If the theme of 2025 in Canadian politics was to expect the unexpected, the ways in which the political world turned upside down will reverberate into 2026. Everyone will have their own surprise developments of this truly tumultuous year, but here are my top five picks for the big country-shaking shifts of 2025.
OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is practising “counterfeit Conservatism.”
Poilievre says while Carney likes to copy his ideas — ending the consumer carbon price, for example — his government won’t do what it says it will.
Carney is widely seen to be moving the Liberals to the political centre after years of more centre-left policies under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
It’s not so easy to remove a politician from office between elections in Canada.
That’s due, in part, to the fact there are few jurisdictions in the country where laws to recall an elected representative are in place. And even where recalls are an option, the requirements to trigger one are challenging, some political observers say.
But the process is currently being played out in a major way in Alberta, where, thanks to citizen-led petition drives, 21 members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) who belong to the governing United Conservative Party (UCP) — including Premier Danielle Smith — are facing recall petitions from constituents. One Alberta NDP MLA is also facing a recall.
Pierre Trudeau famously said that opposition MPs are nobodies 50 yards from Parliament Hill – and today it’s a handful of Conservative nobodies who are laying the foundation for another Liberal dynasty in Ottawa.
Floor-crossings from the Conservatives to the Liberals by Michael Ma last week and Chris d’Entremont after the Liberal budget in November – hardly national figures – put the Liberals at 171 seats, one-seat shy of a majority government in the 343-seat House of Commons.
Losing one MP to the Liberals may be regarded as a misfortune. Losing two smacks of carelessness. Now Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative leadership is really in danger. Even a victory in the upcoming leadership review in January won’t necessarily make it safe.
Now, Mr. Poilievre will be looking over his shoulder and into the shadows. Maybe one more of his MPs will defect before party delegates convene in Calgary to vote on his leadership. Or just after he wins. Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon declared Friday that there are other dissatisfied Conservative MPs. He might as well have sneaked up behind Mr. Poilievre and shouted “boo!”
The dislike held by the media for Poilievre always makes me question the doomsayers.
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon says there are other Conservative MPs who are frustrated with Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, beyond the two who have already crossed the floor to the Liberals.
Mr. MacKinnon, who also serves as the Minister of Transport, made the comments Friday morning after the surprise announcement the night before that Ontario MP Michael Ma was leaving the Conservatives to join the Liberals.
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Mark Carney’s personal popularity took its first major hit in Abacus Data’s most recent polling, while the overall numbers still show a neck-and-neck race between the Liberals and Conservatives.
The polling done exclusively for the Toronto Star shows the Liberals and the Conservatives tied at 41 per cent, with the NDP a distant third place with nine per cent of decided voters and the Greens at two per cent.
Ontario MP Michael Ma announced Thursday that he is leaving the Conservative caucus and joining the Liberals.
Ma said in a statement that he made the decision after listening to his constituents in the riding of Markham-Unionville in the Greater Toronto Area.
“This is a time for unity and decisive action for Canada’s future,” he wrote.
When the Conservatives tabled a motion asking the House of Commons to “take note” of the memorandum of understanding signed between the federal and Alberta governments and express its support for the construction of a pipeline, the Official Opposition presumably hoped, one way or another, to make trouble for the Liberal government.
According to the logic of these things, the Liberals only had two bad options.
If Mark Carney and his cabinet decided to vote in support of the motion, they no doubt risked highlighting dissent about a pipeline among Liberal backbenchers. At the very least, it is hard to imagine how Steven Guilbeault could have supported the Conservative motion.
A politician’s worst nightmare is to be thought of as yesterday’s breakfast by voters. When Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on energy development with the premier of Alberta two weeks ago, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was made to look as relevant to the big issue of the day as the leader of the NDP.
It was, then, an adept parliamentary manoeuvre by Poilievre to wrestle back the initiative with an opposition day motion on Tuesday that forced the Liberals onto the back foot on their own initiative.
The Conservatives say they will table a motion in the House of Commons next week asking whether MPs support an oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast and any “appropriate adjustment” to the oil tanker ban on B.C.’s north coast.
“We need a new pipeline to the pacific,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre posted on X Dec. 5. “Bring home jobs. Put Canada First.”
We need a new pipeline to the pacific.
On Tuesday, the House of Commons will vote on a Conservative motion for a new oil pipeline to the Pacific coast overriding the tanker ban to ship bitumen to Asia.
Bring home jobs. Put Canada First. pic.twitter.com/nDxWgC4aUD
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) December 5, 2025
The federal Liberals are holding 43 per cent of support amongst decided Canadian voters, maintaining a lead over the Conservatives, who dropped two points last month to 36 per cent, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.
Support for the Liberals has not changed since a Nov. 3 poll. The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, gained two points amongst decided voters to sit at nine per cent support, and the NDP was up one point with eight per cent support, according to the survey conducted Nov. 28 to 30.
OTTAWA — Green Party leader Elizabeth May says supporting the Carney government on the budget vote is a “mistake” she won’t make again.
May told The Canadian Press the memorandum of understanding Prime Minister Mark Carney signed with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on energy — specifically the part that applies federal tax credits to enhanced oil recovery — amounted to a “significant betrayal and a reversal” which has her questioning the worth of Carney’s word.
“I don’t know if the prime minister lied but I think he needs to consider what his word means when his word was given,” she said.
Why do we bother? h/t Mauser
What happens when a government survives a big test, but the country still feels stuck?
That is where Canada finds itself today. The Carney government survived its first major budget vote and avoided a holiday election. On paper, that is a win. Our latest Abacus Data survey, conducted between Nov. 20 and 27 with 2,421 adults, shows the Liberals have gained a bit of ground. But the larger story is not a big bounce. It is a stalemate.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s agreement with Alberta toward a new oil pipeline to the Pacific coast has angered the few opposition MPs who saved his Liberal government from falling in a recent confidence vote, increasing the prospect of a snap election.
On Thursday, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlined the conditions needed for Ottawa to back a new pipeline proposal, which included strengthening the province’s industrial carbon pricing system and supporting a carbon capture and storage project advanced by the Pathways Alliance — a consortium of Canada’s six largest oilsands companies.
In exchange, the federal government will scrap the long-promised oil and gas emissions cap, and exempt Alberta from regulations pressing provinces to decarbonize their electricity grid.
