

This is a long, detailed post with many charts, so it might be too big for your email inbox. If that’s the case, you should have a link at the bottom of your email to read the entire thing. Or, you can read it all on The Writ website.

It’s often said that there is no single election in Canada. Instead, there are 343 of them — one for each individual riding.

While most of the focus of any campaign, as well as the bulk of a party’s spending, is national, the battles in each riding can make a real difference. And when the margins are tight, it is organization and money that can decide winners and losers.

The campaign reports for nearly every candidate who contested a seat in the 2025 federal election have been posted to the Elections Canada website. That means its time to delve into these results to help us a learn a little more about how that election unfolded.

We should get a few caveats out of the way before getting into it. A few candidates have either not yet filed or their filings have not yet been posted by Elections Canada. Roughly a dozen reports apiece for the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats are outstanding. So, the figures in this article represent about 97% of all candidates from the major parties. The second caveat is that I have come across a few transcription errors in the data. I’ve corrected them when they’ve been found, but it is possible that some errors have crept into the summarized results. Lastly, note that the spending figures are only for campaign expenses that are subject to the spending limit set by Elections Canada.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the numbers.

Fundraising by candidates was down significantly from the last two elections, with the four major parties (plus the Greens and People’s Party) raising a combined $3.9 million at the riding level during the campaign. That’s down from $6.3 million in 2021 and $7.3 million in 2019. National fundraising was up this year compared to the last two election, so this might suggest that more candidates were directing their donors to the central party office than before.

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives raised the most money at the riding level at $2.1 million, followed by the Liberals at $817,000 and the NDP at $398,000. This was down from both 2019 and 2021 for all three parties.

If fundraising at the local level was down, spending was up significantly. Candidates for the six parties spent a combined $59.8 million in their ridings, up from $49.5 million in 2021 (and higher than the $54.1 million spent locally in 2019). This is in addition to the money spent at the national level. That means that the total spending for the Conservatives and Liberals, nationally and locally, comes in at $61 million and $58 million, respectively.

The Conservatives spent $25.8 million at the riding level, followed closely by Mark Carney’s Liberals at $23.7 million. That was up sharply from what was spent in 2021.

The NDP spent $6.6 million locally, down from over $7 million in the last two elections, while the Bloc spent just over $2 million at the riding level. That’s nearly double the amount that Bloc candidates spent in 2019.

The slide of both the Greens and PPC is showcased in these numbers. Green candidates spent $2.8 million in 2019 but just $1.1 million in 2025. The PPC, which spent $1.5 million locally in 2021, spent just $590,000 in 2025. Having failed to hit 10% of the vote in any riding, the PPC is slated to get none of its campaign expenses reimbursed.

Elections Canada reimburses 60% of a candidate’s expenses, as long as that candidate obtained at least 10% of the vote. The Liberals passed that threshold in all but one riding they contested (Souris–Moose Mountain), where their candidate spent all of $2,300. The Conservatives took less than 10% of the vote in the downtown Montreal ridings of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and Laurier–Sainte-Marie. Their returns show a combined expense of $24 in those ridings.

So, both parties will receive nearly the maximum reimbursement possible. I estimate it to be around $14.2 million for the Liberals and $15.5 million for the Conservatives. (The parties will also get 50% of their national campaign expenses reimbursed.)

The NDP failed to reach 10% in the vast majority of ridings and so will not receive a large reimbursement. However, the NDP concentrated its spending in ridings where it had decent support, so their reimbursement will still be around $2.5 million. That’ll be down more than $1 million from each of the last two campaigns, but is not as disastrous as it could have been — the NDP spent its money largely where it had a shot of winning a good chunk of the vote. The NDP’s reports show 214 ridings with expenses of $10,000 or less. By comparison, the Conservatives and Liberals spent more than that in all but 40 ridings or so.

A few seats stand out, however, as ones where the NDP spent a great deal of money without passing the 10% threshold. They are Ottawa West–Nepean ($109,000), Sudbury East–Manitoulin–Nickel Belt ($97,000), Spadina–Harbourfront ($88,000), London Centre ($79,000), and Vancouver Fraserview–South Burnaby ($71,000). While those are seats where the NDP would have normally had expectations of putting up a respectable performance, the party’s vote tanked in these ridings and those expenses will not be reimbursed.

Before diving deeper into the riding-level data, here’s what else you’ll find in this edition of the Weekly Writ:

• We have a bit of news on the next Conservative campaign director, further upheaval in Quebec and some recall campaigns in Alberta.

• Quiet week on the polling front, but we have some new national numbers as well as some polling on the NDP leadership contest and on the provincial scene in Quebec.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 25th anniversary of the 2000 Canadian election.

• Upcoming milestone for Doug Ford.

Now let’s take a look at how spending broke down at the provincial and individual riding level — and what it says about where the parties were focusing their efforts.

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

With the budget getting (barely) passed on Monday, the potential for a holiday election has been taken off the table. But the way the vote broke down does not suggest that an election will be off the table for very long.

The Liberals passed their budget with only one vote from a member of an opposition party: the Greens’ Elizabeth May. The Bloc voted as a block against the budget, while two Conservative and two NDP MPs abstained. Shannon Stubbs, one of the Conservatives’ two abstentions, did not vote due to a scheduled surgery, while the other abstention came from Matt Jeneroux, which we are meant to believe has nothing to do with the drama surrounding his rumoured floor-crossing from a few weeks ago.

Lori Idlout and Gord Johns abstained for the NDP. Don Davies, the NDP’s interim leader, explained that the New Democrats did not support the budget but also understood that Canadians don’t want an election right now (and, let’s be frank, neither should the leaderless NDP).

The Conservatives also appear to not want an election right now, based on what happened with Andrew Scheer’s and Scott Reid’s supposed IT difficulties. (Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain.)

But the Conservatives and NDP won’t be wary of an election forever. The Liberals have shown little appetite of their own for compromising with the opposition parties to avoid a campaign, meaning that when push next comes to shove we shouldn’t expect the NDP to abstain and the Conservatives to forget the WiFi password again.

It is simply unusual for a budget to pass without any support from a major opposition party in a minority parliament. And it’s also unusual for a government to increase its support in the House of Commons on budget votes the longer it is in office.

That was certainly the case for Justin Trudeau when his Liberals had a minority. Their first pandemic budget got the support of 211 MPs in the House. Their next budget in 2022 had only 202 votes in favour. That dropped to 177 votes in 2023 and stayed around the same level at 181 votes in 2024.

Trudeau’s government banked on Bloc support to get its first two minority budgets passed and it relied on the New Democrats afterwards. Stephen Harper, when he had minorities between 2006 and 2011, also initially got backing from the Bloc before he got support from the Liberals (first through their votes, then through their mass abstentions).

Indeed, the last time a minority government presented a budget that got no support from at least one other major party (either explicitly or implicitly, as was the case with the Harper-era Liberal abstentions) was in 1979, when Joe Clark’s PC government fell.

It’s possible that the Liberals will drop their “take it or leave it” approach and be able to woo one other party over to their side for future budgets, but it’ll be a bigger ask to get one of the opposition parties to turn today’s ‘nay’ into tomorrow’s ‘yea’ then it would have been to keep them on board from the beginning.

With a prime minister seemingly uninterested in watering down his wine and opposition parties unwilling to do more than the minimum required to avoid a Christmas election, this Parliament does not look built to last very long. Probably sooner rather than later, the bluffs will be called.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on how election spending compared between the Liberals and Conservatives. Plus, a new premier in Nunavut, a renewed premier in B.C. and some big drama within the Quebec Liberal Party.

• Polls show trouble for Pierre Poilievre and a shrug for the NDP’s leadership contestants. Plus, Doug Ford keeps his lead.

• Book Review: Times of Transformation: The 1921 Canadian General Election.

• #EveryElectionProject: The first partisan election in Yukon’s history.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Liberals kept pace with Conservative ad-spending

Outspent by their rivals on television advertising, the Liberals nevertheless kept pace with the Conservatives in overall ad spending in the last campaign, putting more into online and radio ads than did their opponents.

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