There is something so Canadian about Joe Clark, with his mix of accomplishments, failures and even humiliations, but also his indomitable spirit and one thing that has never been challenged: his essential goodness. Over the years many have asked if Joe Clark was the right person for the job or was making the right decisions, but it’s hard to find anyone who dislikes the guy himself or questions his intentions; if they do, it’s worth questioning their own.

A Joe Clark bio: Born in 1939 in High River, just south of Calgary, he was a bright student at the University of Alberta and highly active in the PC Party, where he met other hustling young Tories like Brian Mulroney. He first ran for office in the 1967 Alberta provincial election and later came to Ottawa to work for Mr Stanfield. He was elected to Parliament in 1972, and soon took an audacious risk and unexpectedly won the party leadership in 1976 at the age of 36; the famous Toronto Star headline the next day read Joe Who?

Then the struggles began. Right-wingers in the caucus, egged on by the disloyal Chief, challenged his authority. Clark’s masculinity was mocked because his wife, Maureen McTeer, retained her last name. His gravitas was undermined by minor mishaps, most famously losing track of his luggage on an international trip designed to bolster his statesman image. Clark managed to win the most seats in the 1979 election, but was 4% behind Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals in the popular vote; a very weak mandate. He nevertheless tried to lead boldly and aggressively, making what civil servants call “courageous” decisions (i.e, foolhardy), but the government was defeated in a non-confidence vote, and Trudeau - who had announced and then rescinded his resignation - steamrolled him in the subsequent election.

Clark hung on to the leadership despite an open campaign by Mulroney to eject him; in the 1983 leadership review, Clark received 67%, which he deemed insufficient, having received a similar level in 1981. Once again choosing the bold move, he stepped down to run for a new mandate as leader, but was defeated by Mulroney. In late 1983, Joe Clark was looking pretty washed up.

But he hung on. Named Minister of External Affairs by the selectively magnanimous Mulroney, Clark found his groove, became “The New Joe Clark” and finally started to look like a statesman. He was then handed the bomb of Minister of Constitutional Affairs, where he dug deep with all his knowledge and experience of the country to try and find consensus, picking up the nickname “Captain Canada.” He stepped down from politics in 1993, spent a few years filling time with Joe Clark-style jobs like UN representative to Cyprus, and then came back in 1998 to again lead the much-diminished PC party, now fighting for its life against Reform. Clark refused to give in to Reform’s right-wing populism and its claim to speak for the West. Taking another bold risk, he ran and won in a Calgary seat in the 2000 election and kept the PCs alive and in good spirits, setting the party up for his successor Peter MacKay to negotiate an equal partnership in the reunited Conservative Party of Canada. But Clark himself never joined the new party, seeing it as too right-wing. He’s been out of active politics since 2004, but not public life, and while now 87, still pops up from time to time.

Clark has much in common with his contemporary Jimmy Carter; another middling chief executive whose best public contributions came after leaving office. Clark’s resilience amid setbacks is impressive; he’s very durable. But to me what really sets Clark apart, and truly makes him so Canadian, are his human imperfections alongside his accomplishments.

Clark has an inherent awkward formality that long made him the most unintentionally funny figure in Canadian politics; readers of a certain age will recall CBC’s “Double Exposure”, in which Bob Robertson did a terrific impression of Clark, with a very recognizable “Uh, Uh, Uh” laugh and many “Indeed”s. Listen here for Robertson, and watch here for Don Ferguson’s Royal Canadian Air Farce impression. In Clark’s official portrait, showing him speaking in the House, I can’t help but notice that it looks like he’s talking to an empty chamber. Combined with indignities like lost luggage, he is comedy gold.

But let’s face it: no one for a second doubts the essential goodness of Joe Clark. There are no envelopes stuffed with cash, embarrassing inquiries, half-strangled protestors, upraised fingers, or fuddle-duddles. His imperfections only emphasize that his errors are ones of execution, not character, and he has a stubborn moral compass, seen in his refusal to let bygones be bygones and join the CPC.

Clark’s failures, most notably his prime ministership, are usually from trying to play a role that doesn’t suit him: the decisive, iron-fisted, damn-the-torpedoes leader. Clark’s true instinct is to take time to listen, weigh evidence, and pursue consensus, guided by that moral compass. One of his longstanding phrases is that Canada is “a community of communities,” and while it received Trudeauian scorn, it speaks to a fundamentally collective and interdependent view of society. Clark conveys very much a Canadian style of leadership which, combined with his unintentional funniness, makes him the embodiment of our imperfect nation.

Joe Clark is also a package deal. His partnership with Maureen McTeer, who boasts her own accomplishments, has no real parallel in Canada - McTeer remains the only prime ministerial spouse to not change their name or to run for Parliament, as she did unsuccessfully in 1988 - and they are often recognized as a team; in 2010 at Carleton University, we rightly awarded honorary degrees to both of them in the same ceremony. McTeer is a fascinating person in her own right who from the start continued to cultivate her own career separate from Clark. She was finishing law school when Clark won the party leadership, articled while he was preparing for the 1979 election, and wrote her final bar exams days before the 1980 election, all while raising Catherine Clark, born in 1976.

(Maureen McTeer took a lot of crap for her feminism, and much in turn landed on Clark. My own tiny story: when Joe Clark announced his first departure from politics in 1993, I happened to be in Edmonton, where the Ontario Legislative Interns were visiting the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. At a reception I found myself talking with the Deputy Speaker and, searching for suitable conversation, I noted Clark’s announcement. He paused, leaned back and smiled, and distinctly said “yep, Mr McTeer’s gone.” I was only 22 but I hope my WTF face was obvious. I later understood I’d been talking to Stan Schumacher, a former MP and Diefenbaker sycophant who had refused to give up his seat to his new leader after the 1976 riding redistribution moved High River into it, forcing Clark to run elsewhere. In a deserved outcome, the three-term Schumacher then got knocked off in his own local nomination, later crawling into provincial politics.)

There remains no Joe Clark biography, excepting David Humphrey’s Joe Clark: A Portrait (1978), which needs one or two updates. (There are two good contemporary books on the Clark government: Jeffrey Simpson’s Discipline of Power and Warner Troyer’s 200 Days: Joe Clark in Power; also 1978’s Joe Clark: The Emerging Leader, by Michael Nolan, an impressive and lavishly illustrated book answering the question in the Toronto Star headline). Clark himself has written two policy-oriented books but never his own memoir, though one can obtain A Man of Parliament: Selected Speeches from Joe Clark, co-edited in 2019 by my political science colleague Jonathan Rose. This thin library itself says something about a very Canadian modesty, with Clark himself apparently unconcerned about controlling his own personal story, unlike most ex-prime ministers. (Maureen McTeer’s autobiography, In My Own Name, was published in 2003 and remains an excellent read. On p. 133, after the 1980 defeat, she writes: “…people were already beginning to write and rewrite history to ensure their part was portrayed in a positive light. Joe has never given much attention to this aspect of public life.”)

Returning again to a personal note, I first met Joe Clark when he came to the University of Waterloo in the fall of 1991 to talk up the latest round of constitutional proposals, arranged by my professor Peter Woolstencroft, a Clark man from U of A days. I still have my signed copy.

In more recent years I’ve had occasion to chat with him a couple of times at events in Ottawa. I’m very proud of this picture of me with Man From High River - in my view, the most Canadian of Canadians.

The CPC likes to present itself as the sole and rightful heir of a long legacy of dedicated Grit fighters going back to 1867. But it skips over the 1990s, when the upstart Reform Party and Progressive Conservatives were at each other’s throats. That decade has been erased from party history, along with the 2000 flop of the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance party (which was quickly inverted to Reform Conservative to avoid the label of CCRAP). In the same selective way, while the post-2003 party generally embraced Brian Mulroney as a person, who loyally returned the love, you won’t find a whole lot of gushing about the actual Mulroney government, under which the aforementioned split happened (kids, look up “CF-18 contract”). And Joe Clark? Never heard of the guy.

Because of the calamitous Reform split and the resulting wilderness years, the CPC runs a tight ship, is more inwardly than outwardly focused, and is always searching for low-cost ways to maintain party unity. In its initial years, the party thought it had a slam-dunk unifying figure in John A. Macdonald - nation-builder and the closest to a party founder. Accordingly, the Harper government doubled down on Sir John A., naming everything they could find in Ottawa after the Old Man, including the Ottawa River parkway, the former city hall next to the Global Affairs Canada building named after Lester Pearson, and the converted bank building across from Parliament Hill used for parliamentary events. However, even Conservatives are realizing the Macdonald name has too much baggage these days, and while there are still lots of Sir John A. diehards, that branding exercise is over.

Instead, a new person serves as a unifying CPC historic figure: the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker.

When one thinks of party unity, “John Diefenbaker” is not the first name that comes to mind. Diefenbaker was almost thrown out by his own cabinet; refused to resign even after the defeats of 1963 and 1965 and had to be pried out of the leadership; he then ran to replace himself at the 1967 convention, finishing fifth; and was…less than wholly supportive of his successors, Mr Stanfield and Mr Clark.

Even his loyalists found “The Chief” to be paranoid, mercurial, and egotistic. He was obsessed with his image, and is probably the only prime minister to plan every detail of his own funeral. It is well documented that the reason the Diefenbaker Centre exists at the University of Saskatchewan is not because it was USask’s idea, but because he proclaimed the donation of his papers in his speech after receiving an honourary degree and being named chancellor in 1969, leaving the university little choice but to accept this expensive white elephant.

Dief saw enemies everywhere. One of the greatest Canadian political stories, recently confirmed by John Ibbitson in The Duel, is that a bomb threat was received at Diefenbaker’s funeral service in 1979, for which the entire Canadian political and public service establishment had gathered in Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Ottawa. Unsure what to do, the RCMP went to the front pew to consult the prime minister of the day, the aforementioned Joe Clark. Clark said the service could proceed, reasoning that the only person who could possibly wish ill-will on every individual present was up front in the coffin.

But I am noticing that a lot of Tories seem to think very well of Diefenbaker these days, because he fits today’s Conservative zeitgest.

Dief was the original disruptor. Having never run anything bigger than his law practice before becoming party leader, he was a one-man-band uncomfortable with institutions or leading non-sycophants, and certainly incapable of being a team player. He pushed out the head of the Bank of Canada, James Coyne, and despised the Laurentian Elite with every ounce of his being, long before they acquired that name. His one establishment concession was a deep love of the monarchy and all things British, despite his Germanic roots. One of his last great fights was against the adoption of the Canadian maple leaf in 1964, and for his state funeral it had to share space with the old Red Ensign. Dief’s contradictions nicely match the Conservative Party of today.

He was ideologically inconsistent with a selectively progressive streak, and this allows anyone to find things to like about his government. He built his career as a criminal defense lawyer, fighting the power of the state, and opposed capital punishment and introduced a written Bill of Rights. He appointed the first woman cabinet minister in Canadian history (Ellen Fairclough), had the first non-white MP in his caucus (Douglas Jung), and oversaw the extension of the vote to First Nations in 1960. And as the first prime minister of neither English or French descent, he championed “One Canada” (the title of his three volume autobiography) and decried “hyphenated Canadians” (like “German-Canadian) as a divisive practice (though there is no evidence he remotely grasped the aspirations of Quebec and French-Canadians). And as for our current circumstances…Dief was decidedly cool to Americans, pushed for greater separation from the US in foreign and economic policy, was termed a “son of a bitch” by John F Kennedy, and went down in the 1963 election fighting against installing American nuclear weapons in Canada. His elbows-up credentials are pristine.

And while born in Ontario, Diefenbaker was deeply of the West, and more than anyone is responsible for establishing the Prairies as the great redoubt of Conservatism today. Prior to 1957 the region was a electoral tossup, but it became Diefenbaker heartland, then and now. Following his laying in state and funeral in Ottawa, an eight car train carried Diefenbaker home over three days through northern Ontario and Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with massive adoring crowds gathering at every stop to pay their respects to the great Chief. To praise John Diefenbaker today is to praise the virtues of the good and pure West, far from the corrupting bankers and intellectuals of Toronto.

Finally, Diefenbaker has the advantage of being dead for the last forty-seven years, making any new bozo eruptions or leadership rebellions highly unlikely, and all his foes are gone too. (Dalton Camp, the party president who took him down in 1966 and became Diefenbaker Enemy #1 ever thereafter, died in 2002).

Yet the Chief lives, for example in Bob Plamondon’s recent Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker’s Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence, (forward by Jean Chrétien) and fundraising for the AI-influenced feature film Diefenbaker: One Canada. And in my highly unscientific conversations with random Conservatives, Dief seems to be rising in estimation. Rather than the bitter paranoid and party muckracker of decades ago, the Chief is now poised to be the great icon of the Conservative Party in 2026.

A final set of personal observations. I remember when John Diefenbaker died in August 1979, but only because it was on the news before my noontime viewing of The Flintstones; I didn’t know who he was, but I later heard my grandfather mentioning it to my mother and I grasped this had been someone of importance. I also like visiting that same Diefenbaker Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, where the great man is buried beside his loyal wife Olive. There’s a flagpole with a big fluttering Maple Leaf right beside the site. I swear if you listen carefully you can hear a turning sound in the grave.

Non-Ottawanians understandably view the city solely in National Capital terms; a place of political blowhards, patronage troughs, and meddling bureaucrats. There is a more conventional Ottawa of strip malls and suburban sprawl, thousands of ordinary public servants who will never enter the minister’s office, and the tech class in Kanata; people who go about the daily lives never once consulting The Hill Times.

But there is certainly a downtown Ottawa culture, comprised of three groups. There’s the politics class of politicians and aides; the advanced civil service class of executives and agency heads that spend a lot of time keeping an eye on the first class; and what I’ll call the hustler class of journalists, lobbyists, lawyers - and the occasional professor - who measure their success by their access to the other two classes. The business of downtown Ottawa is government; if someone on Sparks Street says they are in “the private sector,” they mean their company’s government relations shop.

Ottawa is livelier than Canberra, where I once lived, but tiny compared to London or Washington, giving a sense that with enough time and effort it just might be possible to know everything and everybody that matters. There’s only one traditional club, the Rideau, and one prewar hotel, the Chateau Laurier. (The Lord Elgin opened in 1941). As some truckers demonstrated in 2022, anything important happens within a few blocks. If you’re at the airport on Friday and can’t spot a prominent politician, you’re not trying. Last week I nearly walked into Joe Clark at the grocery store.

There are two good books about Ottawa as a political city: Sandra Gwyn’s The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier (1984) and Stevie Cameron’s Ottawa Inside Out: Power, Prestige and Scandal in the Nation’s Capital (1989). Both - and no surprise, by women authors - explore the interplay and overlap between public and private life in a government town.

Gwyn chronicles 19th century civil service families living in farmhouse conditions a few blocks from Parliament Hill. Cameron gives a snapshot of Ottawa in the 1980s, including the launch of The Private Capital in December 1984 as “the best party most people ever remembered,” before Tory barbarians killed the social scene. The latter is a cyclical theme stretching from Diefenbaker to Mulroney to Harper; that permanent Ottawa is Liberal, and stays that way because Conservatives arrive suspicious and remain aloof, perpetuating the cycle.

Ottawa Inside Out is now of limited interest if you don’t recognize the name Don Mazankowski, but its insider tone does a marvelous job of convincing you that with a little pluck, you too can figure out this town. Another regular Ottawa chronicler, Sandra Gotlieb, although better known for books on her Washington years, also followed a perennial theme that Ottawa was a simple little town easy to master, which is true if you’re comparing it to the biggest global capitals, and you have a climber’s knack for figuring out who and what is important.

Downtown Ottawa has a national feel; most people came from somewhere else. The Westerners and Atlantic Canadians are divided between the ones that have made their nest here, and those that are counting the days and years until they can get back. People from the rest of Ontario settle here for good, as do many Quebecers, though usually across the river in Gatineau. The exception is Montrealers, who do everything possible not to move here in the first place; preferring to commute in on VIA as required. And Ottawa is also still in the end an English-speaking white man’s town. The sharp linguistic contrast between bilingual government and unilingual private events is always striking. There are plenty of women and racialized people. But when a white guy like me steps out from the Chateau Laurier ballroom and walks over to the human reality of Rideau Street, I realize just how white the crowd inside was, and how much women wanting to succeed have to follow the models set by men.

When I moved to the national capital in 2000, I searched for glimpses of the Permanent Ottawa I read about in Ottawa Inside Out. But it seemed elusive, and not just because I was on the bottom of the social order. I eventually found the Rideau Club, now on the 16th floor of a downtown office tower, the original building having burned down in 1979, and now and then I saw - and still see - glimpses of the traditional mandarin culture.

But the public service class keeps a low profile, because it is terrified of being turned into a Washington-style politicized bureaucracy. It resists incursions, preferring to grow from within, and there’s an inverse relationship between career success and having your name in the news. The opposite applies to the politics class, which is the highest ranking but has the shortest shelf life; today’s all-powerful minister or fearsome staffer is tomorrow’s nobody, unless they find ongoing success in the third hustler class.

And the hustling is constant. When I was in my thirties - a while ago - I realized I was semi-consciously checking out other men around my own age when I passed them on the street downtown; and they were doing the same. This was, er, not for other reasons, but because we were automatically assessing (1) whether we knew each other; and if so, (2) whether we represented a networking opportunity. I’d like to think I’m now a little more discreet, but it remains that no one in Ottawa looks down at the sidewalk, lest they miss a schmoozing moment.

What makes Ottawa elite culture different from other towns is that it’s not really about money. To be clear, everyone wants to be “comfortable”: a nice house in the Glebe, decent cars, respectable Aeroplan status, and their offspring’s education at Queen’s covered. But ultimately visibility and influence in national policy-making are the greater drivers, with a fuzzy relationship between the two.

Most people in Ottawa - politicians, mandarins, and hustlers - genuinely want to do good things for the country. But they also want to do good things for themselves. Public ambition and private ego are deeply intertwined in this town.

Another very Ottawa book is Thomas d’Aquino’s Private Power, Public Purpose (2023). The last founding member of the Rideau Club Roundtable (est. 1985) and an inspiration to prematurely balding men everywhere, d’Aquino was a familiar national face on TV screens from the 1980s to the 2010s representing the voice of corporate Canada on policy issues, and was Ottawa’s Ultimate Man About Town, hosting parties with his associate deputy minister wife Susan d’Aquino in their Hart Massey-designed home in Rockcliffe Park, chairing the National Gallery Foundation board for 18 years, and generally in the right place at the right time. d’Aquino, a kid from Nelson, B.C. who got his big start in the Pierre Trudeau PMO, was the ultimate Ottawa hustler, an act difficult to replicate today; I don’t think he would have done well on TikTok. Not everyone seeks such a visible reputation, either now or in d’Aquino’s time. But the interplay between wanting to make a difference for the country while also doing well for yourself remains.

Even professors feel they must hustle. A couple of years ago I wrote about the “lone wolf tradition” of studying Canadian political institutions, and I expanded on this in my Canadian Political Science Association presidential address. To study and write about government and Parliament, beyond quantitative spreadsheets on a desktop, researchers need to cultivate their own access and connections to power, built on their own personal brand and trust relationships. And so I’ve been hustling for twenty-five years, in this town that combines public ambition and private ego. In fact, maybe I’ve figured out Ottawa after all.

Let’s stop speculating: there will not be a snap election. While it makes sense to keep the opposition wary and edgy and generally a little paranoid, it would be an insanely high risk gamble for the government to call an election in the next few months; we’re only ten months out from the last one.

Let’s review some history. There are five modern cases of federal minority governments pulling their own plug early, as opposed to losing the confidence of the House - 1958, 1965, 1968, 2008 and 2021. (The 1963, 1974, 1980, 2006 and 2011 elections were all due to confidence losses). In each case the story is broadly similar; a government chafing with the petty inconveniences of minority, and feeling itself superior to the pesky opposition, hands in its cards for a redeal in hopes of a better hand. In 1965 and 2021 the results were: almost exactly the same. 2008 did see an improvement for the Conservatives and further decline for the Liberals, but still a minority, with a bonus constitutional crisis to come. Only 1958 and 1968 were big payoffs. But momentum was already with the Tories in 1958, aided by rookie Liberal leader Lester Pearson who made the all-time most arrogant Grit speech ever, suggesting the government simply resign and let the Liberals resume their rightful place without an election. And 1968…Trudeaumania. (Of course there’s a sixth case of a minority dissolving itself: 2025, but that wasn’t early and was largely to forestall a House defeat.)

In short, trying to turn the government off and back on to reset and fix your minority situation usually doesn’t work. (On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to lead to losing office…though recall that the Clark government welcomed its parliamentary defeat in 1979, feeling it could pull off another big Diefenbaker majority. It did not.) And all of the above except 1958 were after at least two years in office….not ten months, as at present.

What about majority governments calling snap elections? Now here we have some fun federal cases…1997 and 2000. The Chrétien government called the 1997 election after 41 months in office, short of the customary four years…why, no one fully knows apart from Liberal arrogance; even Chrétien later said it had been a bad idea. The government won a narrow five seat majority, and was lucky to do so. Impatience almost led to disaster, or at least serious inconvenience.

Then came 2000…and again the government went early, less than three and a half years after the last election. But this time there was more logic; in fact the 2000 call remains one of Jean Chrétien’s gutsiest decisions, and a reason for his superstar elder status in the party today.

Two things were on Chrétien’s mind. One was his open warfare with Paul Martin; Chretien has often said he had planned for only two terms, but Martin’s pushiness annoyed him so much that he stayed; whether or not that’s true, Chretien needed a new election win to quell the insurrection (which did consume him two years later).

The second was Stockwell Day, leader of the new-and-supposedly-improved successor to the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance. It’s quaint now to recall that in September 2000 Day looked like hot stuff, riding a Jet-Ski to a press conference after he won his Kelowna byelection . But the old pro from Shawinigan saw through the wetsuit to assess Day as a superficial amateur he could beat. Day then gave him an enormous gift by casually suggesting in the House that the prime minister “either resign…or call an election,” undercutting any criticism of going to the polls early. Chrétien even received election advice from that master of the democratic voting process, Fidel Castro. According to Lawrence Martin’s book Iron Man, while attending Pierre Trudeau’s funeral Castro ended up sharing an elevator with Day. After their conversation, the unimpressed Castro advised Chrétien to strike while the iron was hot.

Still, many were wary - here’s a good contemporary account of the uncertainty of the early weeks of the 2000 race. But 2000 was a solid win with an increased majority. Chrétien looked pretty darn smart, and that’s why at ninety-two he is still the undisputed rock star of the Liberal Party of Canada.

So what does a true snap election look like? One where the government is already consistently riding high in the polls, and just wants to lock in another four years. We have the perfect example in the Totally Unnecessary Ontario Election of last year. The Ford Conservatives dissolved the legislative assembly solely to trade in for a new majority, with almost the same seat count…but now good to 2029.

THAT’s what a snap election looks like….not a gamble or attempted reset, but one where the government has total confidence and just wants to keep the party going as long as it can. Times are good for the Carney government, but not that good and whatever his faults, Pierre Poilievre is a much tougher opponent than Stockwell Day. While they do seem to be inching to a majority through Conservative defections, for now the Liberals will just have to keep putting up with the inconveniences of minority government. A snap election is a very unlikely, very bad, idea.

That was a fast time in Canadian politics. In the first four months of 2025 this substack had ten posts: eight on federal politics including the April 28 election, and two on the Totally Unnecessary Election in Ontario.

But then things slowed down. I only made seven posts over the remaining eight months of 2025, including a reflection of my treeplanting summer of 1990 and a detour on Korean democracy that I urge you to still read. While horrid chaos has been the order of business south of the border, Canadian domestic politics has a calmness quite different from a year ago. After the whirlwind of 2025, let’s assess where we are.

First and foremost is our dear leader. I’ll admit when I was doing those radio interviews last January the words “Prime Minister Carney” seemed inconceivable to me, but here we are. Carney seems to be enjoying his entry-level job into politics, doing things like getting out on the Rideau Canal and visiting a skate sharpening shop, where the global banker with the London suits hit the right note: “The smell of sharpening skates takes me right back to my days at the rink growing up.” The only additional thing he could have done was to be holding a Timmies.

Carney can enjoy a little fun on the weekend since no one doubts for a second that our prime minister is a Serious Man. He is reported to be a very tough boss, is constantly flying off for sombre meetings with other world leaders, and gives off a sense of relentless focus on the Most Important Thing, and there is no doubt what that is. Beyond fringe conspiracy theorists convinced he is a World Economic Forum plant, it’s hard to find anyone who actively dislikes Carney on a personal level, even if they didn’t vote for him. And though he wanted the job for years, he now comes across as a unusual politician who has stepped up for a very specific purpose and mission, not just a thirst for power. For the moment is Captain Canada, though he’s too serious for anyone but me to make such a facetious remark.

In contrast, while there were so many things about 2025 we did not expect, Justin Trudeau hooking up with Katy Perry still stands out. I’m happy for these folks living their Instagrammed private lives, but dating a fading pop star is certainly an interesting way for Trudeau to double-down on his existing celebrity image and dilettante legacy.

More broadly, if a space alien descended into Ottawa and observed Carney and Trudeau, they would refuse to believe they headed the same party. The Liberal Party of Canada has reached new heights lows parameters in its perennial flexibility, swinging back to business liberalism and jettisoning numerous Trudeau policies (carbon tax? what’s that?). If this was a more paper-based era, the dumpsters in downtown Ottawa would be filled with discarded Trudeau policy papers. The swing from a year ago is breathtaking in its audacity.

Then there’s Pierre Poilievre, who would prefer you forget 2025 completely. Imagine the headline “Tory MP defects to Liberals” a year ago - inconceivable! More than once this substack has optimistically hoped for growth in the Conservative leader beyond being a purpose-built machine to bring down Katy Perry’s boyfriend, but evidence is slim. Yes, he won the most Conservative votes ever in the election, but his grip on the party is weaker than a year ago as he rides the tiger of discontent on the Canadian right. I continue to believe he will comfortably prevail in the upcoming leadership review. But he is much weakened from a year ago, a complete reversal from what seemed inevitable.

I’d also like to remind you that a NDP leadership race is currently underway, with five candidates including three plausible frontrunners, none of them prominent names unless you count Avi Lewis, whose grandfather once ran the party but who has twice failed to actually get elected himself. New Democrat races are family affairs in the broad sense as well. The clannish party doesn’t wash its dirty linen in public and its factions are complicated, all of which doesn’t help garner interest in the race for a party that doesn’t even have official status in the House. The NDP’s decline and crisis was already very evident a year ago, but not this bad. Still, the NDP is the most actual party-like party in Canada, at least federally, in the sense of an institution greater than whoever happens to be leading it. This will be its salvation, especially as the party can really only go up at this point. (A glimmer of hope is that the two Conservative defections to the Liberals slightly realigned the Commons seating plan, so now the NDP can at least sit together - they were ignominiously split between two sides at the back, mostly under the overhang where they couldn’t even be seen from the seats above.)

Finally, let’s all gather for the big sendoff to Chrystia Freeland, who continues her career with a new stint advising Ukraine, though - in a throwback to the way of doing business under Trudeau - no one seems to have thought through the issues of doing so while still a Canadian parliamentarian. Her embarrassing 8% showing in the leadership race was unseemly for a former deputy prime minister, and one wonders if a man with the same resume would have done so badly. Still, Freeland was arguably a better minister than actual politician. And her break from Trudeau in December 2024 was the catalyst that made so much else happen.

There’s so much else we could say about the differences in Canadian politics from a year ago. We don’t have time to get into how Doug Ford has become Canada’s pitbull down south, with a communication shop that managed to anger Donald Trump and shut down trade negotiations with a perhaps-too-clever Ronald Reagan ad. But one place that does look much like a year ago is Alberta, where the Smith government continues doing the things it does; if you had predicted a year ago that Elections Alberta would approve a referendum question on separatism, few would have batted an eye. Once again, the Wildrose Province is the exception and has stayed much on its course, even if many find that alarming.

Predictions for 2026? Are you kidding? I don’t have enough sticky notes for that.

Canadians have a remarkable faith in institutional reform as the key to solving political problems.

We talk a lot about the need to reduce party discipline and the power of the prime minister’s office, change the electoral system, do something about the Senate, revise the division of federal-provincial powers, otherwise rejig the constitution, and much more. Andrew Coyne’s book The Crisis in Canadian Democracy is a great recent example, presenting said crisis as a breakdown of our parliamentary and political institutions, and offering a comprehensive fix-it guide. Even Justin Trudeau got into the act; when asked after his resignation if he had any regrets, he came up with one: not changing the electoral system.

Canadians love to talk about overhauling our political institutions for the greater good. Other countries don’t. Setting aside the current chaos in American politics, when was the last time you heard the phrase “congressional reform”? Americans almost never talk about redesigning their institutions; they talk about the specific people in them. In Britain you do hear discussion of “parliamentary reform,” but not as the existential secret to better politics. In contrast, in Canada we often talk about institutional reform itself as the primary goal; that if we could just get the institutions right, we’d inevitably end up with better politics and policies.

There’s no secret why Canadians are like this. We spent the 1960s to the 1990s preoccupied with constitutional reform in the service of national unity. The entire question of Canada has long been up for grabs. So it’s unsurprising that we keep pondering how we can improve the institutional scaffolding of the country.

The discipline of political science in Canada has been in the thick of these discussions. Like Canadians generally, Canadian political scientists lapse easily into normative discussions of our institutions, more than in other countries. I figured this out early in my career when I showed up at international conferences yakking in standard Canadian terms about “excessive party discipline” and “the need to empower MPs,” and scholars from other countries gave me puzzled looks, because that was not the language and framing they used to study their own institutions.

One reason I talked that way was because governments themselves encouraged it. When I was a junior scholar in the early 2000s, there was a stampede of government- funded initiatives sponsoring nerd talk about institutions. I particularly want to give a shoutout to the late Winnipeg MP Reg Alcock, who in the early 2000s hosted early morning breakfasts in the parliamentary restaurant for assorted wonks like me, and later as Treasury Board President sponsored more formal gatherings, dragging in deputy ministers and others to hear our ideas. Those glory days are gone, but there are still vestiges, such as the Canadian Study of Parliament Group that bridges academics and parliamentary staff, which I once ran.

In some ways this has all been great. In particular, it is inspiring that Canadians can still largely talk about our institutions abstractly for the greater good, rather than just blaming one side for all our problems. Concerns about party discipline and PMO power nicely span both sides of the House of Commons, regardless of who is in power. This urge to improve has also given Canadian political science a feeling of relevance; that we are contributing to the public good and not just our own esoteric conversations.

But there are downsides to all this institutional reform talk, especially for political scientists.

The first is that studying power often requires being close to it. A lot of these discussions meant embedding ourselves in the state, or at least accepting a free breakfast, to study those same state institutions. I’ve written elsewhere about the “lone wolf” approach to studying Canadian political institutions, in which researchers must hunt for themselves, building their own personal relationships to power. We hung around institutions to build the necessary relationships to gain precious access to gather vital information to analyze the institutions that we were hanging around in the first place.

The second is the degree to which so much of this work, certainly mine, studied the distribution of power among white men and how it could be redistributed, largely to other white men. While we gradually paid more attention to the representation of women, racialized Canadians, and others, we took the institutional foundations, built by and for white men in a colonial society, for granted. We couldn’t see what just felt natural for us. As a small town kid I often got lost in the corridors of power. But I wasn’t uncomfortable in those corridors, and over time I could make my own way. I now know that many others could not get to that comfort level. Indeed, I was massively privileged, a white guy hustling around downtown Ottawa talking with other white guys, having breakfast with Reg Alcock while my wife Ruth Blaak Malloy was at home with our small children.

The fix-it approach to Canadian political institutions, with our perennial faith in tinkering our way to better democracy, is not a bad thing. It’s certainly far better than the bitter polarization south of us, where all problems are blamed on the other side, never the system itself. We don’t fully recognize just how much we talk about institutional reform compared to other countries, and it’s good that we can still have civil conversations about it.

But it can be narrow, particularly for political scientists like me who can easily be drawn close to the flame of power, failing to see a bigger picture. We need to keep talking about our institutions and how to strengthen our democracy. But we also need to expand the conversation.

Meanwhile, another Conservative MP, Michael Ma, has crossed the floor to the Liberals, following Chris d’Entremont last month, plus whatever Matt Generoux was doing, and the Liberals are doing their best to unleash further paranoia within the Conservative caucus, suggesting it is ripe with more potential defectors.

What all these have in common is the struggle for Canadian conservatism to define itself in the Age of Trump.

21st century conservative populism is remarkably undisciplined. Unlike its predecessors, it knows no boundaries to its rage, and has difficulty accepting any leader that attempts to impose them. The Reform Party in comparison was a lockstep operation under Preston Manning. And many are now understanding that a major part of Stephen Harper’s control-freak persona was directed at keeping his own volatile ranks in line. When I walked around downtown Ottawa observing the trucker convoy, I kept wondering who could actually lead this bunch. There’s an old union adage that any idiot can lead a walkout. The trick is getting them to walk back in.

Today’s conservative populism is like a tiger: dangerous and difficult to tame. Past leaders like Erin O’Toole tried to lead the tiger where it didn’t want to go, leading to his demise. Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith are trying to ride the tiger; letting it roam more freely but under their control. But just barely.

It’s hard to ride the tiger without eventually getting eaten. Up until his demise as UCP leader, Jason Kenney had a reputation as one of the smartest and most strategic people in Canadian politics, successfully bringing together the factions of Alberta conservatism to victory. But the tiger eventually turned on him. John Rustad, arguably a tiger himself, showed himself unable to lead a party that still had many non-tigers. Doug Ford is fortunate that Ontario is not great tiger habitat, and for better or worse he does a good job of feeding his big cat population. There are dissenters, as mentioned above, but little sign that they carry much weight in a party that has won three strong majorities. Meanwhile, people like Michael Ma and Chris d’Entremont are tired of seeing the tiger’s insatiable appetite prioritized, and making it known.

But what’s a conservative leader to do? The dilemma is perfectly illustrated by this November Ekos poll, posted by Frank Graves

50-50! The party could not be more divided on the most polarizing issue of our times.(One wishes to meet the 3% of NDP supporters that approve of Trump.)

Pierre Poilievre recently shared his own updated view of brokerage politics by explaining his party as a Venn diagram, in which he focuses on the overlap between all the different elements, tiger- and non-tiger. But his continuing efforts to be the Greatest Leader of the Opposition Ever, rather than demonstrating he is prime ministerial material as this substack has hoped here and here, suggest his first priority is always keeping the tiger fed and still under his control.

While I’m confident Poilievre will comfortably pass his upcoming leadership review, it will be interesting to see exactly how this approach is evaluated. Similarly, Danielle Smith’s willingness to spend political capital to make a deal with the hated feds has cost her with her base. Conservative leaders may think they’ve got the tiger under control. But it is difficult to tame. There’s a good reason people don’t ride tigers.

Last month Bonnie Crombie joined the ranks of ex-leaders who couldn’t make anything stick to Doug Ford. After a mediocre 56% leadership vote, the seatless Crombie decided it wasn’t worth sticking around and resigned as Liberal leader. I understand Crombie’s decision. I don’t understand how the Liberals expect to do any better under a fourth leader in seven years.

The original Teflon leader was Ronald Reagan, and it was Pat Schroeder, a groundbreaking woman member of Congress, who termed him “the Teflon President.” Much like his Dougness, Ronald Reagan presented an amiable aw-shucks image of a well-meaning person who just wanted folks to get along. There is a famous though possibly apocryphal story of CBS reporter Lesley Stahl delivering a hard-hitting report on Reagan’s many failings, only to be thanked by his aides, since the report was a five minute parade of charming and irresistible Reagan images, negating her voice-over analysis.

I wrote a while ago that Ford is open about his simple political philosophy of “customer service”; eliminating license fees and highway tolls, allowing beer in gas stations, and giving out his phone number to anyone. He also has a remarkable knack at key moments for doing things that we all kind of want to do, like pouring out a bottle of Crown Royal after it announced plans to shut down its Canadian plant, or freaking out over using dogs for research, and of course donning his “Canada is Not For Sale” cap at the height of 51st state mania. Ford’s style of public anger is itself rarely polarizing, because he saves most of his outbursts for issues where there is only one good side to take.

Many of the criticisms of the Ford government are simply the ones every Ontario government faces: cosy with developers! Not enough spending on health and education! The biggest Ford controversies always seem to be about municipal relations and zoning, not exactly the stuff people go to the barricades over. Ford occasionally veers into culture wars but only mildly compared to Danielle Smith and nothing like the vortex to the south. He treated pandemic measures as an annoying inconvenience but didn’t frame them in ideological terms, and as an Ontarian I’ll be getting my free walk-in COVID shot later this fall.

Ford’s lack of a consistent ideological edge and his comfort with backtracking, about-faces, and public contriteness (I again suggest a drinking game based on the phrase “Doug Ford apologized…”) give a sense of a guy who’s just trying his best. In his early years as premier there did seem to be a quest for vengeance - especially shrinking Toronto city council - and yes, the Ford government has serious failings. But as with Lesley Stahl’s report, these are overshadowed by the irresistible images of Doug dumping soon-to-be-American whiskey down the drain.

How do you position against Teflon? Andrea Horwath, Stephen Del Duca, and Crombie couldn’t come up with an answer; nor Marit Stiles, hanging on to her own leadership. Gender could be a factor; women leaders may find it especially difficult to position against this man who sucks up all the oxygen, even in his own party; Ford’s cabinet is amazingly faceless, with ambitious keeners like Monte McNaughton jumping ship rather than trying to share the deck with the boss.

Crombie’s failure to win her own seat obviously factored into her demise. But the frustration of both the Liberals and NDP with their latest leaders seem ill-placed; it’s clearly Ford, not the leaders, that is preventing success. The grass is unlikely to be greener on the other side.

And it may be getting even harder, since Ford’s style contrasts so much with events south of the border. Ford’s curious hot-mic moment in December that he had been 100% happy with Trump’s 2024 win until “the guy pulled out the knife and f***ing yanked it in us” is revealing, but it’s ultimately the last part that matters, showing both his talent for reversal and his knack for emotionally channeling anger that everyone else is feeling.

Eventually Ford will move on and/or lose his touch, restoring Ontario party politics to their longstanding norms. After the 2022 election the Globe and Mail asked me to tackle whether this was the end of the Ontario Liberal Party, and it wasn’t hard to find a 1970 article asking the same thing. Restoration is very likely, since other than the recent Green incursion, Ontario had had the same three parties consistently in the Legislative Assembly for over seven decades. The Liberals will come back, though not under Bonnie Crombie. And while anything is possible, the New Democrats are likely to slip back to their historic third place. But that will only happen if and when the Teflon wears away.

The 200+ candidates is of course thanks to the Longest Ballot Committee, Canada’s latest contribution to electoral reform, and in my humble opinion, its stupidest.

I don’t say that lightly. In this newsletter and in all my work, I try to be respectful even when I disagree, not using terms like “stupid.” But the LBC tries my patience, because it makes no sense. And it embodies what I see as one of electoral reform’s problems: its own advocates.

Years ago, a prospective PhD student sent me an email. He wondered if I’d be his supervisor for a dissertation on reforming Canada’s single-member-plurality (SMP) electoral system (also known as first-past-the-post.) I responded applauding his proactiveness, but noted one of my colleagues had much more expertise on electoral reform, having written and directed research on the topic. “Yes,” the prospect replied. “But I’ve already had a conversation with Professor X, and he doesn’t support change. So I can’t work with him.”

I popped down the hall and confirmed, as I suspected, my colleague had merely suggested the case for change wasn’t 100% cut and dried. But the applicant was so fixated on his cause that he couldn’t deal with even a hint of skepticism. I suggested he wasn’t going to be successful in a PhD and never heard from him again.

I’d better stop right here and say I have a lot of respect for the electoral reform movement and well-established entities like Fair Vote Canada. But….

Some of the people who are into electoral reform are into it…a lot. They are deeply sincere in wanting better democracy and I want to respect that. But there’s a segment, like the prospective student, that seems obsessed; so convinced of the rightness and logic of their cause that they’re lost in echo chambers.

Which brings us back to the Longest Ballot Committee.

The LBC, as you probably know, organizes large numbers of people to run as candidates in a riding, to call attention to the need for electoral reform. The St. Paul’s byelection last June had 84 candidates; Lasalle-Émard-Verdun in September had 91; as did the Carleton riding in April’s general election, lost by Poilievre. As of this writing, they’re up to 209 in Battle River-Crowfoot.

The LBC has little online presence or clear leadership, making it difficult to engage them deeply and better understand their logic. Which is too bad, because I don’t get it. At all. Instead this feels like the nadir of electoral reform, and the worst possible advertisement for it.

Whatever you think of it, one clear advantage of the single-member plurality ballot is its simplicity. You mark your X, they’re counted, and you’re done. All other electoral systems are more complicated; longer counting, mathematical formulas, etc. And the ballots are often bigger. Check out this Australian Senate single-transferable-vote (STV) ballot, courtesy of the Museum of Australian Democracy.

So, to draw attention to the horrors of first-past-the-post, the LBC has gummed up the system, forcing giant Australian-style ballots a metre long and long counts through the night. They’ve made a simple system into a convoluted mess, to protest the simple system.

Help me out here. Really.

The LBC has or had connections to the Rhinoceros Party, Canada’s longstanding absurd political party. But the Rhinos are consistent in their absurdity; the whole point is to not make sense, while the LBC seems sincere and focused on making a serious argument. Yet apart from driving Elections Canada up the wall, the only thing the LBC seems to have accomplished is contributing to right-wing conspiracy theories that they are part of the establishment cabal determined to take down Pierre Poilievre, following him from race to race while sparing Mark Carney who ran in the very next riding on a normal-sized ballot.

I note the LBC applauds the write-in solution in Battle River-Crowfoot, which at least eliminates roadmap size ballots. But it will still make counting a marathon (and one looks forward to the number of ways people will spell “Poilievre”).

It’s also ironically unfair to…candidates outside the major parties! The CBC touched base with the Libertarian candidate and an actual independent, who are unhappy that they’re lost in a swamp of sign-ups who don’t even live in the riding. Again, LBC…help me out here.

Electoral reform has had a long, hard, and unsuccessful road in Canada; teased by the referendums, sometimes multiple, in BC, PEI, and Ontario; serious inquiries in other provinces; and the grand scam of Justin Trudeau’s promise that 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post election, which he had the bad taste to resurrect in his resignation remarks, lamenting that if we had just chosen his preferred system, everything would have worked out fine. And let me be clear; reform’s greatest enduring foe is indeed the major parties, who have no incentive to change a system that works for them (unless, like Trudeau, they think another system will benefit them even more.) But the LBC seems convinced that the public just needs a nudge to rise up. Even if their method did make sense, I’m not holding my breath.

To close, like the prospective PhD, you’re probably convinced I’m a diehard first-past-the-poster. I am not. I have consistently said I’m neither for nor against electoral reform; I just try to help people understand the competing values and tradeoffs. The one time I truly gave an opinion was in 2007 when Ontario voted on electoral reform. I was one of the 37% that voted in favour of the mixed-member-proportional (MMP) proposal, and I did so on the basis that it would be a darn interesting experiment to watch. But I do have a firmer opinion that the Longest Ballot Committee makes no sense, and does nothing but undermine the real case for electoral reform.

If you want to learn more about different electoral systems, visit this short summary.

As some may recall, last December the country was thrown into political turmoil when President Yoon Suk Yeol abruptly declared martial law on an evening television broadcast. A bizarre night followed, with members of the National Assembly, including the Speaker and the main opposition party leader, climbing over the wall surrounding the Assembly grounds, which had been blocked by military forces sent by the president. And though the soldiers smashed through building windows and were ordered to drag legislators out of the chamber, the Assembly convened and voted unanimously to lift martial law, less than three hours after the president’s declaration. A few hours later the president and his cabinet accepted the Assembly vote and rescinded the declaration.

The aftermath is still playing out. President Yoon was impeached and is now under prosecution for insurrection, along with others. His seemingly bizarre declaration was after increasing frustration at his plunging popularity and resistance to his plans by the opposition-controlled Assembly, along with media inquiries he found inconvenient. It’s complicated. But the takeaway is simple: Korean democracy received a huge blow, but bounced back.

I knew a bit about Korean politics before making this trip - I swear I carefully followed the 1987 Korean presidential election when I was in high school, through my personal subscription to Time - but reading up in preparation for my short visit reinforced my marvel at this democracy that has taken some pretty severe blows but stays resilient. (I should also mention that our conference included an address by new president Lee Jae-myung, and the legislative research subsection was hosted by the National Assembly and Speaker Woo Won-shik, the guy who climbed over the fence and convened the Assembly at midnight, so this entire post can be interpreted as a sponsored message.)

The Republic of Korea founded in 1948, which 516 Canadian troops died defending in the 1950-53 war, was corrupt and autocratic. Founding president Syngman Rhee was deposed in 1960, but amid instability the military took over, led by Park Chung Hee. Park became the new strongman, running things until he was assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979 (for reasons that still remain debated). More instability led to a new authoritarian takeover that ruled through most of the 1980s. In short, while looking better than its North counterpart, South Korea was not much of a functioning democracy. But it was stable, driven by rock-solid alignment with the USA and an economic growth strategy that laid the groundwork for your Hyundai car, Samsung phone, and LG washing machine.

At each transition point and power vacuum before the latest strongman took over, there were uprisings and protests, often violently put down, especially the 1980 Gwangju massacre in which hundreds and possibly thousands were killed. But despite all this authoritarian control, through these uprisings and continuing defiance South Korea was also building a legacy of democratic mobilization and resistance; the legacy that lawmakers tapped into last December.

Real democracy finally came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in a series of stages. Protests again swelled, while the military relaxed its grip and allowed truly fair elections, including the one I followed in high school. The country’s most famous democratic leader, Kim Dae-Jung, imprisoned and nearly executed in the 1970s, was elected president in 1997 and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts for human rights and reconciliation with North Korea.

But it’s still been a rocky road for Korea, symbolized by the fate of subsequent presidents. One committed suicide while under investigation for corruption. Another received a seventeen year sentence for taking bribes. Park Geun-Hye, the daughter of the 1970s dictator and elected president in 2013, was impeached and also went to jail for bribery and corruption. In fact, Moon Jae-in (2017-22) has the distinction of being the only recent president NOT sent or headed to jail. A Korean television show set in the National Assembly and available on Netflix in Canada, Chief of Staff, is pretty much entirely about navigating ridiculous levels of corruption in Korean politics.

But Korean democracy just keeps going. While the country’s presidential choices do seem dubious, what’s more impressive is that they keep getting caught and punished. Korea retains a strong legislature and judiciary along with a lively media that keep things in check, as seen last December. It’s clear that Korea is sensitive about its recent disruption, presumably why President Lee felt the need to stop by and address a thousand political scientists from around the world. Is Korea a perfect democracy? No. But what’s the standard for that? Democracy is about institutions as much or even more than the people in them, and Korean democratic institutions are impressive in their resilience, fueled by the living memories of anyone who remembers not so long ago.

To feebly bring things back to the usual topic of this newsletter, Canadian democracy has never undergone anything like the shocks seen in Korea. For that we are lucky. But Korea shows us just how messy and yet vibrant democracy can be; as long as enough people are willing to work to defend it, especially through strong institutions that can stand up to bullies and wannabe despots. The theme of our IPSA conference, set long before the events of December, was “Resisting Autocratization in Polarized Societies.” Korea shows us that it can be done.

I was 19, finishing my second year in political science at the University of Waterloo, and a huge political junkie. The great national issue was the Meech Lake Accord, the controversial attempt to bring Quebec into the constitution. The Meech debate was reopening other issues, and splitting the country apart. Meanwhile I needed a summer job, and I signed up for treeplanting in northern Ontario.

The planting company was small, run by an ex-Winnipegger just a few years older than me who had relocated to my town in southern Ontario. He recruited a few of us to join his veteran crew coming from the West. We would all meet in Thunder Bay.

Our Ontario contingent started out from Waterloo Region, stopping at Sault Ste. Marie for the night. The next morning driving out of town, we stopped for a hitchhiker, and he got into the boss’s car ahead of the one I was in. When we pulled over in Marathon for lunch, the boss got out and pointed to the hitchhiker: “Meet our cook.” He was Jean-Paul, from Quebec and hitchhiking across Canada. No cook had been lined up yet for camp and so Jean-Paul, who had worked in restaurants back in Montreal, had been hired somewhere around Wawa.

We continued around the top of Lake Superior, meeting the rest of the crew in Thunder Bay. They were mostly from Manitoba and BC. We were all young, mostly students, mostly male. Two were just out of the Canadian Forces and were noticeably tougher than the rest of us, with short haircuts and colourful language.

As a small firm we planted patches left behind by the bigger companies, and relocated every couple of weeks, in an arc around Thunder Bay. Our first was east of the city, at Pass Lake. Soon we relocated near Kakabeka Falls on the other side. Then we went north up highway 17 past Upsala. I had never heard of any of these places, but quickly became intimate with the map. Everything was rocks and trees, punctuated by tiny outposts.

I was a terrible treeplanter. I could barely set up my new tent, and the supervisors later told me I was marked as a sure dropout. My first few days were horrid, and more than once I simply sat down and vowed to quit. But I persisted, largely out of embarrassment, and gradually rose to the expected standard of a thousand trees a day. I understand treeplanting technology has advanced since 1990; we used shovels and dug holes one by one. Dig; turn the dirt to one side; plant the tree; pat it down. Dig; turn; plant; pat. Dig; turn; plant; pat. Insects were by far our main foe, and despite gloves, long sleeves and massive use of bug spray, I became covered with bites.

On Saturday nights we headed to the megalopolis of Thunder Bay for a good time. When coming from the east, we stopped at the Terry Fox memorial outside the city, where the Marathon of Hope had ended ten years before, when we were all in elementary school. It felt sacred.

All this time, the country was in turmoil. I bought newspapers at gas stations and read about the last-ditch negotiations in Ottawa to save the Accord, and seemingly Canada. I talked it all over with my new Western friends, who gave me perspective on why the country was so upset.

Our final site was near Geraldton, as far north as you can drive in Ontario. There we were joined by six members of the Webequie Nation, a fly-in community far to the north. Our pan-Canadian crew had been all white, and this was the first time I had spent any time with First Nations. I wish I could say it was a good experience. But the cultural gap soon became clear. While we were all filled with goodwill, we worked and thought very differently, and we were unequipped to navigate the differences. I still regret that.

The season ended in mid-June. Some rushed to BC to pick up a few more weeks of planting. My Ontario friends headed home. But I wanted to see more of Canada and bought an overnight bus ticket to Winnipeg. I rode with our Québécois cook Jean-Paul. He was on his way to see mountains and the Pacific. We talked all night as we passed through Dryden and Kenora.

We arrived in Winnipeg early in the morning. I said goodbye to Jean-Paul and headed for the Manitoba Legislature, where Elijah Harper was blocking passage of the renewed Accord because of its silence on Indigenous rights. The building was quiet at that hour, and a guard told me nothing would happen until the afternoon. I had arranged to meet up with some of my new friends at the University of Winnipeg campus. I fell asleep on the grass until they arrived and poked me awake.

After a couple of days I got back on the bus and headed to Saskatoon, where I had other friends, watching the endless prairie out the window. My host took me on a tour of the Paris of the Prairies, the highlight for me being the museum for John Diefenbaker at the University of Saskatchewan. Later on TV we watched Meech opponent Jean Chrétien win the Liberal leadership convention, the same day the Accord died.

I was tired and ready to go home. I bought a standby plane ticket to Toronto and a few hours later was back where I started. I spent the rest of the summer back at my old job in the Home Hardware distribution centre in St. Jacobs.

With Meech dead, the nation moved into a new round of constitutional negotiations that ended in the failed Charlottetown Accord. I followed those discussions even more closely and knowledgeably. Because now I knew a little bit more about Canada.

Happy Canada Day!

The presidential nature of Mark Carney’s initial months in power is remarkable. (This entire analysis is based on presidential models in general, rather than the bizarre version currently amok in Washington.) The starting point was taking power in a parliamentary system with no parliamentary experience. Instead, Carney swooped in from above as the new head of the ticket, holding the same party label yet not part of the previous administration. That’s not a prime ministerial route to the job. It is a presidential one though.

He then strides his government like a colossus. Yes, we’ve moaned about excessive prime ministerial power for years. But Carney’s descent from central banker heaven to save the party from oblivion means there isn’t even a pretense of first among equals. He never was equal with any of this rabble on his way up. He came from outside and a different astral plain entirely; and his crushing primary leadership ballot victory established this is his party.

The cabinet is presidential; that is, full of journeypersons whose names you can’t remember with no particular political base of their own who owe their positions entirely to the boss. At this point I have serious trouble even remembering who is in cabinet, given there’s already been two very different Carney cabinets - the March and May iterations, along with the big shuffle back in December. (Trivia quiz; which of these December newcomers are still in the cabinet: Terry Duguid, Joanne Thompson, and Rachel Bendayan? A: Thompson)

Again, sure, a certain number of ministers were always forgettable, and there’s that line in Savoie’s Governing From the Centre that even in the 1990s cabinet was just a focus group. But ministers in previous cabinets brought political weight and standing that could not be ignored; the cabinet was ultimately a cross-section of the party, including people the PM had to include. But President Carney operates so far above in the heavens that these disposable mortals are shuffled in and out as needed to run the shop. Marc Garneau said he never had one-on-ones with Justin Trudeau. One wonders if Carney can even name all his ministers.

Because rather than chit-chatting with the help, Carney spends his time with others of equally great magnitude. Getting the King to come and open Parliament was brilliant. Hosting the G7 was a stroke of luck in which Carney doubled down by inviting as many heads of state that he could fit in Kananaskis Lodge, implicitly making it clear he’s in the club. As he boards the Challenger for yet more international summits, President Carney will keep demonstrating that these are his real peers, not two-bit premiers or whoever is the minister of industry this week.

Carney’s presidential image is helped by the temporary absence of a foil across the aisle. Pierre Poilievre’s vanishing from the public scene means that, like a real president, Carney faces only petty random opponents from the other parties, barely worthy of his scorn and none remotely equal to his grand position. The sense that we have entered a presidential rather than parliamentary system is also evident in the passage of Bill C-5, supported by both major parties while other legislation languishes. Like a president, President Carney wants to be seen building national consensus through his enlightened and mystical vision; if there must be grubby vote-counting and trade-offs in this minority parliament; well, that’s what the help is for.

Even Carney’s staffing is presidential; bringing in other “principals” of weight and standing rather than sticking with the one that brung ya, implicitly elevating oneself by showing even barons and satraps still work for you. Prime ministerial senior staff typically are lifelong but low profile politicos who signed up with the boss long ago, owing everything to that loyalty which in turn makes their positions foreordained once the election is won. Given his arrival from a different universe, Carney doesn’t seem to have any Katie Telfords or Eddie Goldenbergs hanging around him at all. Instead he turned to out-of-work ministers in Marco Mendicino and David Lametti, and hired ex-ambassador Marc-André Blanchard - with whom he seems to have had no previous relationship - as his chief of staff. And of course we now also have a celebrity Clerk of the Privy Council (well, by bureaucratic standards); Michael Sabia, a person who can’t seem to hold down a job but is always brought in for “the big projects.” A president must be surrounded by presidential-calibre staff, you see.

Will President Carney continue? I haven’t mentioned the reason for all this: that with an idiotic child occupying the White House who ignores all normal institutional channels, individuals and individual relationships have become even more paramount. This elevates anyone who has the unlucky responsibility of dealing with the Orange One, focusing attention on them and making all other items and people seem irrelevant. Donald Trump made Carney’s victory possible. He has also created President Carney.

This substack is in summer slowdown; this is my first post in almost two months and last year I didn’t post between July and September. Thanks for reading and subscribing, and watch for new posts when I have time and feel there’s something to say about Canadian politics that isn’t already being said!

“Well, here we are, waiting for Prime Minister-designate Poilievre to take the stage. He’s finally got the job. But what a long road it’s been for him.”

“Indeed. He thought this night would come in 2025, but it was not to be. And perhaps that worked out for him.”

“Absolutely. 2025 was a rollercoaster time; the Tories were high because of Justin Trudeau; then they were low due to Donald Trump. So different from the steady growth that led to tonight’s solid Conservative majority victory.”

“We’re still waiting; let’s go to our panel for their thoughts.”

“Yeah. No doubt about it; this worked out well for Pierre in the end. If he had won in 2025, he would have straddled a wild caucus amid a trade war and chaos in Washington; half of which thought Trump was basically okay and half horrified by him. And lacking much of a clear platform or vision, it could have been a very short-lived government.”

“I agree. And honestly, I’m not sure he was ready, despite twenty years in politics. He was a perfect political tactician, but once Trudeau and the carbon tax vanished, there wasn’t a larger strategy. You didn’t know the vision other than Own the Libs. That was so different than the 2027 platform which was released a whole year ahead, rather than a week before like in 2025. In fact, I’ll bet we could all recite the 2027 platform from memory by now, since we’ve been talking about it so much.”

“Maybe later. Do you think that losing his own seat made the difference?”

“Absolutely. Losing Carleton was arguably the first serious setback in his career. You can’t have a more humbling experience than being the first major party leader since Mackenzie King to lose their own seat. Big time moment to stop and reflect.”

“Didn’t Tommy Douglas lose in Burnaby in 1968? The same seat that Jagmeet Singh lost in 2025?”

“I said major party. By the way, you forgot M.J. Coldwell in 1958.”

“Settle down, panel. We already discussed the NDP comeback earlier tonight during Mr Kinew’s speech. Let’s get back to Mr Poilievre. Walk us through the last two years.”

“Well, as you know, after the 2025 election he vanished from Ottawa for the spring and summer, before winning that by-election in rural Alberta and returning to the House in September. And even though he wasn’t in serious danger of being deposed, he essentially reapplied for his own job. Instead of barbecues and rallies, he had a lot of private meetings across the country, both with party members and others who wanted the Conservative party to thrive, and that special thinkers conferences in Nova Scotia. And by all accounts he mostly listened rather than throwing out slogans.”

“I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for his meeting with Doug Ford.”

“No kidding. But the post-election Poilievre did that meeting; something the pre-election Poilievre would never consider. There were a lot of pretty humble no-ego acts like that.”

“The bro-hug with Kory Teneyeke was certainly something to see. Have we seen this sort of do-over in Canadian politics before?”

“Well, obviously there’s Stephen Harper. He thought he had it in the bag in 2004, but the Liberals scratched out a narrow minority, much like 2025. But Harper took it well, licked his wounds, and worked hard to put the party in a better position to win in 2006. And even that was a pretty raw, wobbly government. It would have been total amateur hour if they won in 2004.”

“But Harper didn’t really change much personally, did he?”

“Not really. For personal growth you can to go back to Brian Mulroney’s first run for the PC leadership in 1976. He was a favourite to win, but was beaten by Joe Clark. Mulroney took it hard; in his own memoirs he said he didn’t handle it well and reacted by sulking and drinking too much. But he turned himself around, gave up alcohol, and had his big comeback in the 80s. I’m not saying Poilievre struggled with that sort of thing; the point is that Mulroney grew and matured as a person after suffering a setback, and so did Pierre.”

“I really agree. In 2025 Poilievre looked like a person who had spent their entire life in politics, which he had. In 2027 he still hasn’t had any other career, but he comes across as more reflective and mature; not just laser-focused on climbing to the top because it’s there.”

“That’s exactly it. In 2025 Poilievre channeled the rage and frustration felt by many Canadians about their personal situations. His promises were of the ‘you deserve’ category - “you work hard, you get a nice house, good food and a great life in a safe community.” But he wasn’t able to balance it with a broader positive vision beyond self-interest and “you, you, you”; one that attracted Canadians that weren’t so worked up, even if they were also hard off. Instead many of them were more afraid of Donald Trump than anything else, because Trump threatened their sense of community and belonging, regardless of their self-interest.”

“That’s right. In 2025 Poilievre attracted angry folks; but he repelled fearful people, who instead turned to the comforting and mature arms of Mark Carney. But instead of doubling down on rage after his loss, Poilievre began to speak a different language that spoke to those fears and the yearning for community and belonging, and his view of how government can contribute positively; not just get out of the way. And that’s why he’s about to become prime minister in 2027.”

“Indeed. Still amazing that Carney stepped down after he secured the new global trade agreement, avoiding tonight’s Liberal loss. Well, I’m told that Mr. Poilievre will be out momentarily. Last thoughts?”

“I’ll admit that back in 2025 I didn’t think this is where we would be in 2027.”

“Me neither. Pierre Poilievre surprised me.”

If you enjoy this newsletter, you may like my essays on Canadian politics in the excellent online Australian journal Inside Story.

Sounds like the 2025 Conservative campaign.

The Conservative Party normally has a tight no-leak culture. I repeat my longstanding observation that the first rule of the Harper government was that you didn’t talk about the Harper government, but the culture under Pierre Poilievre reached new heights of intensity

But right from the start in this election we’ve seen plenty of anonymized grumbling from insiders about Team Poilievre’s apparent determination to not be knocked off their original strategy of focusing on the Liberal record, despite the upheavals of Trump. Stay on target, the campaign kept saying.

Then came the bombshell public remarks in multiple places dissing the entire federal campaign by Kory Teneycke, manager of Doug Ford’s three winning campaigns, including the recent Totally Unnecessary Ontario Election, including the phrase “campaign malpractice.” (This allows Teneycke to be known for something different than his ill-considered 2015 remarks that Justin Trudeau would be deemed successful in the election debates if he remembered to put his pants on, )

There’s no doubt that the Tory strategy has been deeply undermined by the antics of Trump and the replacement of Trudeau with Mark “carbon tax? never heard of it” Carney. But was there another choice a month ago? There are few if any examples of a party changing its strategy mid-election and ending up a winner.

There are plenty of examples of parties on their way down frantically ditching their strategy, usually for a kitchen-sink fire-in-all-directions hail-Mary-pass approach that doesn’t stop the slide. The only really effective pivot I can think of in federal history is the 1988 Conservative campaign that adjusted mid-campaign to “bomb the bridge” after John Turner won the leadership debates and pulled into the lead, and one that some of this year’s grumblers have cited. That campaign was a long eight weeks, giving time to attack Turner’s credibility and de-link him from doubts about free trade, driving voters back to the Tories. (For more, read Graham Fraser’s Playing for Keeps: The Making of the Prime Minister 1988, which brilliantly captures the inside of each campaign.) This campaign is much faster in a much more chaotic and fractured media environment. And arguably, even when one is headed for defeat it may be better to stick with the strategy to avoid outright decimation; the 2015 Tory campaign (spokesperson: K. Teneycke) largely stuck with the plan was defeated but not steamrolled. A late March pivot was unrealistic.

Instead of course, many are questioning the strategy from the start. I raised my own hopeful thoughts a month ago that a more substantive and positive vision was coming; it was not. I was particularly struck by centre-right writer Jen Gerson’s rant in The Line today, which I will quote at length:

When the CPC rode high in the polls, they actively alienated, and even picked public fights with, other factions of the Conservative movement. They could get away with this as long as they were winning; but when the polls turned, the grudges lined up, and by the second week of the campaign, long-time Tory strategists were publicly trash-talking their own team.

This was a choice.

Pierre Poilievre is not ideologically aligned with Trump — but he did choose to ape Trump's tone and language in an attempt to siphon off some of Trumpism's momentum at home. With no plan to pivot away from pocketbook issues, this set Poilievre up for a backlash in the event of a Trump victory. A very foreseeable Trump victory.

This was a choice.

The CPC ran a campaign tightly focused on Pierre Poilievre himself. There was little to no attention drawn to other MPs or experts within the party. There was no transition team, nor any detailed policy released to the public until the last days of the campaign, which had the effect of making the CPC seem overly centralized around a polarizing individual, with no credible plan to address systemic and complicated problems.

This was a choice.

The end result was a version of the Conservative party that is more insular, more petty, more immature, and more shallow than the incumbent party they sought to upend.

Each choice was the same. “Stay on target.”

Pierre Poilievre and his entire strategy now seems purpose-built to take down Justin Trudeau; a function no longer needed. It was incapable of pivoting, and given the catastrophic loss of an overwhelming lead, may go down in history as a stunning exercise in tunnel vision.

Now of course all this could be wrong and I’ll be erasing this post on Tuesday after a big Poilievre comeback. But the polls consistently say otherwise, and the fact that Poilievre was campaigning in Saskatoon yesterday - a province which hasn’t elected a non-Tory MP since 2015 - is an indicator of how dire things are for the Conservatives. They can certainly blame Donald Trump for messing things up bad. But it was their very conscious strategy - a narrow one focused exclusively on the target of Justin Trudeau - that really did them in.

And what happened back in Star Wars? The “stay on target” leader and his wing were blown away by Darth Vader. But then came Luke Skywalker, who turned his targeting computer off completely. Instead Luke relied on The Force, and with a handy intervention from Han Solo blew away the Death Star. Sometimes you just have to let the plan go, and rely on something larger than yourself.

And here’s the clip that you now want to watch:

If you enjoy this newsletter, you may like my essays on Canadian politics in the excellent online Australian journal Inside Story.

Aha....some may say; you’re talking about Pierre Poilievre’s secret agenda to roll back abortion and LGBTQ rights! No, I’m talking about this post, which is widely circulating on social media among evangelicals and other religious conservatives:

Leaving aside the source (the online Niagara Independent doesn’t say much about itself, and mixes local coverage with a lot of national issues), this is a real thing. In its December pre-budget report, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance did indeed make these two recommendations:

Recommendation 429

No longer provide charitable status to anti-abortion organizations.

Recommendation 430

Amend the Income Tax Act to provide a definition of a charity which would remove the privileged status of “advancement of religion” as a charitable purpose.

So while the reference in the post to “the Liberal government” is incorrect - it was a House of Commons committee, presenting its annual wishlist of 462 recommendations to the actual government - it is correct that a proposal was made by a Liberal-led parliamentary committee that could threaten the charitable status of both anti-abortion and all religious organizations. The full report was endorsed by the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc, though the latter two issued their own supplementary opinions, neither addressing these two recommendations; the Conservatives dissented from the entire report, which is common, though their dissent doesn’t mention those items either.

I’ve found nothing in the mainstream press on this, though it’s extensively covered in the religious media and in statements by religious organizations. I also made a rudimentary investigation of how these recommendations came about but came up empty (e.g,, there’s nothing in the report explaining either recommendation, and a search for the word “abortion” in all Finance Committee hearings since 2021 yielded only a single exchange, not related to tax status; nor did a search of the words “charitable” and “religious”/”religion” find anything relevant). Any discussions and decisions were made behind closed doors. The recommendations appear to have been made by the BC Humanist Assocation in its submission to the committee last summer, but that doesn’t explain why the committee apparently copy-pasted them into the report.

What I do know is that THIS is the sort of thing that keeps evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and others firmly in the Conservative camp, despite the party’s repeated refusal to even discuss abortion and its general support for gay and lesbian rights (though noticeably less on trans rights). It’s not even about the policy itself so much as the vagueness behind it. Where did this come from? Are the implications understood? Did the committee know it would set off a five-alarm blaze in religious neighbourhoods?

Religious conservatives are still very mindful of the Canada Jobs issue a few years ago, when federal summer job funding was denied to organizations that were not willing to affirm their support for reproductive rights. Stemming from a kerfuffle over funding that went to organizations specifically focused on anti-abortion activism, the new rules swept up pretty much every evangelical and Catholic organization and other groups that did not support abortion, but were focused on other activities like summer camps or just plain holding church on Sunday.

I don’t want to get into the weeds of that issue, but what remains striking is that the Liberal government did not seem to have thought the matter through; that their attempt to cut off abortion protestors would also entangle ordinary church activities and social services. Their explanations were tepid; more or less saying that they didn’t mean to take on the entire Catholic Church and every religious conservative in the country and that surely there were ways around the new rules.

Now we have a new case - admittedly this time only by a House committee of backbenchers, not the government - of proposals that are even more radioactive as far as religious groups are concerned, since the second recommendation targets them all regardless of their views on abortion. They’ve failed to get any mainstream media traction or explanation. But by golly, they are sure getting discussed within religious circles…with the support of the Conservative party. A quick social media search will find Tories posting the above image or otherwise raising the issue:

But even this is belated and middling support. As mentioned above, the Tories didn’t get up in arms when the report came out. Instead there is a “petition” on the Conservative party website calling on “the Canadian government” to reject the recommendations (it’s undated, but the Internet Wayback Machine shows it was up by December 19, a week after the committee report). A petition? That’s sort of odd for a political party website which, um, usually states actual party policies. So even the Tories aren’t out in front making a big deal of this.

Why? Because they don’t have to. Religious conservatives have so little power in Canadian politics that they are happy if any party gives them the time of day. This is deeply different than the USA, where evangelicals - or at least a weird form of evangelicalism - have taken control of the entire political agenda. They are aggressively moving forward. In Canada, evangelicals are primarily fighting defensive battles, like trying to cling to tax status. And half the battle is just getting noticed, such as these explosive recommendations buried in a committee report that no one else is talking about. (I’m focusing at this point on evangelicals, which is what I know the most about, but the points largely apply to conservative Catholics and other conservative religious groups).

Research (e.g, here) has repeatedly shown that Canadian evangelicals are not as across-the-board conservative as their American counterparts, and many are open to more centrist and even leftist positions on social justice, international development, and the environment. But as I’ve written in various places over the years, the Conservative party enjoys the bulk of evangelical support just by making them feel noticed - even with a vague “petition.” Pierre Poilievre, like his predecessor Stephen Harper, avoids talking about abortion as much as possible, and so there’s no way he wants to be talking about this. Instead the party is letting the word spread through the grassroots to show that, unlike the other parties, it understands this is a big deal, solidifying and deepening the bond without really doing much.

Meanwhile, a social media search will also find some frantic explanations by Liberal candidates that this was only a committee recommendation, not party policy. But the inclusion of this bomb in the report seems another example of Liberal cluelessness about religion, at least elements of it. And the lack of attention outside of religious circles does not help the sense of detachment many evangelicals feel towards the mainstream media and other institutions - not simply that they don’t share their values, but that they don’t understand them at all. The way the Conservatives do, even if doesn’t lead to a whole lot.

Way back in 2011, the Harper Conservatives proposed an Office of Religious Freedom. This was largely covered as an “ethnic issue,” and I realized no one was recognizing this was a giant win for evangelicals. So I wrote an article in the Globe and Mail that for all the worry about a Harper hidden agenda, here was the real thing, and it was in plain sight; it just wasn’t being seen. And here is another example. That’s the real story of evangelicals and Canadian politics.

April 25 update: Globe and Mail tax columnist Tim Cestnick wrote a column yesterday on the issue. He reports reaching out to all committee members but only hearing back from the NDP and Conservatives. No Liberals.

If you enjoy this newsletter, you may like my essays on Canadian politics in the excellent online Australian journal Inside Story.

It’s the party that can’t catch a break. Vaulted into official opposition in 2011 only to see its leader tragically pass away. A pivot to sensible centrism in the 2015 election and promptly outmaneuvered by the progressive Son of Trudeau. Choosing an exciting and stylish leader in 2017 just when the country was falling out of love with its exciting and stylish prime minister. Propping up the Liberals for three years in an agreement that everyone has forgotten. (Even Pierre Poilievre no longer bothers saying “the Liberal-NDP coalition.) And now the country is trying to get away from the Americans as fast as possible, but the NDP, the OG of anti-American economic nationalism, will be lucky to retain party status.

The NDP could campaign in this 2025 election on a simple slogan: WE TOLD YOU. In 1969 its Waffle faction issued its manifesto. Point #5:

The major threat to Canadian survival today is American control of the Canadian economy. The major issue of our times is not national unity but national survival, and the fundamental threat is external, not internal.

The Waffle was admittedly squelched by the party establishment, but for its extreme leftness, not its anti-Americanism. The Liberals may have led the fight against free trade in 1988, but the NDP covered the other decades, consistently squawking against economic integration with the United States and warning of the risks we face today. And what’s their reward? A projection of seven lousy seats in the current 338canada estimate.

It’s the latest chapter in the perpetual identity crisis of the federal NDP and its CCF predecessor.

The federal party’s problem is simple enough: the continuing existence of the Liberal Party of Canada which, like the bumblebee allegedly, defies the laws of the universe and continually blocks the NDP path to growth. No comparable country has a dominant centre party taking up valuable progressive space. There are four healthy provincial New Democrat parties in Western Canada, two currently in power, and they got that way by squeezing out the Liberals (BC being a complicated story) and establishing a two-party system against a right-wing opponent. In 2011 and again last fall it looked like the same might finally be happening federally. But the NDP’s hard luck continues. Similarly, the Ontario party has now won official opposition status three times, but the Ontario Liberals keep refusing to die.

The larger question though is whether this hard luck is self-inflicted. The federal party constantly cycles through debates of whether to move to the centre or stay socialist strong, and if it is running to form its own government, or to influence another. Jack Layton commonly said he was “running to be prime minister,” even when the party was fourth in the House, and he came closer than any other leader. But the supply-and-confidence agreement of 2022-25 fits its more pragmatic tradition of winning policy concessions in minority governments, almost always from the Liberals, including by Layton in 2005. When the NDP speaks of its accomplishments it inevitably points to those minority moments, even though the Liberals usually seem to end up with the better deal. And at times it seems the party prefers to be up against a majority government, allowing a certain purity to yell from the back corner of the House, rather than sacrificing ideals for a slice of power.

Another question is whether the leader matters. I’ve always found Mr Singh very likable, combining three-piece style with the laid-back cadence of a California surfer, and felt he was a victim of bad timing unable to get ahead of the fading Liberal progressivism. But this is his third election, and he doesn’t have a lot to show for eight years beyond a supply-and-confidence deal that arguably any leader could have extracted from the ready-to-deal Trudeau, and which tied the party to a (then-)sinking Liberal ship. The lack of new ideas and imagination in the party is all too evident under Mr Singh, whose only conversation topics seem to be CEO pay and grocery prices.

Admittedly, no NDP leader ever lost their job demanding more taxes on the rich. But the party has been in a slump for some time, well before the bizarre twists of 2025. In 2019 they slid from 39 to 24 seats, clawed up to 25 in 2021, and have been anemic in the polls ever since. The NDP is tight-knit and doesn’t hang its dirty laundry in public, so it’s difficult to know exactly how tenuous Mr Singh’s leadership is, but it is hard to imagine him continuing after this election.

And the election looks like a blowout. Some may forget that 1993 was also a catastrophe for the NDP as well as Kim Campbell’s Progressive Conservatives, reducing them from 44 to 9 seats. This may well be the same. And while the party can blame the coming of the Orange One for upending everything and once more reviving their nemesis Liberals back from the dead, the problem was there well before tariffs became a household word.

Is it the party’s fault? The leader’s fault? The electoral system? The country for not recognizing the value of social democracy? Perhaps all of the above. Regardless, it must be galling to watch the election dominated by an issue on which the NDP has staked its claim again and again, but now is barely in the conversation.

In the late 20th century, the Liberal Party was sometimes said to comprise two wings: “business Liberals” and “welfare Liberals.” You don’t hear the latter term much anymore, it’s now “progressive.” And for a while business Liberalism has mostly been talked about in historic terms; lamenting (or cheering) its death and the party’s dwindling ties with Bay Street and chambers of commerce.

And yet here we are in 2025. The Liberals are led by a former Goldman Sachs banker whose last job was chair of a trillion dollar asset manager that evolved from a branch of the Bronfman family, legendary in late 20th century Canadian business. Under Mark Carney the party has become a tax-cutter: carbon tax gone, capital gains tax raise cancelled, income tax to be cut! In his post Brexit years Mr Carney amused himself with environmental ideas, but he seems over that hobby, and if he has the slightest interest in social policy, progressive ideas, or really anything unrelated to a balance sheet, it’s well-hidden. It’s not even clear if he owns any clothing other than suits.

If Mr Carney pulls this thing off, it will be the second coming of Louis St Laurent, prime minister from 1948 to 1957. A corporate lawyer who only entered politics in 1941 at the age of 59 - same age as Mark Carney, who turned sixty a week after winning the leadership - St. Laurent is mostly a trivia answer these days. He lacked an exciting personality as the last pre-television leader, and his nine years in power are seen as a postwar extension of the long Mackenzie King reign, in which Nothing Much Happened and he acquired the benign name “Uncle Louis.”

There’s an excellent recent book edited by Patrice Dutil, The Unexpected Louis St. Laurent, that shows in fact a lot of interesting stuff did happen, notably the building of the postwar welfare state. Regardless, Louis St Laurent came from the corporate community, was very comfortable with other business elites, and oversaw a government that championed private economic growth.

Now wait, you say. Weren’t the St. Laurent years characterized by the creeping Americanization of the Canadian economy through the proliferation of US branch plants and investment? Didn’t the Liberals blow their political capital in the 1956 pipeline debate by trying to ram an American-dominated project through Parliament? Aren’t we, er, going in a different direction vis-a-vis the Americans today?

Yes we are. But what ties St. Laurent and Carney together, at least based on the latter’s speeches, is their pivotal position in working with the corporate sector to oversee a new economic order. The St. Laurent years were about making Canada a post-British nation, finding logic in reorienting our economic and security ties toward the United States instead. Today, Mr Carney talks about a new economic and security relationship with the United States; it just happens to be in the opposite direction. And in both cases it involves closely working in lockstep with the Canadian corporate community and a decidedly centrist path. Meanwhile his opponent Mr Poilievre went after the CEO of Bell personally last fall, the sort of thing St. Laurent’s onetime opponent John Diefenbaker would do.

Of course, since the St. Laurent years, the secret to Business Liberal success is to avoid being seen as too close to business. John Turner got shellacked in 1984 after nine years hanging around Bay Street, though more for his social and cultural regression than his actual corporate ties. But he made a respectable comeback in 1988 fighting against his old buddies who were embracing the free trade agreement, with words that are now getting resurrected today.

The ultimate Business Liberal in fact was Jean Chrétien, who got along pretty good with corporations but knew he had to occasionally punch them in the face, such as vetoing the big bank mergers of the late 1990s. Paul Martin, who along with Carney and Turner is the only Liberal leader since St. Laurent with any private sector business experience, did not understand this and, along with other reasons, paid the price. It remains to be seen which path Carney, with his Brookfield ties and other baggage, will take.

The post-St. Laurent Liberal prime ministers who were not Business Liberals were Lester Pearson, who made no secret that economic issues were not his thing, and two guys named Trudeau. And indeed, Business Liberals seemed headed for extinction under Justin Trudeau, as they also did under his father, with Bill Morneau’s weak power and eventual defenestration, and Marc Garneau’s non-existent relationship with the PM. (Garneau also illustrates the inaccuracy of the term Business Liberal, since he had no private sector experience yet was a pragmatic centrist, but Centrist Liberal doesn’t have the same ring.) François-Philippe Champagne looked like the lone outrider, and despite his obvious ambition, his prospects for advancement in the party seemed as slim as, well, Mark Carney’s six months ago.

But how things changed. Like the Liberal Party itself, the death of Business Liberalism appears to have again been put on hold. Admittedly, Mark Carney, doing well in the polls at the time of writing but whose political and campaign skills are currently on par with John Turner in 1984, might still be steamrolled and soon be back searching for corporate chairships on LinkedIn. But while there were quite a few things not on my bingo card for 2025, the comeback of Business Liberalism is among the most surprising.

I’ve said before that Mr Poilievre is possibly the most disciplined Canadian politician ever, the other contender being Stephen Harper. He is always on message, and while he says provocative things, it’s important to listen to what he’s not saying. Under his leadership the party has often taken time to sort out its positions. He speaks in complete sentences, seemingly never with a hesitating “uh” or “um” or musing out loud. While he had a hefty share of impulsive statements and actions in the past, anything he now says is carefully parsed for meaning, on the assumption that every word is deliberate.

But this disciplined elusiveness makes it hard to know what’s coming next. We know so much about Pierre Poilievre, and yet so little. I do recommend Andrew Lawton’s book Pierre Poilievre: A Political Life, a sympathetic factual portrayal that fills in the blanks of Mr Poilievre’s life. (I do not recommend Mark Bourrie’s Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre, which came out last weekend in a rush job, and it shows.) Yet I finished Lawton’s book, and everything else I’ve read about Pierre Poilievre, struggling to project forward; to predict based on his values and past actions, what he would do in the future as prime minister. There’s nothing particularly hidden about Mr Poilievre; all reports are that he’s much the same in private as in public. But while we certainly know what he doesn’t like, what does he like? What are his concrete values and beliefs and dreams for Canada, beyond slogans, vague aspirations, and the joy he takes in driving intellectual Laurentian Elites (i.e, people like me) bananas?

Now, the trajectory of all leaders inevitably looks much clearer in hindsight. Some might have had difficult seeing “Steve” Harper as prime ministerial material, but whatever you thought of him, he filled the role. Consider also the best-qualified person ever to become prime minister of Canada, Paul Martin, and his ignominious fate. The past does not always predict the future.

Still, Mr. Poilievre has kept particularly circumspect, focusing instead on the failings of his opponents. This served him well against the increasingly unpopular Justin Trudeau, the reverse of Mr. Poilievre in almost every way. But Mr Trudeau is gone, replaced by a very different Liberal leader, and the polls have changed spectacularly.

Now, the new Liberal support is thin, and Mark Carney’s political honeymoon might end up like those of John Turner or Kim Campbell. But to beat Turner and Campbell, all Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien had to do was keep doing what they were already doing, and wait for their opponents’ house of cards to collapse. Nothing else changed beyond new leadership of an unpopular governing party. This is not the case in 2025. What got Mr Poilievre this far may no longer be enough.

The onslaught of the second Trump administration, with chaos in Washington and a total flip of Canadian-American relations, has wrecked Mr. Poilievre’s strategy of letting the Liberals destroy themselves. Instead, it forces him on the defensive, needing to explain he is not Maple Leaf Trump and trying to articulate a distinct response to Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. The closest seems to be that the Liberals weakened Canada so much that it now can’t stand up to Trump. But it’s a muddled message, not aided by people like Danielle Smith. In his Trump response, we are only learning more about what Pierre Poilievre is not; not what he is for.

But this can be Pierre Poilievre’s moment. Now that the election is finally here, he has the opportunity to begin articulating a forward vision for Canada and a coherent series of actual policies and promises; to show he is not simply the Greatest Leader of the Opposition Ever, seemingly purpose-built to punctuate Liberal pomposity.

Hopefully all this is the pipeline and will emerge in the campaign. But time is short. I may be a Laurentian Elite by all possible measures, but I want to believe in Mr Poilievre, pretty much the most experienced politician in Canada, who knows the country and I think genuinely wants the best for all Canadians. The chaos in Washington in fact gives him even more opportunity for contrast; to demonstrate he is a responsible adult, surrounded by competent people who can run a superior government to the current one in Ottawa.

Admittedly, it is possible that Mr Poilievre can still win largely by doing what he’s always been doing. My very first post here was a hypothetical set of op-eds for the 2025 election night, one explaining why this strategy worked for Pierre Poilievre, and one articulating why it did not. I stand by those, confident that one will be correct. But like everyone else, I’m not as sure as I was four months ago which one it will be.

John Turner’s career was a sequence of poor timing, culminating in his summer job as prime minister before being steamrolled in September. But Mark Carney’s so-far brief foray into electoral politics has been lucky perfection. This moment seems made for Mark Carney. Pierre Poilievre needs to show it actually belongs to him.

It is not controversial to say this was an unnecessary election. It was a calculated gamble by the PCs, which paid off by locking in their majority until 2029. They took a risk, and the electorate was okay with it. They were widely said to have a stretch goal of increasing their majority, which did not pan out; instead they won fewer seats than 2022. However, since some Tory MPPs had left the caucus since then, usually under a cloud, the PCs went into the election with 79 seats and, as of this writing, have 80, while shedding those unwanted ex-Tories.

So it’s back to regular business for the Ford government. Not much else to say, except that the 2025 PC slogan, “Protect Ontario” fits into the longstanding Ontario political culture narrative that Ontario voters reward parties that offer safety and sound management. It’s a natural successor to 2022’s “Get It Done.”

It was a bittersweet election for the Liberals. They increased their seats from 9 to 14, meaning the minivan party now has upgraded to a full size Ford Econoline and finally qualifies for official party status, and their vote from 24% to 30%, not astronomically different than the PC’s 43%. These should be good things for the party. But the NDP is still way ahead as the official opposition, even though their vote dropped by 5% and they lost a seat. And leader Bonnie Crombie couldn’t win her seat. I anticipate a new round of enthusiasm for electoral system reform among Ontario Liberals. Should Crombie step down? Of course not. Whatever the party’s problems, they go well beyond the leader.

And the NDP? I’m not sure what to say. They’re the second-place party for the third time, yet they seem unable to gain further traction or growth against FordMania, and as mentioned, dropped in the popular vote. Marit Stiles seems to be doing a good job as leader, but like her predecessor Andrea Horwath, is still largely unknown outside the political junkie class. There may well be a gender explanation here; regardless, the party seems largely stuck in second gear, for the third time.

The Green Party did okay by retaining its two seats. But it’s clear the provincial party is much like the federal party; largely a one-person show, with little evidence of long-term institutionalization beyond the leader or consistent upward growth. Still, kudos to Mike Schreiner for winning 57% of the vote in Guelph, 33% ahead of the next candidate.

Oh, and I have to admit I was wrong. I assumed Bobbi-Ann Brady, elected as an independent in Haldimand-Norfolk in 2022 was a one-time phenomenon, stemming from a local squabble that would blow over. Wow, was I wrong. She blew away her opponents yesterday with SIXTY-FOUR PERCENT of the vote. Kudos to her.

I was also wrong about voter turnout. I, and I think every pontificator like me, assumed it would be a record low in this impromptu winter election with so much else going on outside the province. But it went up modestly, from 43% to 45%! My only explanation is that the Trump threat has heightened people’s attention to the news, emboldening rather than distracting them.

So that’s about it for the 2025 Ontario election. With so much being the same, I’m glad to say our book is not outdated. See you in 2029!

That race of course was won by Kim Campbell, who then became Canada’s first and so far only woman prime minister, only to be defeated in a catastrophic election five months later. Campbell is the best example of the “glass cliff” phenomenon of parties turning to a woman leader only in distress, letting her take the wheel as the party drives over the brink to oblivion.

When Chrystia Freeland declared for the leadership, I and surely others feared we would see an exact recap of 1993; a woman given the captaincy only after the ship had already hit the iceberg, leading to a second failed female prime minister.

But a twist! It’s still like 1993. But the gender dynamics are reversed. Like Kim Campbell, Mark Carney is emerging as the Chosen One and Fresh Face, with Liberals flocking to the nation’s newest politician in greater numbers than I expected. This leaves Freeland as Jean Charest, the scrappy second place underdog.

Let’s review that 1993 race. When Brian Mulroney stepped down, anticipation was high for a competitive race despite the party’s abysmal popularity. But one-after-one, top ministers likes Michael Wilson, Perrin Beatty, and Barbara MacDougall all took themselves out of contention. Sound familiar so far? Left standing was defense minister Kim Campbell.

Things were looking so lopsided that thirty-four year old Jean Charest was pressured by Brian Mulroney and others to get in the race and make it look like the job was worth going for. This is something to reflect on; was this to stop Campbell or because it shouldn’t look too easy for a woman? Without trying to unpack the gender attitudes of 1993, I do think there was a strong assumption then, and now, that a competitive leadership race invigorates the party and raises the standing of the eventual winner. To not have a serious fight for the leadership of the PC party might signal that it wasn’t worth having…even if that did prove to be the case in November.

And so rather than a crowded field of heavyweights, it quickly became a race between the front runner cruising to their coronation and the scrappy lovable underdog unlikely to prevail. Sound familiar? But wait! There’s more!

Five candidates in 2025? There were five in 1993 too! The falling away of cabinet heavyweights and generally dire state of the party allowed three lesser candidates to find some oxygen. Anyone remember Jim Edwards? An Edmonton MP who had just been promoted to party whip. he seized the opportunity to be the third-place runner, perfectly respectable and filling out the ballot. Patrick Boyer was another ambitious but unknown MP who threw his hat in the ring. Finally, there was the more well-known backbencher Garth Turner, author of one of my favourite book titles, Garth! Just What the Hell is Going on in Ottawa?

This crew doesn’t match up exactly with Karina Gould, Frank Baylis, and Ruby Dhalla, but there’s enough resemblance. Baylis has Garth Turner qualities, particularly a hustling entrepreneurial mindset and healthy dose of self-confidence. Gould of course is really the new Jean Charest - both a similar age with impressive resumes that makes you wonder what you did/are doing/will do in your thirties - but is finding little traction in the race beyond gaining polite attention, just like Jim Edwards. I can’t think of any parallels between Ruby Dhalla and Patrick Boyer other than the common question of why in the world they’re running at all. But overall there’s a lot here.

So what happened in 1993? Well, let’s review and compare with 2025.

• Kim Campbell won and became prime minister with a buzz of renewal and hope, so different from the dire polls under Mulroney. It all looked suddenly possible again…until election day, when the party fell from 169 to two seats.

  Mark Carney….well…we will see…

• Jean Charest, who came closer than expected to the leadership with 47% on the final second ballot, was one of those two seats. Finding the once coveted party leadership keys abandoned in a dumpster, he took the job and carried on for a few years until Quebec politics beckoned and he ran that province for a decade. With an unsuccessful federal comeback attempt in 2022.

  I suspect that whatever happens on March 9, Chrystia Freeland will be on the Canadian political scene for a long time to come.

• Jim Edwards won big from his gamble, at least in the short term, being named to Campbell’s cabinet as Treasury Board president and House Leader. He went down with the ship in November and hasn’t been seen in Ottawa since, though he seems to have found a good life back in Edmonton.

  I don’t know if Karina Gould will retain her Burlington seat, but she’s put herself on the map and has a bright future (even more than she already had.)

• Patrick Boyer did not make cabinet under Campbell; I assume there’s a good reason though it’s never been clear to me. An intellectual gadfly at heart, he also lost in November and returned to law and political science lecturing, where I met him a few times over the years. According to Wikipedia he has twenty-seven books to his name.

  Again, not much in common with Ruby Dhalla, but who is also likely to return soon to obscurity.

• The biggest winner of the 1993 race? I’ll go with Garth Turner, who became minister of national revenue - I think at his request - allowing him to run seminars for years afterward offering financial advice “from the man who ran Canada’s tax system.” He made a political comeback in 2006, lasting ten months in the Harper Conservative caucus before being expelled, later joining the Liberal party and publishing a sequel to his earlier Garth! book, Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa. He was one of the first major political bloggers in Canada, and continues to maintain his blog here.

  Somehow, I think Frank Baylis will come out all right.