Canada votes 2025

Canadians went to the polls on monday, 28 April in the 45th federal election since Confederation in 1867. The final results were not unexpected, but they nevertheless represented a stunning turnaround from where we thought a few months ago we would be today. Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party had become hugely unpopular, with pundits predicting an easy victory by Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives in the election expected sometime this year. Throughout most of the life of the 44th Parliament, the Liberals ruled as a minority government, a supply and confidence agreement with Jagmeet Singh's New Democrats keeping them in power.

Late last year, it became clear that the New Democrats had wearied of this arrangement and threatened to pull the plug on the government. For readers unfamiliar with Canadian politics, parties with only a plurality of the seats in the House of Commons rarely form coalition governments with other parties. The closest we have come to this at the federal level was the Union Government of Sir Robert Borden formed during the Great War between the ruling Conservatives and dissident Liberals outside Québec. It is exceedingly rare for a party to receive a majority of votes cast, and in recent years it has become difficult for a single party to obtain a majority of Commons seats as well. In many other democracies, a party lacking majority support would negotiate with other parties to form a multiparty coalition government. But not in Canada.

Under our single-member-plurality (SMP) electoral system, commonly referred to as first-past-the-post (FPTP) in the popular media, the entire country is divided into so many electoral districts, called ridings here. As of the most recent redistribution, there are 343 ridings, the number gradually expanding in response to population shifts as tracked by each semi-decennial census. Each riding elects a single member of parliament by a plurality of the total number of votes cast. In a closely contested three-way race—among, say, a Liberal, Conservative, and New Democrat—a winning candidate could win with as little as just over a third of the vote. Although SMP tends to favour a two-party system, the presence of a strong third party generally prevents one of the two major parties from securing a majority of the popular vote. Nevertheless, SMP generally over-represents the two major parties and under-represents the smaller parties once the votes are counted and seats assigned. In 2015 Justin Trudeau promised electoral reform towards some variety of proportional representation (PR) but quickly rescinded this promise after his party was elected, something which I personally predicted he was likely to do.

In January Trudeau announced his resignation as leader of the federal Liberal Party and thus as prime minister (PM). To prevent his government's anticipated defeat in the Commons, Trudeau requested Governor General Mary Simon to prorogue Parliament until 24 March. This would give the Liberal Party time to elect a new leader to replace him. That leader turned out to be Mark Carney, a name familiar to Canadians who take the time to look at the signatures on their banknotes. Governor successively of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Carney's economic prowess is undoubtedly what catapulted him to the highest elected office in the land. But US President Donald Trump's puerile threat to annex Canada undoubtedly played a role as well.

As I see it, there are six issues raised by the recent election and the run-up to the vote.

First, prime ministerial power is insufficiently accountable to the other institutions of our political system. True, the governor general, as the King's representative, is said to possess reserve powers that could be used in an emergency situation. But the last time a governor general refused the advice of a prime minister was in 1926—just short of a century ago—when Canada was still in some sense part of the British Empire, with the governor general representing not the Crown of Canada, which did not yet exist, but the British government in London. Our adherence to democracy makes us reluctant to have an unelected official check an elected leader. However, a functioning constitution does not necessarily require that nondemocratic elements be always subordinated to the democratic. Otherwise there could be no judicial independence.

I personally thought that Governor General Michaëlle Jean should have refused Stephen Harper's request for prorogation in December 2008, because his request amounted to an abuse of the system motivated by pure partisanship. She should have instructed him to return to the Commons and face the opposition parties whose very status requires that they check the government of the day. Similarly, I believe that Mary Simon would have been within her rights to refuse Justin Trudeau's request for prorogation. If she had done so, his government would likely have been defeated and Poilievre might be PM today.

Second, in a highly unusual move, Mark Carney was elected Liberal leader and appointed PM before he had won a seat in the Commons. To be sure, William Lyon Mackenzie King continued as Liberal leader and as PM despite losing his own seat in the 1925 election, although he would subsequently win a seat in a quickly-called by-election. In 1894 Sir Mackenzie Bowell became PM although his seat was in the Senate rather than the Commons. So there are precedents for Carney's irregular status. Could the governor general have refused to appoint as PM someone lacking a Commons seat? Perhaps, but there are few modern precedents for a monarch or his representative taking such action on his or her own.

Third, as in most recent elections, the results indicate the disparity between the respective parties' vote totals and seats won in the Commons. Here are the totals:

CBC News

 

As we can see, the Liberals once again failed to win a majority of seats in the Commons, although they are only two seats short of the mark. Although Poilievre lost his own seat, his Conservative Party managed to win 25 more seats than it had at dissolution. Both the Liberal and Conservative Parties gained seats, while the New Democrats lost ground, with Singh losing his own seat. If Canada had had an electoral system based on some form of PR, the Liberals would have won 150 seats, the Conservatives 141, the New Democrats 22, and the Bloc québécois 22, with the remaining eight seats allocated to other parties. Under PR no single party would be able to govern alone. Some level of co-operation amongst the parties would be necessary, and multiparty coalition governments would likely have to be negotiated.

Related to this is a fourth issue, namely, national unity. Here is what Canada looks like after the recent election:

 

As we can see, the western provinces, with very few exceptions, are a sea of Conservative blue. Alberta in particular stands out as a province very much at odds with the new Liberal minority government in Ottawa. Accordingly, Premier Danielle Smith has been fanning the flames of separatism while claiming personally not to favour that option. Under a provincial list form of PR, Albertans would have elected 10 Liberals, thereby enabling the province to have a greater say in the new government. With partisan seats more widely distributed across the country, Canada would look less divided than it does now. Western alienation would be dampened to some extent.

Fifth, we cannot neglect to mention the Trump factor in the recent election. The US President appears to be channeling William McKinley and to think that it's 1898, when the United States was embarking on an expansionist programme in the Caribbean and Pacific. In the face of Trump's juvenile threats to Canadian independence, voters decided that they trusted Carney over Poilievre to represent the country's interests more effectively. Thus far there has been one meeting between Carney and Trump at the White House. Although some criticized Carney for calling Trump "a transformational president," Carney seems to have judged that it is better to butter up his counterpart while affirming in no uncertain terms that Canada is not for sale. Whether this is the correct strategy and whether Carney is the man for this moment in history remains to be seen.

Sixth and finally, apart from his leadership of two central banks, Carney's positions on other issues are not widely known. I was somewhat put off by his Trump-style signing of a fictitious executive order abolishing the hated carbon tax. This was obviously done for publicity purposes and for the sake of gaining votes that otherwise might have gone to the Conservatives. I hope this is not an indication of what we can expect from Carney during the remainder of his tenure as PM. That said, Carney appears not to be a flashy leader. We will not be seeing a fawning public exhibiting "Carney-mania" any time soon. That is almost certainly a good thing. Canadians nervous over the noises coming from south of the border seem to have chosen sobriety over sparkle, gravity over glamour. In the coming months and years we shall see whether they made the right decision.