Another day, another politician defects to the Liberal regime.

You may have voted for a conservative politician, but if that isn’t what the regime wants, well then, they’ll change that vote one way or another.

It is a farce of the worst sort. If a politician crosses the floor, there should an immediate byelection.

Marilyn Gladu (Sarnia-Lambton) became the fifth MP, and fourth Conservative to cross the floor to the Carney Liberals since November 2025, making it the largest mass defection to a governing federal party in 109 years. 

Since November 2025, four Conservatives: Chris d’Entremont (Nova Scotia), Michael Ma (Ontario), Matt Jeneroux (Alberta), and now Marilyn Gladu (Ontario), plus NDP MP Lori Idlout have all crossed to the Liberals. The Liberals now sit at 171 seats, one shy of a majority. Carney has said it’s always been the MPs who reach out to him, not the other way around. Sure they do when you have some third party within your government put out feelers.

Keep your hands clean and let the underlings do the dirty work, and just pretend this amazing coincidence isn’t benefitting you when you are within the grasp of a majority you didn’t actually earn. Word parsing is obvious here, and it isn’t cute.

Besides, there is no law or obligation to accept the defectors. They are not owed a seat because they don’t like it anymore. The sense of entitlement should be enough to reject their offers.

Except why would they even take a gamble and offer to cross the floor out in public, unless they were certain they’d get something in return?

But it does come at the steep cost for defectors. I asked Perplexity about the chances of defectors winning a subsequent election and this was the answer:

The research is fairly damning for floor-crossers in the modern era. A peer-reviewed study published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, analyzing all Library of Parliament data from 1867 to 2015 (72 unique floor-crossing MPs who subsequently ran), found:

• Overall since 1867: Floor-crossers won re-election 55 times vs. 27 losses — seemingly okay, but the wins are almost entirely pre-1958
• Modern era penalty: By 2015, switchers were expected to receive close to 20 percentage points less than non-switchers in comparable ridings
• Overall penalty: Even accounting for partisan tide and riding characteristics, there is a ~5 percentage point penalty across the full study period — and the trend is worsening

Separately, a comprehensive tracking site covering all 131 floor-crossers since Confederation found that only 35% won re-election. The most successful crossers — Scott Brison (PC to Liberal, 2003), Keith Martin (Alliance to Liberal, 2003), and Lucien Bouchard (PC to Bloc, 1990) — crossed early in their careers, had strong local ties, and offered clear policy rationales. Opportunistic-looking switches tend to fail.

Gladu’s situation is particularly risky — Sarnia-Lambton is a historically Conservative riding, her past positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights have already raised questions among Liberal supporters, and her stated reason for crossing (“I hoped to gain more federal funding for my riding”) is exactly the kind of naked opportunism voters historically punish most severely. Matt Jeneroux won his Alberta seat with 50.2% in 2025 as a Conservative — flipping that seat as a Liberal in rural Alberta is a steep hill to climb.

A few crossers do survive — Belinda Stronach (Conservative to Liberal, 2005) won re-election in 2006, though she did not run in 2008. Jenica Atwin (Green to Liberal, 2021) retained her Fredericton seat. What they had in common: they crossed in ridings already competitive for the new party, and the switch came well ahead of an election, giving voters time to reset expectations.

It also turns the political system into a farce. If I go to a car lot and buy a black SUV, I expect a black SUV. I don’t want to wake up one morning with a red compact car because the car salesman has a financial gain fr swapping my car.

The political system runs on fiat. Politicians who cross the floor don’t just look opportunistic; they look flighty and unreliable.

But it’s not the only thing the Grits are trying to do to maintain their autocratic ways.

We now have the same governing class trying, repeatedly, to acquire discretionary power over what counts as acceptable “legal internet content,” behind closed doors and with only vague assurances about future transparency.

And given the greedy way the Grits are trying to rig and stack the deck, they should not be trusted.

Because they can’t seem to earn an organic majority, they don’t have a mandate, but they will stoop to any trick: secrecy, proroguing the government, using nudge units, and so on.

This is what Donald Trump would do if he was more of a weasel and less of a narcissist.

Ottawa has quietly built an infrastructure: Policy Horizons, Impact Canada in the PCO, various behavioural insight teams, whose explicit mandate is to use behavioural science (“nudges”) to steer public choices in line with pre‑chosen policy goals, often without citizens realizing they’re being steered. A 2023 economic note pointed out that Canada has no dedicated oversight on government use of nudges, even as Impact Canada describes itself as an applied behavioural science unit reporting into the PMO’s orbit.

This isn’t democracy. This isn’t respect for citizens or caring one whit about governing. It is not about caring or having to do what needs to be done because the little people don’t understand.

It is about holding on to power at any cost. The US is having a crisis because their autocrat is flaunting it, but Canada is in no better position. Soft autocracy is still autocracy that treats citizens as obstacles to be punished.

If this is how our so‑called democrats behave when they think no one is looking, then we need to change who is doing the looking.

Canada doesn’t need more promises from the same insiders who built this mess. It needs a standing, independent check with the power to drag their tricks into the light and punish them when they cross the line. If governments insist on behaving like they can’t be trusted with power, then it’s time we gave this country something that can watch over them, and answer only to us.