In Trump's shadow
Reflections on Canada's 2025 federal election — and a historically bad night for its electoral left
(Note: I finished this piece yesterday, but since it was too late in the day to publish I decided to hold off until this morning. So to those who read on and are wondering about the various references to “last night”, that’s the explanation…)
Results continue to trickle in from last night’s federal election, but a few hours after midnight the final picture was basically clear. Mark Carney and the Liberals have won, but have also failed to secure a majority. The Conservatives made more gains than many people expected, but their leader Pierre Poilievre suffered the indignity of losing the Ottawa-area seat he’s held since 2004. As far as the New Democratic Party is concerned, the result is calamitous (of which more shortly).
If the Bloc Quebecois had fared even slightly less well in a handful of seats, Mark Carney would be entering Parliament with a more or less impregnable four year mandate. Without a majority, however, the stability this election was meant to offer — at least to those who backed the Liberals — is not going to be. Much of Carney’s popular appeal has rested in the technocratic promise to make politics go away for awhile. After last night’s vote it’s abundantly clear that, whatever else, they are very much here to stay.
I’ll definitely be writing more on this election (on Substack and elsewhere) and its aftermath in the weeks ahead. For now, here’s my quick take on things from last night’s stream at The Breach and my appearance on The Majority Report the next morning — the relevant parts should be timestamped so you don’t have to scroll through it — followed by some top line reflections on what happened and what the election’s outcome will mean.
1) In responding to Trump’s threats, the Canadian electorate has inadvertently Americanized Canadian politics
As I’ve written here, and argued in various interviews throughout the past few months, this election has played out almost entirely in the shadow of Donald Trump. Its dynamics owe themselves largely to his trade war and his annexationist rhetoric, and its results must be interpreted with this in mind.
But in an election where millions of Canadians rallied behind the Liberals in the wake of Trump’s threats, there’s a tragic irony to its outcome that shouldn’t be missed. To a greater extent than ever before, the coming Parliament will resemble a US-style duopoly — with only about 30 of the 343 MPs hailing from parties other than the Liberals or the Conservatives. While the Conservative Party has been refashioned by a new right faction represented by Poilievre, the Liberals have also shifted rightward under Carney, distancing themselves from even the modestly centre-leftish parts of the Trudeau project.
The result is not just a political duopoly, but a distinctly Americanized one. A party of the new right facing off against a right-leaning centrist alternative that is socially liberal but economically conservative? We’ve seen this movie somewhere before.
2a) There’s no sugar coating it: last night was a disaster for the NDP
Shortly before the NDP’s founding in 1961, its predecessor the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was wiped out in the 1958 federal election. Its well-respected leader M.J. Coldwell lost his own Saskatchewan seat, and no less than the stalwart MP Stanley Knowles went down in Winnipeg North Centre. To veteran CCF-ers, it was an all-too familiar experience. Formed with tremendous hopes in the depths of the Great Depression, its fortunes had periodically risen and fallen — with each advance swiftly tempered by a fresh dose of disappointment or defeat. In 1944, the CCF very nearly came to power in industrial Ontario and the following year it looked poised to form a national government before a sweeping and well-financed campaign of red-baiting effectively checked its advance.
Throughout its own roughly 64-year history, the NDP has similarly known plenty of defeats and electoral disappointments. Just after creating North America’s first system of universal health insurance in Saskatchewan and defeating the powerful doctors’ lobby that opposed it, its first leader Tommy Douglas went down to defeat in a province he’d led as premier for over 15 years. After the 1972 election, his successor David Lewis used the party’s leverage in a minority parliament to secure comprehensive campaign finance reform, major investments in housing and Old Age Security, and the partial nationalization of the energy sector. His reward in the subsequent election was a caucus half the size and the loss of his own Toronto seat. Having achieved the best ever result for parliamentary social democracy since its first electoral outing in 1935 in 1988, the NDP lost official party status just five years later and was reduced from 43 seats to 9.
By historical standards, however, last night’s outcome represents the single worst electoral result in the history of Canadian social democracy. In its first effort back in 1935, the CCF failed to make the gains it hoped for but nonetheless received the votes of nearly 1-in-10 people. In 1958 it similarly won 8 seats with 9.50% of the popular vote. 1993’s historic low of 6.88% yielded a caucus of 9 MPs.1
As things stand, the NDP looks to have elected 7 MPs last night. It has lost official party status, secured about 6.3% of the vote — once again, that’s the lowest vote share for a social democratic party in history — and seen its (now outgoing) leader Jagmeet Singh defeated in British Columbia.
In the coming weeks and months, there will doubtless be plenty of discussion about what exactly went wrong (and I plan to write a more on this point myself). Throughout its history, the NDP has also managed to achieve plenty despite never wielding federal power and, after the 2021 election, did extract a number of measures from the Trudeau Liberals — among them a free dental program for low-income people and anti-scab legislation in the public sector.
I’ll soon have more to say on the NDP’s deal with the Liberals. But, whatever you think of the gains extracted, the extent of last night’s drubbing needs to be recognized. On a personal note, it was particularly devastating to watch fantastic MPs like Matthew Green and Niki Ashton (among plenty of others) lose their seats. Parliament is now without some of its most principled voices, and plenty of excellent NDP candidates who stood for the first time.
2b) …but it will recover
With every ebb in NDP support, no matter the decade, predictable parts of the Canadian commentariat have sung the same, tired refrain. Since I started following politics as a young teenager, I’ve seen countless think pieces and would-be eulogies positing questions like “Does Canada really need two progressive parties?” (the other, ostensibly being the Liberals).
To some extent, there’s an opportunism to such pieces. Even at its most cautious and moderate, sections of the Canadian establishment would simply rather not have to tolerate the presence of a social democratic party in the House of Commons. But there’s often a genuine lack of understanding at work as well. Commentators who know nothing about either social democracy or the labour movement are liable to think they’re simply extensions of some mushy “progressivism” which, if different from the Liberals, is different in degree rather than kind. That just isn’t true. The tradition broadly called social democracy (or democratic socialism) has a different analysis than liberalism and different aspirations from it as well.
In any case, last night’s election occurred under unprecedented circumstances and in the shadow of an exceptional moment that will never be repeated. The NDP will recover soon enough, because there are millions of Canadians responsive to the message of social democracy. Whatever else, its sinews run deep throughout many parts of the country and it has persisted as an electoral force since the 1930s for a reason.
Since this post is at risk of becoming one entirely about the NDP, I think I’ll leave things there for now. A dedicated piece will be coming soon, and I’m also considering writing a series over the next few months exploring the history of the social democratic left in Canada, and what we can learn from its various successes and failures. Stay tuned.
3) Ultimately, no one is very happy about this outcome
Throughout most of this election, the Liberals under Mark Carney seemed to have the kind of momentum that typically precedes an electoral landslide. Until results began to solidify in Atlantic Canada last night, I personally believed they’d win at least 200 seats — surpassing Justin Trudeau’s majority victory in 2015. Winning a minority government instead is bound to be personally frustrating for Carney, who I’m sure has been relishing the prospect of governing in a managerial fashion for the next 4 years without having to worry about the intricacies of parliamentary politics. Instead, Carney will soon take his seat in a House of Commons where his government theoretically has the potential to fall at any moment.
As far as the Conservatives are concerned, they have managed to blow a stable polling lead in the double digits and have yet again been relegated to opposition. The loss of Poilievre’s seat is genuinely surprising, and it’s unclear what’s going to happen next. Without a seat in Parliament, he is forbidden by its Standing Orders to act as Leader of the Opposition — meaning he will most likely be compelled to appoint an interim leader to serve in his place and convince a just-elected MP somewhere to resign their seat so he can personally reenter Parliament through a by-election.
4) The coming Conservative turf war will likely be vicious
Many Conservatives will be deeply frustrated by this election result, and the party’s recent history has seen it swiftly discard two leaders who failed to break through. Poilievre’s position is weakened by his loss in Carleton, but also strengthened by the overall Tory result.
Anecdotally, I have a fair bit of triumphalism today about the Conservatives being crushed. But they weren’t! In fact, notwithstanding Poilievre’s personal defeat, they have won the second most seats in their modern history (the CPC was created in 2003 from the merger of two smaller right-leaning parties) and the biggest share of the popular vote for any Conservative party since 1988. Stephen Harper won more seats in 2011, but it was on a vote share of less than 40%. With just over 41% of the popular vote, Poilievre can reasonably lay claim to be one of the most successful right wing politicians in Canada since the latter part of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, it’s been evident for weeks that an internecine Conservative conflict is looming. Ontario’s Doug Ford and Nova Scotia’s Tim Houston refrained from campaigning with Poilievre, and the former at least passively endorsed the Liberals. To some extent, there’s a genuine political schism reflected here: both Ford and Houston hail from a more traditional kind of machine politics (for what it’s worth, Houston is also widely rumoured to have federal leadership ambitions). Ford especially is a much more transactional and less ideologically-driven figure than Poilievre — something the latter’s more right wing faction clearly views with contempt.
Among the most astonishing spectacles last night was that of re-elected Conservative MP Jamil Jivani (incidentally a friend of JD Vance) laying into Ford. It’s often said that the left is needlessly petty and factional. But I invite anyone who is under the impression those qualities are confined to one side of the political spectrum to take a gander at the interview I’ve embedded above.
In an election day interview for Politico, Doug Ford seemed to at least partly put the schism between himself and Poilievre down to a beef involving Tory campaign manager Jenni Byrne (his own campaign manager Kory Teneycke, for what it’s worth was vocally critical of Poilievre throughout the campaign).
Effectively, Canada’s conservatives are about to undertake a fearsome turf war on the heels of one of the Conservative Party’s best ever electoral results. Whatever else, it’s going to be interesting to see how things play out.
5) RIP the PPC, and a quick note on the other parties
The far right People’s Party, founded and led by former Tory Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier, was shut out of Parliament in both 2019 and 2021 but in the latter still received nearly 5% of the popular vote. This, it seems, was entirely down to pandemic politics. Last night, Bernier once again got crushed in his former seat of Beauce and the PPC got a paltry 0.7% of the overall vote. The PPC might have represented a genuine threat, but like plenty of other efforts in the same vein has proven too personality-driven and quixotic to really go anywhere. Good riddance.
Good riddance is also in order for another overhyped party-of-one. The so-called Canadian Future Party, led by the oddball Tony Blair fanboy and former New Brunswick NDP leader turned provincial Conservative cabinet minister, has gotten a decent amount of press coverage with its dull centrist message and deservedly has nothing to show for it. Its 19 candidates got only 3,172 votes combined — less than the Christian Heritage and Rhinoceros parties. What can you even say? Only Dominic Cardy could have convinced himself the country needed another centrist vehicle preaching a bland gospel of “moderation.”
The Greens, who have struggled to become much more than a personal vehicle for their longtime leader Elizabeth May (re-elected in her BC seat last night) ended up losing their only other beachhead in Kitchener Centre. I’ve personally never had time for the Greens, but their defeated MP Mike Morrice seems like a genuinely decent guy. So, too, does the party’s co-leader Jonathan Pedneault — who suffered a tough loss in the Quebec riding of Outremont. I’ve actually followed Pedneault somewhat during his brief stint in politics and, party aside, he really does seem like the kind of person we’d be lucky to have in Parliament.
I have nothing particularly interesting to add about the Bloc Québécois, but it will be interesting to see whether Carney tries to rely on their votes in the minority situation ahead.
6) This electoral map won’t hold — and Canada will be doing this again soon enough
As a final note, it’s worth registering how crazy Canada’s electoral map now looks. The safest NDP seats in the country are now Edmonton-Strathcona and Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie on the island of Montreal. The Conservatives hold every seat in industrial Windsor and both seats in Oshawa. The Liberals, improbably, were given a run for their money in Atlantic Canada.
I suspect none of this will hold in the long term. Canada now, unexpectedly, has a minority Parliament with the potential for real volatility. The viability of Carney’s appeal beyond the one-in-a-million election cycle that’s just concluded is unclear, as is how the Liberals plan to manage the ongoing trade war without the majority they’d banked on to (among other things) advance their somewhat cryptic agenda of cuts.
Regardless, we definitely won’t be waiting 4 years for the next election.
In each of these elections, moreover, Parliament had many fewer seats than it has today. In 1935, for example, there were only 245 seats in total — meaning the CCF’s caucus of 7 made up a greater share of the House overall.