Canadian floor crossings in 2026

Five MPs have crossed the floor to Mark Carney's Liberals.

Poilevre thinks the constituents should sign petitions to ask for their recall.

But he should narrow his request - in two of the five cases the Conservative and NDP had had support from less than half the votes anyway.

and in four of the cases the Liberal voters had been within 2000 votes of the Conservative anyway.

So even if the Liberal candidate of 2025 is not now representing the riding, at least an MP who votes along Liberal lines is, and a good portion of the constituents are likely happy with that.

Note that in four of the cases the riding boundaries are strictly arbitrary and the voter is lumped together with an odd assortment of others.

Only the Nunavut riding, covering a whole Territory, makes sense on the ground.

Nov. 4, 2025

Chris D'Etremont (MP for Acadie-Annapolis) won seat with 48 percent of the vote.

He received only 600 more votes than the Liberal candidate, and the NDP candidate got almost 1800 votes as well.

Dec. 11, 2025

Michael Ma, an MP from Markham, Ontario

he was elected with just a slim majority of the votes in 2025, He received only 2000 more votes than his Liberal contender.

Feb. 18, 2026

Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux

he was elected with just a slim majority of the votes in 2025, and received only 700 more votes than his Liberal contender.

March 11, 2026

Lori Idlout, the MP for Nunavut MP, crossed from the NDP

she had won her seat with just 37 percent of the votes, receiving only 40 more votes than the Liberal contender

April 2026

Marilyn Gladu (MP for Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong) crossed from Conservatives to Liberals. She was elected by a slight majority of votes in her district

but the distance from the number of her Conservative supporters and those for the Liberal candidate was only 12,000.

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"... 273 MPs have crossed the floor since Confederation; of these, 55 crossed the floor twice and 9 crossed three times.

Most “floor-crossing” actually occurs on the same side of the floor, between ranks of the opposition.

Literal floor-crossing, from the opposition to the government or the government to the opposition, constitutes about 40% of the party switching of sitting MPs, and is equally common in both directions."

from https://cpsa-acsp.ca/documents/conference/2016/Sevi-Cochrane.pdf

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Alberta

MP David Kilgour crossed from the Conservatives to become Independent, then to the Liberals and was elected as a Liberal from 1993 to 2004, serving as MP to 2008.

Rahim Jaffer (MP for Edmonton Strathcona 1997-2008) sat under three party labels (Reform, Alliance and Conservative) but in his case he didn't cross the floor but the parties to which he was affiliated merged and took different labels.

provincial

our present premier, Danielle Smith, crossed the floor twice, to Wildrose from Conservatives, then from Wildrose back to Conservatives.

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Here is article I wrote for Mill Woods Mosaic in April 2026:

Floor Crossings Symptom of Party Politics, Not Cause of Democratic Failure

By Tom Monto

The recent floor crossings have opened a debate on the shape of our democracy. And it is not good – the shape of our democracy, that is.

Floor crossings have long been part of our Westminster system, at least potentially. Heck, our premier herself crossed the floor twice, first in 2009 and then again in 2014. 

Our democracy is a representative democracy, which means we elect certain people to fill seats and in hopes that they will represent “voters.”  But who do they really represent? We elect one person to represent a geographical area containing all sorts of people. So obviously some voters in the district will have someone to speak in support of their opinion, and the others will not.

Is that the best we can expect for our democracy?

A look at Europe – and many  countries in Asia, Africa and South America – shows us that democracy does not have to look like this. Democracy - which can be defined as rule by the people themselves or their chosen representatives - does not have to look like this.

Democracy started in ancient Greece, in Athens. That civilization used different election systems at different times, but the pinnacle of democracy there was due to leadership of a man called Cleisthenes, who around the year 600 BC divided the electorate into ten tribes. Each tribe included a sampling of male citizens in each of the three geographical areas of Athens. The tribe's representatives were chosen by lot, and in fact those who were seen as becoming adept at working the system were ostracized (forced to live outside Athens) for ten years. The selected people from the tribes gathered in the Boule, which was composed of thousands of delegates, like I say chosen by lot. They acted like what we would call a Citizens Assembly today.

The idea that common persons, the general public should have input into laws is similar to the idea now becoming more and more widespread of the usefulness of Citizen’s Assemblies. One was used in BC in 2005 to consider reforms of the election system. Its suggestion to switch to Single Transferable Voting in multi-member districts was put to a referendum and endorsed by a majority of votes, but the result was ignored by the government.

And in 2020, the Citizens’ Assembly on Democratic Expression was organized and, after 40 hours of online meetings, came up with 33 recommendations. These recommendations were the basis of the Trudeau government’s Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), which unfortunately was not passed into law before his resignation.

Unlike Ancient Athens, we in Canada have never had assemblies of thousands of ordinary citizens debating policy and putting forward their ideas for approval as law.

Perhaps the closest we have had is when a government puts the power to choose law in the hands of voters in general. This is done through referendums such as we saw when Edmontonians voted to close the downtown airport in 1995 and in 2021 when we voted not to adopt permanent daylight savings time.

Those kind of direct questions to voters are also a part of democracy, because democratic politics is about people achieving the passage of government policy that they like, whether directly through Citizen Assemblies, petitions or referendums, or through fairly elected representation. 

In Canada we mostly hold elections and then leave the government to do what it wants until four or five years later when another election is held. Some describe this as “elective dictatorship.” And often the MLAs or MPs who make up the majority in the chamber do not have the support of the majority of voters. Such minority rule leads the country or a province down paths against the will of the majority of voters. 

The 1988 federal election was taken as a referendum on freer trade with the U.S.  Mulroney’s Conservative party was re-elected to a  majority of seats although more votes were cast for the Liberals and the NDP, both of whom were opposed to Free Trade. That free trade deal led to Canada’s over-dependence on just one trading partner. And now we are urgently working to get away from that.

Other historical cases include the U.S. Civil War. If the U.S. government had actually represented the will of the voters, the war could have been avoided according to one analysis.

The Second World War likewise could have been avoided if the British government had been composed based on votes cast, with more-aggressive actions taken against Hitler's early moves.

In Israel, in the last election Netanyhu’s coalition did not take a  majority of votes but due to the electoral threshold, it received a majority of seats anyway. His decisions have helped cause the present destructive and expensive conflict.

The idea that one single party has overwhelming power in the House of Commons for a set period of time means deaf ears are given to those with divergent ideas. There will always be those in power and those outside power, but at least under a properly working system, the government should have the support of a majority of voters and every substantial voting block should have a voice in the chamber, to at least be listened to, even if their remarks are not directly acted on immediately.

But such is not guaranteed today. Mark Carney's success in assembling a majority in the House of Commons does not overcome the fact that the Liberal MPs that compose his caucus have less than 40 percent of the vote.  The Conservative MPs have even fewer votes.

With no one party actually deserving power, what to do?

We can do what is done in most countries in Europe (and many in Asia, Africa and South America as well) – compose a working majority through forming a coalition of multiple parties. Certain parties put aside their differences and form a common platform and get things done.

The "party first" notions that lead to one-party rule prevents the general will of the people (of a majority of the people anyway) from having power and ensuring the government works for them.

The recent uproar against the floor crossings of Conservatives (and an NDP-er in one case) to the Liberals is to my mind just party machines upset at their inability to control elected members.

Because we don't simply fill slots in the parties caucus; we elect individuals. Sure we would like the elected member to do what they promise but we actually have no hold on them between elections. 

Are the constituents mad about the floor crossing? Some likely are, but others -- the many who did not vote for the elected member in the first place -- may not be, especially those who wanted to see a Liberal elected.

Parties are a convenient way to group candidates. Voters know roughly what to expect from candidates running under labels, and parties are useful forces in fighting elections. But when parties themselves are seen as the purpose of politics, they are a hindrance to democracy.

Back in the 1910s many Albertans saw that the Liberal party had "sewn up" the election process in most of the province. It was difficult to get even a Conservative elected, not to mention someone who wanted to represent workers and farmers. They pushed the Liberal government to bring in Direct Legislation where citizens could sign petitions and force the government to adopt legislation or hold a binding referendum on it. 

The Alberta Prohibition law of 1915 came in through this process. 

Beer sales in taverns were still allowed, and an attempt was made to collect the required number of signatures to get that banned as well. But other than Prohibition, no other initiatives were able to breach the critical threshold. 

Then people said “why do this work to force the government to do what it doesn’t want to do? Why not just elect a government that wants to do the right stuff in the first place?”

The UFA were elected in 1921 due to a groundswell of "Organized Farmer" sentiment. It promised to bring in a fairer election system. It did bring in ranked voting in each district of the province and by using city-wide districts in Edmonton and Calgary, ensured that each major party would have representation in each city.

It was not the Democracy of old Athens, but it did see a Farmer MLA and a Labour MLA elected in Edmonton in 1926, which had never happened before. And a Calgary Labour MLA was named a cabinet minister in the UFA government.

We have unfortunately lost the system of proportional representation in Edmonton and Calgary that we once had. But now perhaps there is renewed interest in establishing new forms of voting and representation. And hopefully in the future the will of the people, not just an assembly made up of winners of local dominance in separate districts, will become the basis of our political system.

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