Liberals celebrate after MP quits New Democrats to join Mark Carney's government

The Liberals now have 170 MPs in the 343-seat House of Commons, just two seats short of a majority, with three vacant ridings scheduled to hold byelections on April 13. Since two of them are in Toronto, and have reliably elected Liberals for more than a decade, only a shock result would prevent the Carney government from clinching the barest majority of seats after those contests are held. 

The situation had the Liberals taking a victory lap as they welcomed Idlout to their weekly caucus meeting with rapturous applause and chants of “Lori! Lori!” 

One senior government source — who, along with other sources, spoke to the Star on the condition they weren’t named in order to share inside details about how Idlout decided to cross the floor — said cabinet members including Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu, Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand and Culture Minister Marc Miller had included Idlout in Nunavut-related policy announcements in recent months.

One example was how officials made themselves available to brief Idlout about a January housing announcement in Nunavut before the government ensured she was given a chance to ask about it in the House of Commons, a second official told the Star. 

The senior source also said the Liberals took note of how Idlout abstained on a crucial budget vote last year, with active conversations in December followed by a more recent burst of talks in recent weeks.

Idlout’s decision to cross the floor — which did not come with any special role in the government, Carney’s office confirmed — was made official after she met with Carney in Ottawa on Tuesday night, the source said. 

On Parliament Hill, Carney hailed Idlout as “one of Canada’s greatest constituency MPs,” before entering Wednesday’s caucus meeting alongside the Nunavut MP.

“We’ve had conversations about what we can do both large and small in Nunavut — large projects, but also helping everyone to get ahead. So, all for Canada, Canada for all,” Carney said. 

Idlout, in turn, said many factors motivated her to join the Liberals, after citing threats to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and pressures on people living in the North in a party statement the night before. 

Opposition parties, however, blasted the Liberal government for courting Idlout after three Conservative MPs crossed the floor and brought the Liberals closer to a majority government in the House of Commons. 

“I’m becoming increasingly concerned by the way that Mr. Carney is trying to stitch together a majority government in this country,” said interim NDP leader Don Davies, who called on Idlout to resign her seat and run for re-election if she wants to sit as a Liberal. 

“Whether or not there’s a majority government is fundamentally a decision of the Canadian people at the ballot box,” he said, “and it should happen that way, not through backroom deals cut behind closed doors in Ottawa.”

The Conservatives also claimed the floor-crossing was wrong, with Alberta MP Michael Cooper charging it is “fundamentally undemocratic” for the government to achieve a majority by courting opposition defectors. In a statement online, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused Carney of “using backroom deals to seize a costly majority that voters rejected,” alluding to how the Liberals only won a minority government in last April’s general election. 

Lori Turnbull, a political science professor at Dalhousie University, said some voters will be uneasy with Carney getting a majority this way, but that this is how our system works.

“We don’t elect governments. We elect members of Parliament and they can choose to sit in different parties,” she said.

Idlout was long known to have considered joining the Liberals, with public comments confirming she considered crossing the floor as early as last June, after Carney’s Liberals fell a few seats short of a majority government in the April 2025 general election. 

Anne McGrath, a longtime NDP strategist who was principal secretary to former leader Jagmeet Singh, said the Liberals have “put on a full-court press” to try and win over MPs from other parties. “It’s quite obvious that (Idlout) was under a lot of pressure a few months ago when she was considering it,” she said. 

McGrath added that politics in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are generally less partisan than elsewhere in Canada, which could have played a role in Idlout’s thinking. 

“I think Lori made a calculation about what was best for her constituents. I think it’s the wrong one,” she said. 

Idlout declined to speak to the Star when approached on Wednesday. 

She is the fourth opposition member to cross the floor since November, following former Conservative MPs Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma and Matt Jeneroux.

Over the weekend, Carney called byelections for April 13 in three vacant ridings. One of them opened up after the country’s top court struck down a result that saw Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste win the Quebec riding of Terrebonne last year by a single vote. Some Liberals have told the Star they believe it will be difficult to repeat that election victory against the Bloc Québécois’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné. 

The other two byelections are seen as likely Liberal wins: the Toronto ridings of University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, which became vacant after the recent resignations of former Liberal cabinet ministers Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair. The Liberals have held each riding for more than 10 years, and won the constituencies by double-digit margins last April. 

Winning those two seats would give the Liberals the narrowest majority of 172 seats, although it would require Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia to break tie votes in the House of Commons. By tradition, speakers usually vote with the government on confidence votes, but they don’t vote to limit debate that would allow the Liberals to push through legislation more quickly.