GOLDSTEIN: Liberals and Conservatives must accept new reality of minority governments
Election results show Canadians want them working together for the common good rather than constantly warring with each other
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Minority governments are the new norm in Canadian politics and it’s time the two major political parties in Canada started acting like it.
In the past 25 years, since the last of three consecutive Jean Chretien majority Liberal governments was elected in 2000 – at a time when the federal conservative movement was divided – eight federal elections have produced six minority governments.
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That includes the last three elections in 2019, 2021 and 2025.
As one of many examples of the political class in Canada failing to understand this new reality, while Canada’s major pollsters have been congratulating themselves on their polling this year falling within their margins of error on the popular vote, most who predicted seat counts wrongly predicted a strong Liberal majority government.
What this election in fact produced was a strong Liberal minority government – the latest number pending recounts being 169 seats, three short of a 172-seat majority – which means Prime Minister Mark Carney doesn’t have to kow-tow to either the Bloc Quebecois or the NDP, which both suffered significant losses in this election.
Neither of these parties – the NDP isn’t even an official party any more, having won seven seats, five short of the 12 required for official party status – wants an election any time soon.
That’s one reason why Carney said on Friday he’s not interested in concocting another supply and confidence agreement with the NDP to ensure the survival of his government, as Justin Trudeau did, because he doesn’t need one.
While Carney may still try to entice enough opposition MPs to join the Liberals – he only needs three – the better choice would be for the Liberals and the Conservatives to accept what voters have told them in this election.
That is that with 16.7 million voters (8.6 million for the Liberals and 8.1 million for the Conservatives) awarding 85% of the popular vote (43.7% for the Liberals and 41.3% for Conservatives) to the two major political parties, Canadians want them working together for the common good rather than constantly warring with each other.
That doesn’t mean they have to sing Kumbaya at the start of every question period.
It does mean co-operating in order to confront the threat to the economy posed by U.S. President Donald Trump and his irrational tariff war against Canada, which shouldn’t be hard since during the election their approaches to dealing with Trump were closely aligned.
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On a positive note, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in his concession speech suggested that, rhetorically, at least, he understands this new reality.
Quieting boos from the partisan crowd when he congratulated Carney on his narrow victory, he said:
“While we will do our constitutional duty of holding government to account, and proposing better alternatives, we will always put Canada first as we stare down tariffs and other irresponsible threats from President Trump.
“Conservatives will work with the Prime Minister and all parties with the common goal of defending Canada’s interests and getting a new trade deal that puts these tariffs behind us while protecting our sovereignty and the Canadian people.”
It will be up to Poilievre – assuming Conservatives still want him as their leader – to live up to those words.
Another positive sign was Carney’s public commitment on Friday to call a byelection to give Poilievre a seat in the House of Commons “as soon as possible, no games, nothing, straight” – which he could have delayed for months – after the Conservative Leader lost his seat in the Ontario riding of Carleton on Monday night.
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With Alberta Conservative MP Damien Kurek having announced he will give up his Battle River-Crowfoot riding in order to allow Poilievre to run, it means Poilievre will be back in the House of Commons in short order, assuming he wins.
Beyond the question of dealing with Trump, there are a number of significant policy areas on which the Liberals and Conservatives now agree, given that Carney adopted many of Poilievre’s policies during the election.
As a result, in areas such as a middle-class tax cut, cancelling the GST for homebuyers and controls on immigration, the differences between the two parties are now ones of degree rather than kind.
In the last Parliament before the election was called, the House of Commons was paralyzed by a Conservative filibuster and the Liberals’ refusal to hand over documents demanded by the House of Commons.
There is far too much at stake for a repetition of this political paralysis when Parliament resumes.
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