Walk this way!  …singing, hey diddle diddle with the NDP in the middle…

Rumours are bouncing around that a number of NDP MPs are looking at potentially crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party of Canada and give Mark Carney the majority he is looking for. The final count for the Liberal Party was that they finished with 169 seats, a mere three seats short of the number needed to claim majority and not have to work with other parties to create a workable mandate.

From the NDP perspective, I sort of get it. After all, Singh lost in his own riding, the party no longer enjoys Official Party Status and all the accoutrements that come along with this (the biggest one being money), and the party is rumoured to be bankrupt. From an individual’s perspective, crossing the floor gives them four years of employment (beyond that may be more murky as many will say “I didn’t vote for that”), and if you are amongst the first to cross, your bargaining position (cabinet position) can enhance your political lot in life fairly materially. If this were to occur it will happen quickly as the law of diminishing returns happens exponentially faster should you be the fourth to cross the line (maybe the Lizzy will join the race!)

From the Liberal perspective, I’m not as convinced the benefits are as transparent, from a nation building perspective. Sure, you get the majority (and thus mandate) you wish to pursue, but you truly would be thumbing your nose at Canada when you know that many NDP votes metaphorically crossed the floor to vote during the election (likely without the foresight that it would result in the death of their party), and that the country is actually pretty evenly split between the Liberals and Conservatives. Language like “now is the time for Canada to unite” and “we need a strong mandate to make Canada strong, and now we have it” could be thrown around, but that can create real fractures should that occur.

Personally, I am hoping that Prime Minister Carney says no to any floor crossers, and works to bridge the divides that are significant within this country. There is no reason that Canada cannot be one of the greatest countries, other than getting in the way of ourselves. Now is the time for olive branches, not cactus areoles.

Sam Cooper

In striking remarks delivered days after Canada’s federal election, former longtime Liberal MP John McKay suggested that threats from President Donald Trump helped propel Prime Minister Mark Carney to power—and warned that Canada is entering a period of “existential” uncertainty. He likened the threat posed by Trump’s second term to the peril Taiwan faces from China’s Xi Jinping.

“This was the most consequential election of my lifetime,” said McKay, who did not seek re-election this year after serving as a Liberal MP since 1997. “I would always say, ‘This is the most important election of your lifetime,’ and usually I was right. But this time—I was really right. This one was existential.”

Explaining his assertion, McKay added: “I was thinking of the alienating and irritating comments by a certain president that Canada should become the 51st state. We should actually send President Trump a thank-you card for his stimulus to Canadian patriotism, which has manifested itself in so many different ways. Who knew that shopping at Loblaws would become a patriotic act?”

The Toronto-area MP, who has made several visits to Taiwan over the past two decades, drew a controversial comparison between how Taiwan faces the constant threat of invasion and how Canada is now confronting an increasingly unreliable United States under the influence of Trump-era nationalism.

McKay was the first speaker at an event co-hosted by the Government of Taiwan and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, focused on the People’s Republic of China’s growing use of “lawfare”—legal and bureaucratic tactics designed to pressure Western governments into accepting Beijing’s One China Policy and denying Taiwan’s sovereignty. While China’s claims over Taiwan may appear to have gained tacit acceptance at the United Nations, U.S. expert Bonnie Glaser later clarified that Beijing’s position is far from settled law. The issue, she said, remains open to interpretation by individual governments and is shaped by evolving geopolitical interests. Glaser, a leading authority on Indo-Pacific strategy, added that subtle but meaningful shifts during both the first and second Trump administrations are signaling a quiet departure from Beijing’s legal framing.

“Our institutions are being bullied—that they will be denied involvement with the U.N. unless they accept that Taiwan is a province of China,” Glaser said.

McKay, framing most of his comments on the past election, argued Canadians now face subtle but real consequences when engaging with American products and institutions. He argued that Canada can no longer assume the United States will act as a reliable partner on defense or foreign policy. “Maybe a few weeks or months ago, we could still count on the security umbrella of the United States,” he said. “That is no longer true—and the Prime Minister has made that abundantly clear.”

Predicting that Prime Minister Mark Carney “may be a very unpopular politician within six months,” McKay warned Canadians to prepare for a period of sacrifice and difficult decisions: “We’re not used to asserting our sovereignty. Taiwan lives that reality every single day.”

Citing Canada’s pivot toward new defense arrangements—including the recent purchase of over-the-horizon radar from Australia instead of the United States—McKay said the country is entering a new era of security realignment. “New alliances, new consequences, new changes,” he said. “This will create some real disturbing issues.”

He contrasted China’s strategic approach with the erratic behavior of the United States under Trump: “President Xi conducts the trade war like a chess match—methodical, searching for new alliances. Our supposed security partner conducts it like flip-gut,” McKay said, referring to a children’s game he plays with his grandchildren. “Sometimes the piece turns over, sometimes it falls off the table. But the one guarantee is—there is no guarantee.”

Another speaker, Professor Scott Simon of the University of Ottawa, took a far sharper stance on Beijing’s role in the increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, describing China as part of a “new axis of evil” engaged in cognitive warfare targeting both Taiwan and Canada.

“We have to be part of the alliance of good,” Simon said. “China is part of that axis of evil. We have to be honest about that.”

Drawing on recent global crises—including the war in Ukraine and the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel—Simon argued that democracies like Canada have lulled themselves into a false sense of security by believing that trade and engagement would neutralize authoritarian threats.

“For the past 40 years, we’ve been very complacent,” he said.

Expanding on Beijing’s tactics, Simon said: “They’re active against the Philippines, South Korea, Japan—and Taiwan is only part of it. What they’re using now is a combination of military threats—what we often call gray zone operations—but also cognitive and psychological warfare, as well as lawfare. And they use these techniques not just in Taiwan, but in Canada. And so Canada has to be a part of countering that lawfare.”