Juno News - December 12, 2025


Another Conservative MP defects as Liberals near majority


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20 minutes

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3

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1

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A Conservative MP crossed the floor to join the Liberals, putting the governing party within one seat of a majority in Parliament. The Globe and Mail's Peter Williams and Lorne Gunter discuss what that means for the leadership of the party.

Transcript

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00:00:00.000 Well, another Conservative member of Parliament has crossed the floor to join the Liberals,
00:00:09.320 putting the governing party within one seat of a majority in Parliament.
00:00:14.120 Michael Ma, rookie MP for Markham Unionville, has crossed the floor just eight months after
00:00:19.940 the election.
00:00:21.520 Prime Minister Carney introduced a new member at a Liberal event last night.
00:00:25.280 Let's give a warm welcome to our newest member of the Liberal Party, Michael Ma, the MP for
00:00:36.040 Union Markham Unionville.
00:00:38.160 Thank you.
00:00:39.080 Thank you.
00:00:40.560 All I want to say is Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a great 2026 coming to all of you.
00:00:50.040 Thank you.
00:00:50.600 It wasn't long ago, Ma was harshly critical of government policies.
00:00:56.220 The common sense amendments that the Conservatives and the Bloc so carefully crafted at committee
00:01:03.180 to improve Bill C-3 are being undone by my post-nationalist colleagues across the aisle.
00:01:11.700 They don't believe in Canada because they don't believe in our borders.
00:01:15.220 They believe in a two-tier immigration system where citizenship by naturalization within
00:01:22.000 our borders has harder requirements than citizenship by descent outside of our borders.
00:01:29.260 They believe in distributing the privileges of Canadian citizenships abroad while offloading 0.54
00:01:36.020 the costs and duties of citizenship to those who live coast to coast to coast.
00:01:41.940 They believe that Canadians of convenience should be able to wear the Team Canada jersey without
00:01:49.680 even putting time on our ice.
00:01:52.640 People who want to be in the team photo without being a team player.
00:01:58.740 Well, now he's on the Carney team.
00:02:01.160 Journalist Sam Cooper says China's past interference in that riding is a major red flag considering
00:02:06.800 what just happened with Ma.
00:02:08.600 This post on X, wake up Canada.
00:02:14.220 A majority of floor crossing in circumstances where the PRC, that's the People's Republic of
00:02:20.220 China, is recognized to a favored Carney will be absolutely unacceptable.
00:02:26.900 Look at the MP that crossed in his Markham riding.
00:02:31.120 Look what just happened to Joseph Tay.
00:02:33.860 That can't stand action is needed.
00:02:36.660 Well, just before announcing his departure, Ma turned out at the conservative Christmas party.
00:02:43.400 That's right.
00:02:44.400 This post by Dodd, Todd Doherty.
00:02:47.060 Odd.
00:02:47.960 He seemed to be fine as he posed for pictures and danced the night away at the conservative
00:02:53.040 Christmas party last night.
00:02:55.940 Meantime, conservative party leader Pierre Polyev issued this statement.
00:02:59.700 Michael Ma was elected as a conservative by the constituents of Markham Unionville to fight
00:03:05.820 against liberal inflationary spending, driving up the cost of living in his community.
00:03:12.060 Today, he chose to endorse the very policies he was elected to oppose.
00:03:17.860 The same policies driving up food prices and making life more expensive for all.
00:03:23.320 The people he let down most are the ones who elected him.
00:03:28.720 Well, a close friend of the prime minister's is about to be appointed to the role of Canadian
00:03:33.480 ambassador to the United States.
00:03:35.780 This headline.
00:03:37.120 The Globe reports Mark Wiseman's appointment was approved by the Liberal cabinet this week.
00:03:43.060 Wiseman is an advocate for wide open immigration policies and has extensive business ties to the
00:03:49.160 United States.
00:03:50.480 I'm now joined by Lorne Gunter, longtime columnist with the Edmonton Sun.
00:03:55.360 Welcome, Lorne.
00:03:56.900 Thanks very much.
00:03:58.620 So what was your reaction to the latest floor crossing and the possible impact on the leadership
00:04:03.560 of Pierre Polyev?
00:04:06.040 Well, I don't think there's any denying now that Polyev's leadership is in question, but I don't
00:04:12.360 think it's a big question.
00:04:14.020 I don't think it's a passionate question.
00:04:15.480 I think there are, as the Liberals said yesterday, there are a few more disgruntled conservative
00:04:21.980 MPs that they might be able to hive off.
00:04:25.780 But do I think this will cost Polyev his leadership review in January at the convention in Calgary?
00:04:32.800 No, I don't.
00:04:34.180 I think he's going to survive that.
00:04:36.080 Could he survive another year of this?
00:04:38.320 Probably not.
00:04:39.380 So if they have another leadership review, I think they're not scheduled for another one
00:04:42.820 until 2028, but the next time they have one, if he still has all these problems, he would
00:04:50.680 be in real trouble.
00:04:52.080 But I don't think he's in trouble this time.
00:04:55.120 Yeah.
00:04:55.720 I mean, some are suggesting that if the Liberals do peel off one more and manage to get technically
00:05:01.640 at majority status in Parliament, that that would probably be it for Polyev, I'm not sure it
00:05:09.500 would be.
00:05:10.100 But would that be a deal breaker, do you think, in terms of support for Pierre?
00:05:16.020 No, no, I don't.
00:05:17.560 I don't think so.
00:05:20.360 The Liberals probably actually need two more because the Speaker is a Liberal and so they don't
00:05:25.920 have his vote except in a tie and they probably would need two more defectors.
00:05:35.180 But it's interesting that they're getting defectors from the right rather than from the left.
00:05:41.080 They're not getting, I mean, if I was in that rump that's known as the New Democratic Party,
00:05:46.460 I might be more interested in moving over to the Liberals just so that I was in a position
00:05:52.040 to do something other than just wait for every third Tuesday to get a question in against
00:06:01.560 the government because they're not a registered party.
00:06:05.580 So it's interesting to me.
00:06:08.060 I think that the fact that these defections are coming from the right, although not from
00:06:14.400 people on the far right, but they're coming from people who are right of center is an indication
00:06:20.100 that Carney has done a better job of convincing centrist Canadians to trust the Liberals again
00:06:31.620 than Justin Trudeau ever did.
00:06:36.120 And what do you think it says about the Conservative Party and the unity of that party right now,
00:06:42.260 do you think?
00:06:43.200 Well, I think the unity is there.
00:06:46.220 I really do.
00:06:46.720 I mean, there are people who are trying to shatter that illusion.
00:06:52.300 I mean, I would have said six months ago, Doug Ford was among those people that after the
00:06:58.160 election in April that the Conservatives lost, there was every indication that Ford wanted
00:07:05.040 Polly Ebb's job. 1.00
00:07:07.000 And so, you know, he went around and say, oh, Mark Carney's a great guy.
00:07:10.300 Oh, I can deal with Mark Carney.
00:07:11.680 Oh, this is fabulous for Ontario.
00:07:16.420 You don't hear that from him as much anymore.
00:07:18.860 And his own people have said recently that he's not interested in taking over the federal
00:07:24.920 leadership.
00:07:25.540 But you have to be.
00:07:27.620 You know, you're not the premier of the biggest province in the country.
00:07:31.060 And with mandate after mandate after mandate, unless you have some ambition, the thought
00:07:38.260 has crossed his mind.
00:07:39.080 Let's put it that way.
00:07:39.920 He may not have ambition, but the thought has crossed his mind more than once that he
00:07:44.180 would be a better prime minister, a better Conservative leader than Polly Ebb would be. 1.00
00:07:48.860 I wrote a piece earlier this week about Polly Ebb's leadership when I said the unfortunate
00:07:54.980 thing is he comes across as the smartest sophomore in a university debating society.
00:08:03.020 And he doesn't strike enough people as serious, whereas Carney does.
00:08:08.440 And I think we're going to be disappointed with Carney's policies.
00:08:11.600 I think we're going to be disappointed with the administration.
00:08:14.880 They're going to rack up debt at a staggering level.
00:08:20.760 I don't think they're going to make a particularly good trade deal with the Americans.
00:08:24.740 I don't know that many of their major projects that they've sent over to their new major projects
00:08:29.440 office are actually ever going to come to anything.
00:08:31.700 I mean, they sent one very good example from New Brunswick that had already been approved
00:08:37.880 in 2017, but in the intervening years, it had not met one of its regulatory requirements.
00:08:46.500 So I think this is all show.
00:08:49.480 And I think in the end, people are going to be disappointed in Mark Carney.
00:08:54.380 But right now, he looks like a much more serious prime minister.
00:08:58.480 He looks far more prime ministerial than Polyev does.
00:09:02.260 And I think that's what Polyev is suffering from.
00:09:04.760 Well, I mean, he's doing a great job as opposition leader.
00:09:07.600 And in a way, you can almost make the case that he's a victim of his own success as far
00:09:11.520 as doing that.
00:09:12.800 We saw what he did to Trudeau.
00:09:15.880 But unfortunately, you could do such a good job catching the government off guard, which
00:09:23.040 is his job.
00:09:23.980 But you could do such a good job that it may pigeonhole you in that role.
00:09:27.980 I think it has pigeonholed him.
00:09:30.580 And there's a reason he was Stephen Harper's attack dog.
00:09:36.380 It's because the leader himself shouldn't be seen to be doing that.
00:09:41.520 So Polyev may be a very effective soundbite opposition leader.
00:09:46.100 But he's got to find himself in someone else who can then go and take over his job of zinging
00:09:55.200 the liberals.
00:09:56.620 The liberals need to be zinged. 0.71
00:09:58.780 I have no problem with that.
00:10:00.600 But it ought not to be the leader of the opposition most of the time.
00:10:05.220 It needs to be some younger person or some lesser individual in the party who gets to do that.
00:10:14.100 Because that attitude and that function irritates a lot of voters.
00:10:19.820 And so I think he's irritating people while he's doing a good job.
00:10:24.020 Well, he's certainly irritating the liberals.
00:10:28.040 Yeah.
00:10:28.560 I mean, he's got their number, which is, I think, great.
00:10:32.580 It certainly makes question period even more entertaining.
00:10:36.420 Yeah, so he should be writing these things down on notepapers and having them sent over
00:10:41.140 to somebody three seats down from him who then gets up and says,
00:10:46.020 Oh, Mr. Speaker, you know, and send in one of those zingers that Polyev is really good at.
00:10:53.780 So maybe he needs a little bit more gray hair.
00:10:56.980 You remember how much more gray hair Harper got, you know, as he stayed in his position
00:11:04.020 as leader of the opposition.
00:11:06.000 And then slowly he became.
00:11:07.760 Right.
00:11:08.620 He looked older, looked wilder.
00:11:11.140 He looked more avuncular and kind of.
00:11:15.300 It's gravitas.
00:11:16.400 Yes, gravitas.
00:11:17.440 Stephen got gravitas is what happened.
00:11:21.320 But you're bringing up Stephen brings up another point.
00:11:25.800 And it is that Michael Ma, who is the most recent floor crosser, 0.98
00:11:30.540 I think is a bigger blow to the conservatives than Chris Dantremont,
00:11:35.600 who crossed a few weeks ago.
00:11:38.620 Dantremont came from a Nova Scotia ride.
00:11:40.380 It was the only riding in the in the province that was conservative.
00:11:45.040 It's from a region where nobody expects conservatives.
00:11:47.820 So is it as big a deal?
00:11:49.960 No, I don't think it is.
00:11:51.700 But Ma is from Markham Unionville, which is right in the core of the 905.
00:11:58.240 And if you're going to we don't use the term 905 as much as we used to.
00:12:02.400 But that's the ring of suburban ridings around Toronto, where if the conservatives are going
00:12:08.560 to have any chance of winning a majority government, they have to just about sweep the 905.
00:12:16.220 And Harper did in the 2011 election where he got his majority.
00:12:20.260 He had almost swept that entire ring around Toronto.
00:12:24.960 And so for Paulyev to lose an MP from that ring is, I think, a bigger blow than losing Nova Scotia's one and only conservative MP.
00:12:38.220 Yeah, I would I can see that.
00:12:42.080 And there are issues around Ma as well.
00:12:45.540 I mean, he's a rookie MP.
00:12:47.680 He hadn't been there that long.
00:12:49.480 Right.
00:12:49.860 So it appears that, you know, this was purely exploitive on his part.
00:12:56.580 You know, he took advantage of a situation and he made the jump.
00:13:01.640 And, you know, you really have to question the level of loyalty he had with the party, even though I know for a fact, based on people who were on the inside, he banged hard on the conservative party door in order to let the party, you know, run in that riding.
00:13:17.100 And so here he is making the jump.
00:13:18.680 So there will no doubt be some backlash against Mr. Ma.
00:13:22.700 And there already is some backlash.
00:13:24.060 Well, any time you cross the floor, which Winston Churchill used to call ratting, any time you rat, you build up animosity from the people you left.
00:13:38.040 And rightly so.
00:13:41.400 Merry Christmas defector.
00:13:43.440 That's apparently what one of the conservatives who left behind said to him as he went out the door.
00:13:51.300 So there is going to be some animosity there.
00:13:54.220 Will Ma get something from the liberals in return?
00:13:57.520 I don't know.
00:13:58.240 But the thing about this that bothers me most is not whether or not it's affecting Polyev's leadership or the effect on the conservative party.
00:14:07.720 It's the fact that these floor crossers are just about to give to the liberals what they want most, which is a majority, which voters didn't give them in April. 1.00
00:14:21.240 How is it that three or four or five disgruntled, disloyal, ambitious people who move across from the conservatives to the liberals can change what it is that Canadians wanted from their parliament?
00:14:37.520 You know, there would have been an election next year if the liberals didn't get a majority.
00:14:42.920 There's still, as we're talking, one or two seats shy of that.
00:14:48.420 But if they get those, then there won't be an election until 2029.
00:14:54.920 Yeah, it would be a pretty thin, I mean, unless you have mass exodus from the Tories, it's unlikely.
00:15:04.120 I mean, even if he gets another seat, you know, to your point, he's going to need another one on top of that.
00:15:10.860 I also want to ask you about this poll because this looks like it is good news for Polyev and the conservatives.
00:15:16.540 This was conducted for the Toronto Star by Abacus.
00:15:18.860 And it finds the liberals and Tories tied at 41%, but it also finds that Carney's negatives are starting to creep up now, rising four points to 35%.
00:15:31.500 Now, you still have 45% with a positive view of him, but this may be around the whole issue of affordability.
00:15:40.280 Canadians are still suffering here.
00:15:41.940 Well, and Polyev is still underwater, meaning that his disapproval is higher than his approval.
00:15:48.860 Carney is still above water, that his approval is higher than his disapproval.
00:15:54.000 But there are cracks in the visage with Carney.
00:16:00.240 You can see where over time, if they don't deal with housing affordability, if they can't bring grocery prices down,
00:16:09.540 if, you know, they end up with a lot of major projects that don't get completed because they spend too much time on reconciliation and not enough time on construction,
00:16:24.340 you can see where people are going to be disappointed.
00:16:26.540 I think people are already disappointed with Carney over the fact that he can't deal with Trump.
00:16:31.060 Because if you remember, in the run-up to the April 28th election, he's Mr. Elbows Up, and he's the only one who can really deal with Trump and take him on and get the good deal for...
00:16:43.120 Well, isn't there any of that?
00:16:44.560 In fact, it looks...
00:16:46.620 Every time he goes to Washington and says, oh, Mr. Trump, you're one of the greatest presidents in history, that rankles me.
00:16:55.680 I mean, I don't believe that Donald Trump is a great president.
00:16:58.220 And I know you have to kiss his ring if you want to get anywhere, but Carney just looks weak on the whole Trump thing.
00:17:08.140 And I think people are going to get tired of that.
00:17:10.200 They're going to wonder not whether we can get an agreement.
00:17:13.280 When the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement comes up for renegotiations next year, I don't trust the liberals to get us even as good a deal as Justin Trudeau and Christopher Freeland got us back in 2018.
00:17:31.340 And I didn't think that was a particularly good deal.
00:17:33.620 The best NAFTA we've ever had was the first NAFTA.
00:17:37.960 And the second NAFTA was, okay, and I think what we're going to get out of Carney and Trump is the worst.
00:17:48.260 Could be.
00:17:49.520 But now we do have a new ambassador that's been announced now.
00:17:53.640 He's an approved by cabinet, Mark Wiseman, an advocate for wide open immigration.
00:17:59.460 This is also a guy who, interestingly enough, has been a harsh critic of supply management.
00:18:04.760 Yes.
00:18:05.280 And the regulated dairy industry, and he's going to be a key point man on these trade negotiations.
00:18:12.400 How do you see that playing out?
00:18:14.020 Well, you've seen already that this memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta over building a pipeline to the West Coast, pipeline that doesn't go through Quebec, has already begun to affect the liberals' fortunes in Quebec.
00:18:29.540 There are so many of their voters who are against pipelines, period.
00:18:35.180 They don't care where this pipeline is going.
00:18:37.500 It doesn't matter if it's not going through Quebec.
00:18:39.420 They're against it.
00:18:40.700 So they've got problems in Quebec based on the pipeline.
00:18:44.360 Well, if Wiseman gets his way in negotiations and they start to go after supply management, supply management in dairy is 50% in Quebec.
00:18:54.540 Supply management in all sorts of other things, like pork and eggs, they're huge in Quebec.
00:19:03.200 If you took away supply management from dairy farmers, you would lose Quebec.
00:19:08.780 They have 44 seats there.
00:19:10.980 I can't imagine them holding more than 15 or 20 of them if they get rid of supply management.
00:19:18.560 So I think it's fun.
00:19:20.360 It's fun to watch.
00:19:23.120 It'll be interesting to see how this guy Wiseman negotiates that relationship.
00:19:28.620 It was interesting also to hear from Hillman, who was leaving, the outgoing woman, saying, you know, you've got to build ties with Trump.
00:19:36.520 And he was kind of complimentary towards Trump in some of her comments in the Globe and Mail saying, you know, Trump has been pretty consistent when it comes to his relationship with Canada.
00:19:45.580 And you've got to, you know, build these relationships with the Trump administration if you want to get a deal.
00:19:51.960 Anyway.
00:19:52.720 I think she was an underrated ambassador for us. 1.00
00:19:55.420 I think she was very, very good in a quiet sort of backstage kind of way.
00:20:05.100 We'll have to see what happens.
00:20:06.520 In 2026.
00:20:07.500 Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:20:09.200 We appreciate that very much.
00:20:10.400 Very good.
00:20:12.060 Lauren is with the Edmonton Sun.
00:20:14.680 You can read his terrific columns in the pages of that fine publication.
00:20:18.860 And that is it for this edition.
00:20:22.140 Thanks for tuning in.
00:20:23.300 We'll do it again real soon, shall we?
00:20:24.780 Bye-bye for now.