Mark Carney’s Coalition Numbers Don’t Add Up

Mark Carney’s Coalition Numbers Don’t Add Up

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It was often said of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that her greatest political asset was her ability to count. To count votes, certainly — but more importantly, to count what allows a coalition to endure over time: sensitivities, idiosyncrasies, and invisible red lines.

Mark Carney holds a PhD in economics. He knows how to count. Yet, eight months after his government’s election, it remains unclear whether he has mastered the kind of political arithmetic required to govern a minority government in a federation as diverse as Canada’s.

Since his election last April, Carney and his government have embarked on a sweeping overhaul of major federal policies, marked by limited consultation and transparency.

Virtually nothing has been spared: international trade, internal trade, environmental policy, national defence, climate policy, immigration. All of it has been pursued under the cover of a political consensus that hangs by a single thread — Donald Trump.

While decisiveness is essential when governments face challenges requiring immediate responses, strategic restraint are just as crucial when the issues at stake are structural in nature.

Unfortunately, restraint has been largely absent. Between visits to Paris, London, Doha and Beijing, Mr. Carney has appeared intent not only on rebuilding the foundations of Canada’s major public policies, but also on reshaping the Liberal Party’s governing coalition.

For decades — from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau — the backbone of that coalition has been formed by Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and Ontario (particularly the GTA and its suburbs).

Since his election, however, Mark Carney has devoted disproportionate attention to the grievances of Alberta and Saskatchewan while relegating to the sidelines Quebec’s concerns over pipeline development and carbon emission reductions and Ontario’s interests in the health of its automotive sector.

The issue is not whether Alberta and Saskatchewan have legitimate claims tied to the development of their natural resources. They unquestionably do. What is striking is the contrast between the urgency with which those claims are addressed and the relative indifference shown toward the concerns of other provinces that remain central to the Liberal Party’s traditional electoral coalition.

On paper, the Carney government appears to have gained stability since the election. In Parliament, it has survived its first major political tests, including confidence votes on the Speech from the Throne and its budget. Before the holidays, two Conservative MPs — one from Nova Scotia and one from the Greater Toronto Area — crossed the floor to sit as Liberals.

On the ground, however, the picture may be quite different. The Liberals and Conservatives remain neck and neck in the polls. And while it is still too early to speak of entrenched trends, early signs of erosion are already visible in the Liberals’ traditional strongholds.

This is true in Quebec, where Liberal support has declined by roughly five points since the election; in Ontario, where the drop approaches six points; and in Atlantic Canada, where the decline exceeds five points since April. Notably, Liberal support has remained essentially unchanged in the Prairies and in Alberta.

A closer look at the electoral map helps clarify the magnitude of the political risk facing Mr. Carney and his government.

In the last election, the Liberals lost seven ridings in Alberta and Saskatchewan by margins of a few thousand votes. By contrast, they won 26 seats in Ontario and Quebec by margins of less than 5,000 votes. Even a marginal weakening of Liberal support in Ontario, Quebec, or Atlantic Canada would be enough to shift dozens of seats into Conservative or Bloc Québécois hands.

The chart below illustrates the asymmetric electoral reality facing the Liberal Party: while close losses in the West are relatively few, dozens of seats in Ontario and Quebec rest on razor-thin margins.

Mark Carney and the Liberals returned to power in the shadow of Donald Trump. They benefited from voter anxiety and a reflex of solidarity among Canadians confronted with American political chaos. That consent was real — but it was circumstantial. It did not constitute a mandate to upend the country’s industrial, economic, and political foundations.

In a federation, knowing how to count is not simply a matter of tallying seats or securing markets. It requires acknowledging and accounting for what may not be immediately visible: diverse values, regional diffrerences and sensitivities, and thresholds of acceptability.

Mark Carney is a smart man. What he lacks is the lived political experience — and the humility that comes with it — needed to understand how electoral coalitions are built, and how they unravel. Canadian political history is clear: coalitions do not always collapse with a crash. More often, they erode — slowly. And when the numbers no longer add up, it is usually too late to start counting again.

When Applause Comes Before Principles

When Applause Comes Before Principles

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre responded to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in markedly different tones.

Mr. Carney welcomed the operation, then called for respect for international law, sovereignty and democratic self-determination. Mr. Poilievre offered unqualified praise for President Donald Trump.

The distinction matters. But so does what unites the two responses.

Both reflect a dangerous and increasingly familiar tendency: the normalization of behaviour that weakens the normative guardrails meant to constrain the conduct of states and governments.

In Mr. Carney’s case, applause for the capture and rendition of a foreign head of state came first, followed by pious invocations of the rules-based international order. In Mr. Poilievre’s, enthusiasm displaced restraint entirely.

The difference is real. The common ground is more troubling.

When breaches of international norms are greeted with approval and only later qualified with caveats, the caveats lose their force. Ordering matters. Principles invoked after the fact rarely survive first contact with power.

For Canada, it is against that backdrop that the U.S. operation in Venezuela must be assessed.

In the hours following Nicolás Maduro’s capture, President Trump and members of his administration framed the action as justice in motion — a law-enforcement operation designed to bring a fugitive to account, not the overthrow of a head of state.

The language was familiar and reassuring, drawing on two enduring elements of American political mythology: the belief that the United States is uniquely entrusted with the defence of law and liberty, and the conviction that American power carries moral purpose beyond its borders.

The mask slipped almost immediately.

Within hours of the capture, President Trump indicated that the United States was already working with Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, describing conversations in which she offered to “do whatever you need,” and adding pointedly that she “doesn’t really have a choice.”

In the same exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed Venezuela’s leading democratic opposition figure, María Corina Machado, as lacking the support or respect required to govern.

Soon after, the president dispensed with even the pretence of moral justification, openly acknowledging that American involvement in Venezuela was about oil.

What had been framed as justice delivered in defence of law and liberty was revealed instead as the pursuit of strategic and economic advantage.

The transactional character of this moment — and the lesson it carries for Canada — is underscored by the conditions under which Venezuela’s democratic opposition must now operate.

María Corina Machado, an internationally recognized advocate for democratic change and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, publicly praised President Trump following her award.

Yet within hours of Maduro’s capture, Machado and her movement were summarily dismissed by the same president whose favour they had carefully sought. The speed and ease with which that dismissal occurred is instructive.

That is the deeper lesson for Canada. In a transactional order, fealty buys access, not assurance. Praise secures attention, not commitment. When power is exercised without restraint, yesterday’s ally can become today’s adversary, and yesterday’s cause can be readily abandoned.

For Canada and for our partners across the Western alliance, this latest act of imperial power, predicated on the thinnest of rationales, must be viewed with alarm.

What is at stake is the continued erosion of the institutional, political and moral guardrails that have underpinned the international order

As former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy warned, silence in the face of norm-breaking does not preserve stability. It invites vulnerability. Canada’s former ambassador to Venezuela made the same point: abandoning rules-based action has consequences.

Deference may secure short-term, transactional returns. It offers no protection over the longer term. A world in which justice, freedom and democracy become infinitely adaptable justifications rather than bedrock principles is one in which sovereignty is more exposed, not more secure.

For Canada, vigilance does not mean panic or posturing. It means resisting the temptation to applaud first and qualify later — and recognizing that the defence of institutional, legal and moral norms may be the only real bulwark against the erosion of our own sovereignty.