Canadian politics has a deserved reputation for being dull — not for nothing did The New Republic once crown “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” as the most boring headline ever. But every once in a while, it has the ability to surprise. Mark Carney, a man who has never previously held elected office of any kind, has in a matter of weeks gone from the periphery of Canadian politics to prime minister, to, now, leader of the government in the House of Commons. That alone would be novel and notable, but the fact that the Liberals were looking at near-annihilation before the resignation of Carney’s predecessor (remember him?) at the beginning of the year makes it even more spectacular.
Carney’s win also marks the first time in nearly a decade the Liberal party actually won more votes from flesh-and-blood Canadians than the Conservatives: in both the 2019 and 2021 elections the Liberals owed their plurality in the Commons to the vagaries of our first-past-the-post electoral system. Experts in federal politics (i.e., not me) will undoubtedly have much to say over the coming weeks about what to expect over the next four years. I specialize in Ontario politics, however, and I’ve spent the past several weeks unable to shake the feeling that all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.
Specifically, Canada in spring 2025 looks and feels eerily like what Ontario saw in spring 2014. Whether Carney and his party choose to heed some of the lessons of that election, and what came after, could determine whether this is his one and only election win.
For those who don’t recall: by late 2012 the Ontario Liberals, governing with a minority of the seats at Queen’s Park, were beset by numerous scandals and an unpopular leader. Dalton McGuinty prorogued the house to stave off a contempt motion, announced his resignation, and gave his party time to pick a successor. Kathleen Wynne became premier in 2013, worked out a modus vivendi for a year with the NDP, and then called a snap election when the NDP pulled their support for her government. As it turned out, Ontario voters were willing to give the Liberals another chance for a few reasons, starting with the fact that a new leader looked like a breath of fresh air compared to what had come before.
The similarities continue: Wynne’s victory in 2014 was due in no small part to the decision by the Progressive Conservatives and their leader Tim Hudak to run a less centrist, more avowedly right-wing campaign pledging to substantially shrink the size of the provincial public sector, including a promise to lay off 100,000 or so people. Tories believed that public would support a hard-right turn after more than a decade of Liberal rule; they gambled and lost.
What Hudak’s plan did accomplish, however, was to alarm a lot of soft-NDP support into backing the Liberals despite any misgivings: Wynne’s majority was won as much by taking NDP seats in Toronto and the GTA as it was by flipping Tory held seats elsewhere in the province. The New Democrats actually held their seat count level by flipping some Liberals and PC seats, but it was little comfort given that they’d triggered the election in the first place.
The federal results from last night aren’t a perfect match, but the broad contours sure sound familiar: a new leader gives the party a new lease on life; a conservative opponent misjudges the mood of the public; and support from smaller parties bled away to Liberal benefit — most critically from the NDP (whose leader, Jagmeet Singh, failed to hold his seat and resigned last night). The federal Liberals today don’t have the majority that Wynne won in 2014, but once again: this is a party that was looking at total disaster four months ago. Carney’s own team, in January of this year, was confidently arguing they could, if things went well, keep Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives to a minority, and they’ve dramatically exceeded that.
Obviously one big difference between the two elections a decade apart is Donald Trump. The role of the U.S. president in reviving Liberal fortunes can’t be overstated, but that doesn’t mean it was predestined. Here in Ontario, just this year, a right-leaning party leader was able to see the political geography shifting under his feet and was nimble enough to parlay that into an election win; Poilievre and his team watched a 20-point lead evaporate before their eyes.
Given the seat count in the Commons, Carney and his Liberal caucus may not get very comfortable, and that might be for the best. Because the rest of the story for the Ontario Liberals after 2014 wasn’t exactly happily ever after. Wynne didn’t even enjoy a full year before the Ontario PCs regained the lead in the polls — a lead they’ve only briefly relinquished since. Elected as a breath of fresh air, voters started souring on Wynne when new controversies broke, notably the Sudbury by-election skullduggery and the decision to partially privatize Hydro One.
In the euphoria of their 2014 win, Ontario Liberals ignored what ought to have been giant flashing warning signs: the Wynne majority was relatively thin to begin with, and the party was routed in areas of the province where they’d historically done well. If Ontario’s history has any lessons for Mark Carney, it’s this: don’t let the rush of an unanticipated victory blind you to the party’s real weaknesses.