As massive Carney majority looms, NDP seeks counter-strategy

By Tom Parkin

April 2nd, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Projections put Carney’s Liberals at 203 seats, 87 ahead of Poilievre — and free of a strong NDP opposition.

In normal times, socialists voting for capitalist archetype Mark Carney would be an absurd idea, but that’s exactly what some left-wing voters are contemplating for Canada’s April 28 election.

The shift has drained support for Jagmeet Singh’s social democratic NDP despite announcements highlighting Carney’s problematic corporate behaviour and his current conservative leanings.

While Carney was board chair of investment bank Brookfield Asset Management the company persued “opportunistic real estate [purchases] in order to take advantage of the stress in the market,” and helped Canadian investors dodge taxes using Caribbean tax haven accounts directly overseen by Carney.

On becoming Liberal leader, Carney adopted several core Conservative positions including cancelling a planned tax inclusion increase on those making capital gains over $250,000 a year, ending the consumer carbon tax, stalling pharmacare, and unspecified cuts to “slay” the deficit, positions left-wing Canadians would usually recoil from.

Some left-wing voters considering lesser evil

But for many left-wing voters, Carney is the lesser evil to Pierre Poilievre, who rode the anti-vaxx movement to a Conservative leadership win then tried to ride Trump’s tailwinds to the prime minister’s office.

Even as Trump threatened to annex Canada, Poilievre’s biggest January media push was a long sit-down with Jordan Peterson, the Trump supporting identitarian who recently moved to MAGA-land to protest Canada.

The event earned the endorsement of Elon Musk, also widely despised by left-wing Canadians.

The left-wing lesser-evil movement has driven down NDP support. But with a massive Carney majority the new threat, in the next four weeks Singh may yet be able to move left-wing voters back to the NDP by offering his party as a hedge against Carney’s conservative leanings.

Lower support, inefficient vote puts Poilievre 87 seats behind Carney

The CBC’s poll tracker currently shows Poilievre’s Conservatives 5.8 points behind Carney’s Liberals. But what counts are seats, and the Conservatives’ bad vote inefficiency compounds their losses.

Conservative candidates pile-up big wins in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba ridings. But winning a seat with 45 per cent support or 75 per cent is still just winning one seat.

In both 2019 and 2021, the Conservatives received about 200,000 more votes than the Liberals but both times won about 35 fewer seats.

Current projections show the Liberals beating Poilievre by 87 seats, a bigger gap that 2021, 2019 or 2015.

The Liberals are currently projected to win 203 seats and the Conservatives 116, down three seats from Erin O’Toole’s 2021 result.

Threat of big Carney majority allows NDP strategy shift

The red flags Singh has been planting about Brookfield and Carney’s conservative leanings may yet pay off as the reality of a big Carney majority sinks in.

In a dynamic where the threat is now a big Liberal majority, calls by Singh to elect more NDP MPs as a hedge against Carney’s conservatism should resonate with traditional NDP voters.

That logic of the situation suggests Singh needs to start two new pushes.

First, and in the context of Trump annexation threats, Singh can make the case NDP values are a fundamental to Canada’s different history and identity, pointing to icons including dental care, childcare and pharmacare, but also the grandparents of them all, universal healthcare and a real labour movement.

Second, Singh can talk about what Liberals do when there’s no strong NDP fighting for those Canadian values.

Liberal majorities without a strong NDP make deep cuts