Juno News - Another Conservative MP CROSSES FLOOR to Liberals

00:00:00.000 strange bedfellows well the latest to cross the floor to join the liberals is a conservative by

00:00:11.200 the name of marilyn gladu she is the mp for sarnia lambton it's a bit of a shocker for some she's

00:00:17.640 been slammed as a far-right kook by some in the media who claim this proves that prime minister

00:00:24.300 Carney will take anyone into his caucus. The previous floor-crosser was a new Democrat,

00:00:29.900 Lori Idlut, from Nunavut. The response has been one of outrage by some conservatives.

00:00:36.060 This post by YouTuber JJ McCullough. This floor-crossing BS is out of control.

00:00:43.660 If MPs in this country can just change parties whenever they want, then voters truly have no

00:00:50.700 control over who becomes prime minister and runs our government the whole canadian system is based

00:00:58.700 on the premise that parties matter and our host our guest rather is jj mccullough welcome to the

00:01:04.700 show jj hey thanks for having me sounds like you feel strongly about this and you're certainly not

00:01:10.460 alone it actually dawned on me that considering some of the vitriol online some a lot worse than

00:01:17.900 what you wrote, she should be careful. I think she blocked comments on her Twitter page or x.com

00:01:28.060 page and I think there's a lot of people who are very angry about this and you're suggesting that

00:01:33.660 they have a right to be, correct? I think so. I mean this is a kind of like the amount of floor

00:01:40.300 crossings that we are now experiencing is just kind of like a day-to-day fact of life in Canada

00:01:45.100 is really extraordinary and without precedent you know i think that most canadians are you know

00:01:50.140 they're comfortable with the idea that maybe this is something that happens once in a great while

00:01:54.300 and it's like an issue of great conscience for an mp and you know and all of that part of their

00:01:59.180 personal journey of their belief system or whatever but when this is happening as a matter of course

00:02:04.620 in the direction of giving a prime minister a majority government that he was not elected to

00:02:10.540 have by the people of this country, then I do think that Canadians are right to sniff that

00:02:15.760 something is fishy here, something is not right here, something substantial about the nature of

00:02:20.880 Canadian democracy, the Canadian parliamentary system is being undermined. And I think that

00:02:26.620 is something that Canadians are very right to be offended by and bothered by. Because, 0.99

00:02:32.100 you know, like I said, this is very clearly how Mark Carney is planning to get a majority

00:02:37.760 government like there's no ambiguity to it this is not just a thing that's incidentally happening

00:02:42.400 with a handful of mps that are having a crisis of consciousness no this is something that the

00:02:45.840 liberal party is actively seeking to make happen and you know the will of the voters you know be

00:02:51.200 damned it has occurred to me that by bringing someone who's a social conservative she's pro-life

00:02:58.720 she's very much against the actions of the government 0.97

00:03:05.460 that were levied against the convoy, the Freedom Convoy.

00:03:11.000 She favors, she was sympathetic towards the convoy.

00:03:14.500 The fact that the liberals have been involved in a gun grab,

00:03:18.800 she has opposed that.

00:03:20.400 And so all these policies that she has opposed

00:03:23.340 kind of puts her, according to some,

00:03:25.880 on the right wing of the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:03:28.720 And so here she is joining the Liberals, they're bringing in a new Democrat,

00:03:32.480 they've got quite a few very progressive left-wing people in caucus.

00:03:38.160 I mean, how is that going to work?

00:03:40.480 It's going to be kind of a weird place considering that you've got

00:03:44.080 such a broad spectrum of social views. What do you think?

00:03:50.080 I mean, I hope that we in coming weeks get a clearer 1.00

00:03:55.840 picture of what how exactly these pitches are being offered to these mps of like you said a

00:04:01.200 variety of different ideological backgrounds you know some mps have now come out and sort of said

00:04:05.520 hey i have been actively courted by the liberal party i turned down their advances but i think we

00:04:10.560 deserve to hear a more uh you know fully fleshed out picture of what exactly are being offered to

00:04:15.680 these people how exactly are they being seduced because you're right like there's something

00:04:19.520 incredibly fishy about you know whether you're a socialist a conservative whatever if you've

00:04:24.320 signed up in this case a politician who served in one party for over a decade as an elected

00:04:29.200 member of parliament to just kind of like abruptly say like all that stuff i don't care about it

00:04:34.000 anymore like you would think you know if i think of myself or you like how you know how much would

00:04:40.640 you have to offer to just someone to fundamentally change their whole belief system would it entail

00:04:45.840 like a new job a promise of cabinet a promise of some other sinecure you know some sort of handout

00:04:51.040 for your riding like what exactly is being offered that's able to get these people to convert

00:04:55.840 because it's it's clearly not something that's coming from a necessarily sort of sincere place

00:05:00.160 i don't know if some of these people are just perhaps shallow on some level and they just like

00:05:03.760 the idea of you know being part of the governing coalition rather than being on the opposition

00:05:08.080 benches you know if they like sitting in the you know the caucus room of the party in power as

00:05:12.240 opposed to the party out of power but you know i'm going to give these people credit and i'm

00:05:15.680 going to think that their souls couldn't be bought quite so easily so as a result i think you know

00:05:19.680 I hope that our crack journalists actually start digging into what was actually offered. 0.56

00:05:25.120 Well, she called for forced by-elections on anybody who wants to switch parties. She herself

00:05:34.000 said that it was outrageous that Michael Ma, for instance, crossed the floor.

00:05:38.240 Yeah, and it is. It is outrageous.

00:05:42.960 I mean, that's going to breed a lot of cynicism. We already have a lot of cynicism amongst Canadians

00:05:49.120 who are looking at this situation, shaking their heads, they can't believe it.

00:05:53.040 And maybe the government, Mark Carney, is counting on people's eyes to glaze over,

00:05:58.380 you know, just another day in the neighborhood,

00:06:00.100 just another day in which somebody crosses the floor and joins some other parties.

00:06:03.840 But they, you know, you would think that the party starts to blur as one.

00:06:07.640 I mean, that's what the leader of the bloc said, you know,

00:06:09.680 that the ideological differences between the conservatives and the liberals is getting blurred.

00:06:15.640 if these guys can just cross from one to the other as easily as they are.

00:06:20.180 But I guess, will this resonate with voters?

00:06:23.860 I mean, is this going to be something that come election time,

00:06:26.220 they're going to really push their candidates hard and ask them,

00:06:31.640 you know, will you ever cross the floor?

00:06:33.560 Would you ever envision a situation where you will cross the floor

00:06:37.300 and join some other party and make that an election issue?

00:06:41.540 What do you think?

00:06:43.220 Well, I mean, I guess you can ask that.

00:06:45.060 But I mean, they could just lie. I mean, presumably when you're running for a party, that's already the biggest kind of proof point you have that you're serious about that party.

00:06:55.060 Right. Like we're going down the path where it's like, well, I'm running for the conservatives.

00:06:58.620 But, you know, who knows? Maybe I won't. You know, it's really asking a lot for a voter to have to be like, well, you know, what is you know, what is your deepest passion?

00:07:07.460 like what would it take to get you to convert and like have to sort of like measure candidate

00:07:11.700 loyalties to their own party that they're choosing voluntarily to self-identify with

00:07:16.020 like it's a preposterous request the whole premise of canadian democracy is that when you choose to

00:07:21.860 run under a party label you are loyal to that party you are loyal to the leader as i said in

00:07:26.980 that tweet you know you're getting into politics because a vote for you is an indirect vote to

00:07:31.860 help make the head of your party the prime minister of the country the prime ministership

00:07:36.100 is an incredibly powerful office you know being elected to a majority government is even more

00:07:41.060 powerful than a minority government you know this is just the basic architecture of how our

00:07:44.820 parliamentary system is supposed to work and yet what i see a lot is you have these people in the

00:07:49.460 media you have these kind of you know self-proclaimed experts of canadian parliamentary

00:07:53.060 democracy who talk in this like hectoring condescending way where it's like well you

00:07:57.460 know nothing is actually going wrong this is just how our system works and mps can do whatever they

00:08:01.940 want and you know they're a liberal one day a conservative the next day like who are you to

00:08:05.640 complain this is just our way of doing things and I think people are right to be pretty cynical about

00:08:10.600 that because supposedly Canada is a democracy and supposedly the preference of the voters actually

00:08:15.900 matter like we're not living in you know the Soviet Union or Iran or something where we just

00:08:20.780 have these sham elections and the politicians just do whatever they please right in theory

00:08:25.800 there's supposed to be some line of accountability between the MP the political party they represent

00:08:31.480 and the voter who made an expressed preference at the ballot box and then sort of the collective

00:08:37.100 wisdom of the voters of this country who, you know, on election night, we are told if we

00:08:41.680 collectively elected a minority government or a majority government, if all that stuff goes out

00:08:45.880 the window and if this is all just kind of like a performative exercise in which, you know, we just

00:08:49.740 elect random people and they just do whatever they want and the voters have no say, yeah, then I

00:08:53.960 think we are right to be cynical because we are in a very different system at that point than the

00:08:58.280 system that we've been taught to believe we live in, you know, starting in elementary school.

00:09:02.320 A lot of people predicted that we would be going to the polls in 2026, that this government would

00:09:08.280 not be around a whole lot longer. But it seems to me that maybe that's changed now. And it also

00:09:15.440 suggests, despite polls, that suggests that the liberals are way ahead. I mean, I'm asking polling

00:09:21.220 that has them up by 15 points. So you would think, based on those types of numbers, that the liberals

00:09:26.380 would not fear an election.

00:09:27.740 They said, bring it on.

00:09:29.040 We can little trounce the conservatives next time

00:09:31.780 and get our majority the old-fashioned way.

00:09:34.600 But instead, they're doing it this way.

00:09:36.580 What does that tell you about Mark Carney,

00:09:38.260 that he would rather do it in a sneaky way,

00:09:42.560 luring conservatives and New Democrats to cross the floor

00:09:46.320 rather than go to the polls and ask Canadians

00:09:49.940 to give him the majority that he is seeking?

00:09:53.100 Yeah, that's a very good question, actually.

00:09:55.240 And it's one that I honestly like don't understand. Like even if we assume the worst of Mark Carney, like the more kind of cynical sort of schemey thing to do would be to just call an election when your poll numbers are higher. You know, that's a tried and true cynical technique in Canadian democracy.

00:10:09.940 The idea of just kind of cobbling together this kind of ideologically incoherent majority government of like one, like just kind of creeping over that magical line from minority to majority, like, I don't know, that seems like a kind of dopey way to go about doing things.

00:10:25.400 Because even if you have a majority of government of one or even have a majority government of two or three, you know, you're just a few resignations or deaths or, you know, party switches in the other direction to lose that.

00:10:34.820 So you would think that a prime minister would just be inclined when his numbers are good to just, you know, pull the trigger and have a big election and win a big solid majority that way.

00:10:43.900 I don't know. I mean, maybe Carney is just a little risk averse because, of course, Carney only got into power in the first place because of a dramatic, unpredicted, you know, sort of swing in the polls towards him.

00:10:54.040 and so maybe he's just a little risk averse and worried that you know he could live and die by

00:10:58.640 the same sword and that maybe something could happen that could see the pendulum swing in the

00:11:02.800 opposite direction and then you know he would regret uh calling the early election but it's

00:11:07.220 it's a good question and it's and again like this is something the press should be asking

00:11:10.920 carney is basically committing this conspiracy in open sunlight and yet there's this kind of

00:11:17.320 passivity in the canadian press where just like oh well you know this is just happening and isn't

00:11:21.820 this interesting how he's doing this and hmm what will the next day bring right it's like no he's

00:11:26.420 actually doing a thing he's consciously plotting in this very conspicuous way so we should ask him

00:11:32.240 like why are you doing this what is your logic mr prime minister and then like i said also ask all

00:11:37.080 the mps who have been converted or who have been uh sort of courted to convert how exactly is this

00:11:42.880 pitch being made what are you being offered yeah and of course there's always rumors out there there

00:11:49.940 was that story posited by the guy at La Presse who said there were 10 conservatives potentially

00:11:57.260 that were ready to cross and the inevitable finger pointing that takes place at the leader,

00:12:04.100 which is to say, you know, is it his fault? We just had a very successful from the conservatives

00:12:09.320 vantage point from Paglia's standpoint, leadership review that had him at 87% support. So we all

00:12:16.380 thought that was put to bed. But again, they resurrect concerns about his leadership.

00:12:21.380 And there were no direct shots at Polya by Marilyn Gladue, except she just said,

00:12:28.380 well, you know, I really wanted to work with a smart leader.

00:12:33.380 Maybe that was directed at Pierre Polya, or a serious leader, you know.

00:12:38.380 And I don't know where she was going with that.

00:12:43.380 But how do you see this, if you do in fact see it, coming back on Polyev? Will this cast a shadow over his leadership once again?

00:12:52.940 Well, I don't know. This also sort of gets to, I think, a kind of breakdown of the lines of authority in Canadian democracy.

00:12:59.980 It's like, who exactly is Polyev supposed to get his mandate from? Who is he serving, right?

00:13:06.240 Like, is he serving the membership that overwhelmingly reelected him as conservative leader? Or is he serving like the caucus, which is, you know, overwhelmingly loyal? Or is he somehow like accountable to these dissident MPs and that, you know, a small minority of the caucus whose loyalty to the party is clearly incredibly fragile to the part where they would join the party that they just finished running against?

00:13:28.500 Like, is that who Pierre Polyev as conservative leader should be most sensitive to? Like the least representative faction of his own caucus? I don't know. It's very strange, right? And it's like, you know, we know when we look at polls that Pierre Polyev is still popular with conservative voters, you know, the Conservative Party is still at the end of the day, competing quite well in the head to head against Mark Carney.

00:13:50.200 like we're not looking at some sort of existential wipeout if an election was held tomorrow i mean

00:13:55.280 the liberals are up as you said but the conservative party is you know still doing quite

00:13:59.140 well and pierre has led the party to its best showing in you know uh i believe decades right

00:14:04.160 so i don't know it's it's it's just this it's a strange sort of calculus where we're being

00:14:10.300 like the the lines of accountability traditionally understood between the voter the party the party

00:14:16.800 leader the base all of this kind of stuff is getting muddled by all of these sort of machinations

00:14:21.540 and then a press that's sort of pushing certain narratives because they want to see certain

00:14:25.340 outcomes as well i don't know i it's it's it's not a great point for canadian democracy when things

00:14:30.800 to for things to be this muddled and for people to be so actively muddling them as a type of

00:14:37.960 political strategy you know i do think that that is responsible for a lot of cynicism because it

00:14:42.640 makes the Canadian political system seem very confusing, very counterintuitive, governed by a

00:14:48.560 kind of like alien Ottawa logic, as opposed to just the kind of common sense logic that I think

00:14:53.160 your average, you know, voter on the street assumes that their democracy operates according

00:14:58.120 to. So, yeah, it's, it's, it ain't great. Yeah, and these MPs have to look their neighbors in the

00:15:05.300 eye, too. I mean, that can't be an easy thing to do, whether you're a Michael Ma or Chris

00:15:10.960 We know that they ultimately lose, right?

00:15:16.060 We know that party crossers don't tend to get rewarded very much by their electorate when they do this.

00:15:22.260 Because, you know, most people, like, this is the thing, too. 0.61

00:15:24.240 It's like most Canadians are voting for the party, as they should, right?

00:15:27.800 You should vote for the basis of the party because by voting on the basis of the party, you're helping make a certain person prime minister, right?

00:15:34.160 The prime ministership is an extraordinarily important job in our political system.

00:15:38.040 So you should vote for the party whose leader you think would be best suited to run the country.

00:15:43.780 Like, this is not a sort of radical proposition, at least it shouldn't be.

00:15:47.480 But now we're sort of being told it's like, oh, well, you know, the MPs should just be able to pick whoever they want.

00:15:53.160 And, you know, they are the real sort of, you know, figures of agency in our parliamentary system, which is just it's just not true.

00:15:59.620 Like, we all know that that's not how Canadian democracy has ever worked up until like five minutes ago,

00:16:04.180 where we're suddenly being sort of told to, you know, retroactively justify the bizarre way in

00:16:09.640 which Carney plans to get his majority, that he was denied by voters. Yeah. J.J. McCullough,

00:16:15.300 where do people find you online? You can just find me on my fabulous YouTube channel. J.J.

00:16:21.240 McCullough. McCullough is hard to spell, but if you just type J.J. Canada, you'll see me pop up.

00:16:26.520 Okay. Thank you, J.J. Appreciate that. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting

00:16:31.720 independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News, go to junonews.com backslash

00:16:38.680 straight up. You can find a link below that helps us do what we do. Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:16:44.740 We'll see you next time.

Juno News - April 08, 2026

Another Conservative MP CROSSES FLOOR to Liberals

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript