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Notes -
Mark Carney, Ascendant
At the start of the year there was somewhat of a stalemate in Canadian politics. The Liberals were close to a majority with two recent floor-crossings, but still a few seats shy. Prime Minister Mark Carney was reasonably popular, but the Liberal party he led was decidedly not. Conversely, the Conservative Party was moderate popular, but its leader Pierre Poilievre was not. All this added up to what was essentially a deadlock in voter intention should an election be called.
Since then, there has been a dramatic change in political fortunes. Mark Carney is now the most popular Canadian politician in recent memory. Pierre Poilievre is now the most unpopular (give or take a Justin Trudeau). The difference between their favourability metrics (i.e. how much people approve vs disapprove of them) is now 60 points, which is truly monumental. The Liberals are now polling into solid majority territory, but they don't even need to call an election to get one. With two more defections (one from the Conservatives, and another from the NDP last night) they will have a majority if they (almost certainly) win two of three forthcoming by-elections. And that's even if there isn't more floor-crossers, of whom there are several more expected from both the Conservatives and NDP.
What the hell happened?
I've always said that even the most dysfunctional democracies favour boring bankers as leaders in times of crisis. Carney is probably the most-qualified PM in Canada's history, if you try and rank them by achievement before taking office, but obviously that only goes so far in the social media age. But the economic and political turmoil, and especially the impact of Trump, definitely works in his favour. As the various American attempts to squeeze the Canadian economy have continued, Carney's popularity has grown. This isn't all pure contrarian reaction to Trump - Carney's messaging has been very effective. He makes repeated high-profile trips to foreign countries to secure new trade deals and terms, and I think this is a huge boon to his popularity as the news of new trade deals, investment, partnerships, etc. is a good counterpoint to the economic uncertainty. Even the areas where Liberal support reached a nadir, like Alberta and Saskatchewan, have substantially warmed up to him because of his success in ending trade conflict with China and clearing the bureaucratic hurdles towards substantial new infrastructure projects. Also it can't be overlooked how influential his speech at the WEF was in setting himself apart from the crop of other Canadian politicians in terms of having a coherent, long-term philosophy that is achievable rather than a mishmash of contemporary trends and reflexive partisanship.
Speaking of which, Pierre Poilievre is largely the victim of his own personality. He is not exactly what you would call charismatic. He has had basically no work experience outside of being an MP, and for decades was the "attack dog" of the Conservative caucus who gave much of their replies during Question Period in Parliament. In short he developed a character that was partisan, quippy, and negative. This worked just fine when he was up against a very unpopular Justin Trudeau. Even while he was still unpopular himself he was looking at a super-majority election win at the end of 2024. But up against a very popular Carney he comes across very poorly by comparison, and Canadians have soured on him even more as a result. It doesn't help that his leadership style is very literally driving MPs out of his party: all the three defectors from the Conservatives so far have cited his abrasive nature as a reason for leaving. In late January his continued leadership of the party was confirmed at the Conservative convention, but you wonder how much leash he has if Carney remains popular and peels another few Conservatives away. It's one thing to lose an election: it's another to then let your opponent form a majority because you've driven off your own MPs.
The third element in all of this is that the NDP, the traditional third (fourth?) party and the left flank of Canadian politics, is currently having its leadership race and looks set on picking Avi Lewis, who is firmly from the progressive/activist mould. He is an interesting choice for leader in the sense that there is some reward to the risk; he's a very smooth media personality and has the potential to sell Canadians on a different approach. But his views are at odds with average Canadians and more NDP MPs seem primed to jump ship to the Liberals if he wins, which is very bad for the NDP as they're already skating on thin ice. Even the MP who just quit the party, Lori Idlout, was a supporter of Lewis not an opponent. But at some point you figure it's better to be in the tent pissing out, so to speak. Especially given that Carney has (so far) been successful at securing foreign deals and investments, there's a strong personal and political incentive to join the winning team if you can secure something for your region out of it.
Anyways, here are the polls as they stand now. You can see the very marked shift in fortunes since the start of the year. This is a new phenomenon in Canadian politics; floor crossers are nothing new, but the sheer number of them in such a short span of time, let alone to form a majority government, is entirely novel.
Immigration is like boiling a frog. It really is too late by the time you notice it getting a little warm. Occasionally, you start thinking “man, it’s getting hot in here”, but then you’re distracted by geopolitics, or by the economy, or another financial crisis, or a pandemic, and the water temperature goes to the back of your mind.
I think this probably ought to be the greatest cause of pessimism for the Western right - you can have a few great years where immigration is the number one issue, but then there’s another recession and suddenly all anyone cares about is stimulus and unemployment and bank bailouts and it’s another decade before people remember what’s happening.
Immigration has been another interesting change with Carney in power; most of the pathways that were vulnerable to fraud have been (quietly) shut down. It's been a strange phenomenon where you end up seeing the article about how x or y immigration scheme has been closed from an Indian newspaper, because the Canadian government has not commented on it all. Since Carney has taken over, Canada's population has started to shrink for the first time in a long time (not including COVID years). The vast bulk of this is due to expiring visas of temporary residents.
Obviously it won't be enough for a lot of people, but the people who were claiming that Carney was going to press down the accelerator and flood the country were obviously wrong. I think more importantly for Canadians the more obviously fraudulent elements are being restricted, namely the international student streams, while popular capital I immigration (that is to say, permanent residency offered to non-Canadian residents) stays the same.
The other really troublesome issue is the stream of asylum seekers which exploded again at the end of Trudeau's reign; Canada got some 170k in 2024 and another 110k in 2025. The Carney government is cutting a bunch of funding to refugees and asylum seekers (again, quietly), and there's been more recent debate in Parliament about going further.
I think the Liberals have managed to somewhat skillfully defuse immigration as the bomb around their neck, at least for the present, by simultaneously addressing the most negative elements of the system they had set up (while also not telling anyone they are doing so, as to avoid blame).
The big question is going to be how they deal with the bubble of post-COVID migrants as their visas start to expire. Canada does not have the law enforcement capacity or legal infrastructure to carry out a deportation program at any meaningful scale. If people simply overstay and refuse to leave until they have exhausted all possible remedies including bogus refugee claims, it will create a decade-plus backlog of appeals in a system that is already not fit for purpose. An illustrative example of this is the Indian migrant who killed 16 members of a hockey team in one of Canada's largest mass casualty incidents. He pled guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison, which should have triggered automatic deportation after his release. Now years later, he is still in Canada filing appeals, and using the anchor baby he has post-conviction to argue for humanitarian relief. What's even more insane is that legacy Canadian media appears to be supporting this push for his deportation to be waived. If they can't manage to deport this particularly heinous criminal, do they really expect to be able to process 100k+ deportations per year?
Nonsense, this is the system working as intended. Who's going to hold it to account? Clearly, voting doesn't matter- whatever party rep you selected is just going to go LPC anyway becuase fuck you, that's why.
Media system working exactly as it's intended to.
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Immigration was never a bomb around the LPC's neck, though: it helps exclusively their voters, and that's the only Canadian that matters.
See, LPC voters care about two things, and two things only: the price of their house, and flapping their jowls at the US (and any liberal reforms in that direction; the LPC is a Conservative party, not a classically liberal one). Carney is objectively the best candidate for those things, and that's clearly good enough for a dictatorship.
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Labour in the UK are trying surprisingly hard as well, from what I can see. Not doing that well but definitely much more than I was expecting - and more than the Tories for that matter.
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