Carney attracts a 5th Conservative lawmaker to Canada’s Liberal Party

TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has attracted another opposition Conservative lawmaker to the Liberal Party, further assuring that he will soon have a majority government.

Ontario Member of Parliament Marilyn Gladu alluded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty and economy for her decision to defect to the governing Liberals. Trump has talked about making Canada the 51st U.S. state and has applied punishing tariffs on certain key sectors.

“We need a serious leader who can address the uncertainty that has arrived due to the unjustified American tariffs,” Gladu said Wednesday, alongside Carney in his office.

“We need a global leader with a plan to make a more resilient Canada, a stronger Canada, a more self-reliant Canada, for this critical moment and that man is our prime minister Mark Carney.”

Gladu is the fifth Canadian lawmaker to defect to Carney and the fourth Conservative. She called it a “large Liberal tent” and said that she’d rather be inside it than outside.

“She is going to be a great member of our team,” Carney said. “This all comes at a time when the country as a whole is uniting.”

Her defection puts the Liberals on the verge of having a majority government and being able to pass any bill without opposition party support.

The Liberals now have 171 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. They need 172 to secure a majority government, which would allow them to unilaterally pass any bill.

Carney has called special elections for three districts for Monday that would give the Liberals a majority government if his party wins one of them.

The prime minister announced on March 8 that votes will be cast April 13 in the Toronto-area districts of Scarborough Southwest and University-Rosedale, which are considered safe seats for the Liberals, and in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne, which is considered a toss-up.

The three other Conservative legislators who defected from their party to join the Liberals in recent months were Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma and Matt Jeneroux. One member of the leftist New Democrats party, Lori Idlout, also defected to the Liberals.

Jeneroux referenced Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as helping his decision. In the speech, Carney condemned economic coercion by great powers against smaller countries and received widespread praise and attention for his remarks.

Carney, the former head of the Bank of England as well as Canada’s central bank, has moved the Liberals to the center-right since replacing Justin Trudeau as prime minister in 2025 and winning a national election.

Gladu’s defection is another blow to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost the previous national election last year and even his own seat in Parliament. He has since rejoined the House of Commons.

Poilievre won a party leadership review earlier this year, but continues to have problems controlling his lawmakers.

“Mark Carney is seizing a costly Liberal majority that voters denied him, and doing so through backroom deals,” Poilievre said in a post on social media.

Poilievre said that in January, Gladu said that floor crossers should face voters in a special election to give voters the final say.

“She should honor her word and let voters decide,” he posted.

Gladu, the member of Parliament for Sarnia-Lambton near the U.S. border, served as the Ontario co-chair for Poilievre’s 2022 leadership campaign.

“This is stunning, not only because Gladu is the fourth Conversative member of Parliament to cross the floor to join the Carney Liberal caucus since the fall, but also because she had been a Conservative member of Parliament since 2015 and that she had strongly criticized the Liberals in the past,” said Daniel Béland, a political-science professor at McGill University in Montreal.

“Gladu was not typically seen as one of the most likely Conservative MPs to jump ship at this time so it must be quite shocking for many Conservatives,” Béland said.

He said that it will become harder and harder for Poilievre “to hold on, especially because more floor crossings remain possible in the short run. Once the Liberals get a majority government, they could stay in power until 2029 without the need for a new general election.”