Prime Minister Mark Carney greets supporters after his speech at the Liberal national convention in Montreal on Saturday.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images
The buzz at the Liberal convention over the weekend was all about floor-crossers.
On Friday morning, there was a rumour circulating that Prime Minister Mark Carney would show up unexpectedly to unveil another, freshly recruited Conservative to follow the surprise defection of Marilyn Gladu. Later, there was scuttlebutt that Mr. Carney might show up on Saturday with two or three.
It didn’t happen. And it wasn’t all that crucial, anyway. Mr. Carney’s government is already on the cusp of a majority government, only one seat short in the House of Commons and all but guaranteed to win two of the three by-elections to be held on Monday.
Yet for the party faithful in Montreal, the more than 4,000 Liberal delegates, the floor-crossers are badges of success. Some didn’t see the social-conservative Ms. Gladu as a great catch, but for the most part there is an almost giddy joy at seeing MPs cross the floor to the Liberals. They pine for a by-election win in Terrebonne, too. They’re euphoric with the feeling they’re winning everything and everyone.
Mr. Carney leaned into it. In his speech Saturday afternoon, he told the party faithful that there is a groundswell moving Canadians across party lines to join the Liberal mission.
“In the past year, 300,000 new people have joined the Liberal Party. Canadians who voted for other parties in the past now put their trust in us for the future. And that’s in all the provinces and territories of Canada,” he said.
“MPs have switched sides to join our team. They understand the importance of what is at stake.”
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It’s certainly not new to hear Mr. Carney assert that the country is in a crucial, watershed period that demands societal ambition. But at his first Liberal convention as prime minister, he was crowing over success.
There was a we-did-it note of triumph. He walked in to a rock star’s reception and told Liberals that their party had been quick to understand the changes the country faced from a changed United States and changing world and galvanized a new nationalism that was building a more independent country.
And he tied that nationalism to people “choosing a wine from Okanagan over one from California” or taking a vacation in Prince Edward Island instead of Florida. He all but declared Liberal ownership of the new era of Canadian nationalism.
The Liberal crowd cheered loudest at the expressions of implicitly anti-Donald Trump nationalism. It’s still strange to hear Liberals cheer increased defence spending, but the cheers were loudest when Mr. Carney said Canada’s military will no longer send 70 per cent of every dollar to the United States.
It was also exorbitantly self-congratulatory for a one-year-old government. Mr. Carney’s speech took a lot of his government’s promises and process-in-progress and made them sound like results, as if the 125,000 promised jobs from the government’s announced defence-industrial strategy were already people hired.
That’s not really shocking at a partisan convention. The speech, like much of the convention, was full of rah-rah Liberal pom-pom shaking. And a touch of Liberal hubris creeping back in.
Former Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, the most recent of five floor-crossers, is pictured at the Liberal convention on Saturday.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Gerald Butts, who served as former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary, once said that arrogance is the Liberal kryptonite. At this convention, one could sense Liberals were again starting to feel the urge to grasp the kryptonite with both hands.
The convention program itself was mostly a plastic spectacle, with MPs and ministers interviewing other MPs and ministers on panels, with no questions from ordinary Liberals on the floor.
The politician panelists were often eager to work in crowd-pleasing applause lines (Sample: “Who loves Canada?”) and made delegates hoot at the many mentions of Mr. Carney’s celebrated speech in Davos earlier this year.
Collectively, it was a scene of Liberals patting themselves on the back for being on top again. One delegate made buttons with a picture of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre beneath the headline, “Please stay,” and another with a 2026 Bingo card that showed a row of five blue (Conservative) chips turned (Liberal) red, with the label “majority” at the end.
There were other notes. Mr. Carney spoke about Canadians serving their country in a crucial time, with a brief warning that “the path we’ve chosen is hard.”
But overall Mr. Carney and the Liberals spent the weekend in a swaggering mood. The prime minister didn’t bring another floor-crosser but suggested much of the country is joining them.
A year after the general election, the Liberals were on the brink of a majority, and already celebrating victory.