Canadian Commons Member Lori Idlout last week became the fourth party member since November to jump from the NDP to Mark Carney's Liberals.
This is the direct result of one thing, and that is taking a year — yes, a year! — to elect a new party leader since the disastrous early 2025 election result that forced the resignation of Jagmeet Singh as party leader.
That, in turn, was its own stupidity, prefigured by Singh having the NDP enter into a "service and supply lite" agreement with the Liberals under Justin Trudeau and getting basically nothing in return. More about that from me here.
The first link notes that Canada has by-elections for three ridings on April 13. If Carney wins two, with the four defections, the Liberals have a majority not a plurality. And, that is expected to be likely.
Technically, it will be 10 months, not a full year, as the NDP is currently in the middle of a three-week election process. But, you couldn't schedule this for earlier, when Singh resigned as party leader in May 2025 after the April election? You couldn't decide to move it up when you started having a defector problem?
I'm not sure which is worse, the NDP taking nearly a year for this, or Britain's Your Party defectors from Labour doing the same even as British Greens eat their lunch.
I mean, a theoretical selling point of parliamentary government is its flexibility. Delays like this totally undercut that.
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