Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt
Chrystia Freeland appears to have developed a knack for making career moves that shake up Liberal governments.
A little more than a year since the former finance minister dramatically exited Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, triggering his departure and a whole new Liberal era, Freeland’s announced plans to step down as an MP have set things in motion for an imminent shakeup of Mark Carney’s caucus.
Carney admitted as much on Tuesday when he said Freeland would be replaced when byelections — note the plural — are held.
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“There’ll be a few byelections coming up, and we’ll run great candidates,” Carney told reporters travelling with him in Paris.
Clearly Carney knows of more vacancies coming up in the Commons than the official standings show, which, for the record, is zero at present. With that one off-the-cuff sentence, the prime minister has reignited speculation about who else is in line to leave the Liberal benches for greener pastures.
Freeland, by saying she would leave in the “coming weeks,” to take up a post as an adviser to the Ukrainian government, gives a deadline to all that speculation. So if we were talking about Carney adding to his caucus with floor-crossers before the holiday break, now we are now looking at the Liberals shedding some MPs.
What this does to Carney’s tendency to govern as though he has a majority — he’s one seat shy — adds a whole other layer of unpredictable to this Parliament.
Throughout the fall, news reports have said former defence minister Bill Blair and former natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson — both dropped from Carney’s cabinet — were in line for diplomatic posts. Neither man has confirmed those reports, nor have they denied them.
Meanwhile, Nate Erskine-Smith said in a New Year’s post that he is building a team for the Ontario Liberal leadership race, although he hasn’t quite officially leaped in yet. The last time he ran for that job he stayed on as an MP in Ottawa, but it’s been an up-and-down year for Erskine-Smith during the transition from Trudeau to Carney.
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He has also mused in the past about packing it in as an MP but when I asked him on Tuesday whether his Beaches-East York riding might be among the byelections looming, he said simply, “I plan to keep serving.”
Over on the Conservative benches, Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux has said he’s stepping down too, although he has yet to tender an official resignation. Still, one assumes that if Carney is getting ready to call multiple byelections, that Edmonton seat would be among them.
So that’s as many as five seats that could be in play. But could there be others too?
The fact that we now are staring down so many byelections less than a year after a general election speaks to the fact that this Parliament has had a transitional feel to it.
It’s kind of a mix of old and new, the same larger power dynamics with a Liberal minority and strong Conservative opposition as was the case before the election. But there are enough differences that it’s a mistake to assume it will work like the Parliaments after the 2019 and 2021 elections.
Many Conservative MPs fully expected to be on the governing side of the House after last year’s election. A good question, and one that Liberal emissaries have been exploring, is whether there are some among them who will turn that disappointment into a floor-crossing, as Michael Ma did shortly before the holidays.
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Many Liberal MPs, on the other hand, likely started last year pretty sure that their governing days were behind them. The adjustment from Trudeau to Carney hasn’t been entirely smooth, as we saw with Steven Guilbault’s departure from cabinet and persistent reports of unease within Liberal ranks about a perceived retreat from progressivism.
So there will be questions about who else may follow Freeland’s example and decide it’s time to turn the page on their political careers. Carney, by talking about multiple byelections on Tuesday, only gives fuel to those queries.
Many who lived through the tumultuous past year in Canadian politics are probably hoping this new year will be a more stable one. But the fact that 2026 isn’t a week old yet and we’re already seeing byelections needing to be called means stability hasn’t yet come to this Parliament.
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