The two-faced hypocrisy MP Marilyn Gladu demonstrated on Wednesday, in abandoning the Conservatives for the Liberals, is shocking even when considering the ever-malleable “political principles” of floor-crossers in general.
On Jan. 11, the then-Conservative MP for Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong since 2015 told her local Petrolia Lambton Independent newspaper she supported an automatic byelection for any MP defecting to another party.
OTTAWA — Ethics screens are little more than loopholes for politicians to cover themselves while sidestepping ethical compliance, an ethics watchdog said Wednesday.
One day after federal Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says he officially recused himself from discussions involving the Alto high speed rail project, Democracy Watch Founder Duff Conacher said “ethics screens” like the one minister created for himself are little more than “secretive smokescreens” that don’t prevent cabinet ministers from ethically-questionable situations.
“The whole point of being an MP is to represent your constituents,” a Conservative MP told a local Ontario newspaper back in January, when she backed a call for automatic by-elections following an MP’s defection.
“So if they’re voting you in under one platform,” she continued, “for you to switch for whatever reasons, just seems to me to not be representing what you’re supposed to be there to represent.”
She wants in on that $300,000 in flight catering the Liberals offer. Have you tried the Filet Mignon? pic.twitter.com/FwJsKKBcCo
— JohnnyD (@John0Vision) April 8, 2026
With one warm floor-crossing welcome, Prime Minister Mark Carney challenged Wednesday what it means to be a Liberal, gave his primary opponent a big wake-up call, and planted the seeds for simmering caucus discontent.
A day before Liberals gather in Montreal for their biennial convention — Carney’s first as leader — the prime minister embraced four-term Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu to the Grits’ caucus. “I couldn’t be happier,” he said, as he shook Gladu’s hand and lauded her “tremendous” international business experience, her decade in Parliament, dedication to her constituents, and well-known reputation as one of the most collaborative MPs on the hill.
Deputy minister of national defence Christiane Fox broke conflict of interest rules by hiring an old acquaintance when she was the deputy immigration minister, the federal ethics watchdog has found.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein published an investigation on Wednesday finding that Fox improperly influenced her department to hire Björn Charles in March 2023.
The report said that officials “felt pressured to hire him” at “a management level for which departmental officials had advised he was not qualified.”
Liberal MP Chris d’Entremont, who crossed the floor from the Conservatives in November, says current Conservative MPs have “absolutely” asked him what it’s like being a Liberal.
“They want to know what the caucus structure is, what we talk about, what kind of input that we have in decision making,” d’Entremont told host Mike Le Couteur in an interview on CTV Power Play Wednesday.
Every last defector will regret their actions.
It was during the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio on hardcore pornographers that Justice Potter Stewart famously offered as a threshold test for obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”
The news of Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu’s defection to the Liberals will shock many Canadian voters. It’s timely then to explore the question: are any floor crossings defendable or even laudatory?
Rat infestation.
Three months before Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu crossed the floor to the Liberals, she backed a call for an automatic byelection when an MP defects.
Gladu said she decided to join the Liberals because she has “heard clearly from constituents that (they) want serious leadership,” in a statement released today. But in January the Ontario MP who has represented Sarnia—Lambton–Bkejwanong since 2015, backed a petition calling for “immediate accountability” for voters.
Yup. @fancypants_s https://t.co/wVNC0uXGEK
— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) April 9, 2026
h/t Auntie Polly
Six years ago, after Gabriel Wortman of Nova Scotia committed the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, the Trudeau government banned more than 2,500 models of firearms because they looked scary. Even though other models of the same firearms had the same firepower, those versions were not banned because they lacked the militarist features that made the others look like “assault-style” weapon.
OTTAWA — In this discussion with Jason James, I break down the stunning rise of Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma — a story The Bureau has led Canadian media on with at least 10 investigative reports since mid-December 2025, culminating in our coverage of his suspicious cross-examination of expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston.
This is a wide-ranging conversation.
When news broke that the Donald Trump administration and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire, markets reacted instantly. Oil prices plunged within minutes, wiping out days of gains and triggering a wave of optimism. For many consumers, the assumption seemed obvious: lower oil prices should mean lower food prices.
That assumption is fundamentally flawed.
Let’s just do the right thing by Heritage Canada and rename it for what it is, the Canadian Ministry of Propaganda. Or if you want to follow the official style sheet, Propaganda Canada.
Top of mind today is a draft rewrite of Canada’s Citizenship Guide, Discover Canada. This is the book they give prospective immigrants, an explanation of how the Government of Canada sees itself, the country, and the people living in it. The present one was published in 2012 during the Stephen Harper ministry, when Heritage Canada was known as Canada Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism.
The news that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to join the Liberal caucus, effectively guaranteeing Prime Minister Mark Carney a parliamentary majority, has not been hailed universally by her constituents.
“She thinks she knows better than her voters?” said one resident of Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong on social media. “What is the flipping point? You wonder why people get radicalized? This is why people get radicalized.”
The Liberal party may yet lose byelections in Toronto’s University–Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest next week, but the odds are about as likely as Canada or Scotland winning this summer’s World Cup (about 150 to 1). The third byelection in Terrebonne in Quebec will be closer, but with Gladu’s road-to-Damascus conversion, it has become less crucial to the Liberals.
Nobody’s separating. Yet what’s happening in the suburban riding of Terrebonne on Monday may tell us something just as consequential about the country.
Three federal by-elections are being held that day. Two are in safe Liberal ridings in Toronto vacated by former ministers Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair. The third is in Terrebonne. The largely francophone community northeast of Montreal is where Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste defeated the Bloc Québécois’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote in last year’s general election. That result was eventually annulled by the Supreme Court over irregularities with mail-in ballot envelopes.
He’s building it by defection.
As Canada lowers its tariffs and imports more electric vehicles from China, an upcoming report from New York-based labour rights researchers is making new allegations of forced labour practices at the world’s bestselling EV manufacturer, BYD.
China Labor Watch (CLW) received a complaint last fall from one of the thousands of migrant workers brought to Hungary from China to help build BYD’s first European plant in the city of Szeged — a $6-billion investment intended to supply the European market with around 300,000 vehicles per year.
