National Post (Politics) Archives - Page 10 of 211

It’s said that politics is as unforgiving as a blood sport — one move can make or break a career. For outgoing NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, we can now pinpoint the exact moment that sealed his fate: when, in December, he said he wouldn’t play “games” with the Conservatives.

Singh was speaking about the third non-confidence motion the Conservatives had introduced to try to bring down the deeply unpopular government of Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau. Despite

ending

his party’s confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals in September, Singh

accused the Tories

of “playing games” and pledged to continue propping up the government. As it turns out, Singh might not have been playing the game, but that doesn’t mean the game wasn’t being played.

While the government had survived confidence motions on

Sept. 25

and

Oct. 1

, the

Dec. 9 vote

was different because the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of it, after Trudeau failed to acquiesce to

an ultimatum

issued by the party. Had the Bloc and NDP voted for the motion, the government would have fallen and we would likely be in a much different situation today.

At the time, Singh took a lot of flack,

especially

from

conservatives

, for continuing to prop up a government whose policies he clearly didn’t support. But from Singh’s perspective, the decision made perfect sense. After all, the NDP has never had as much influence over government policy as it did while the

confidence-and-supply deal

was in place between March 2022 and September 2024.

Singh knew that when an election was eventually called, he would be able to go to his voters and say that the NDP finally achieved real-world results on issues like pharmacare and socialized dental care. But he also knew that if Canadians went to the polls right away, the Conservatives, who

were then leading

both the Liberals and New Democrats by more than 20 points, would likely have formed government.

If that had happened, Singh would have lost all his power. Even if the Conservatives had been held to a minority, it’s unlikely that the NDP wouldn’t have had much sway over the government, as there are few issues that free-market Tories and socialist Dippers agree on. As Singh

told the media

at the time, he was worried that the Conservatives would cut the very programs he had fought so hard to get the Liberals to enact.

From an ideological perspective, Singh’s calculus thus made perfect sense. And perhaps, despite announcing his resignation on election night, the NDP leader will be able to sleep soundly believing he will someday be remembered as the Tommy Douglas of tooth decay.

But, for better or worse, politics is about more than just policy. It’s about power. Which is why the most successful politicians are quick to punt ideology to the sidelines when it suits their political interests. Singh put ideology over party and it cost New Democrats dearly.

The day after the Liberals survived the third confidence motion of the fall sitting,

an Ipsos poll

showed the Conservatives way ahead of the pack with 44 per cent support, compared to 21 per cent apiece for the Liberals and NDP. If the government had fallen, Trudeau wouldn’t have had time to resign and find a new party leader before the election, meaning the NDP would have had a real chance of forming the official Opposition for only the second time

in history

This would have helped sustain the NDP brand and extended Singh’s political career. Instead, Singh waited out the clock and allowed the Liberals to find their next messiah. Ultimately, Singh’s plan to run on the concessions he received from the minority Liberal government backfired when left-wing voters finally realized that Canadian elections are always a binary choice between the two parties that actually have a shot of forming government.

And so it was that Monday’s election saw the New Democrats

lose 18 seats

, including Singh’s own seat in Burnaby Central. Singh’s signature policy wins may live to see another day, but his party is now a shell of its former self, having been reduced to seven seats, from a high of 103 in 2011 under Jack Layton. Rebuilding the party will be an uphill battle.

This was a historic election for this country because it will likely mark a turning point in Canada-U.S. relations and, with a little luck, in how serious Canada takes its own defence and economic prosperity. But this may also be the era that historians look back on as the period in which the NDP’s power finally crested, before the Orange Wave crashed ashore, turning the New Democratic Party back into what it was always meant to be: a left-wing protest party with no hope of gaining any real power.

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There will be lots of arguing over how the Tories managed to lose Monday’s election, but the simple truth is that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre cost himself his chance at victory.

It was Poilievre’s party, Poilievre’s campaign, Poilievre’s stratagems, Poilievre’s statements, Poilievre’s policies, Poilievre’s record, Poilievre’s attitude and Poilievre’s personality on view. All run by Poilievre’s people, who gave no sign that any aspect of the campaign took place without Poilievre’s approval.

It was clear that the Tories had an excellent chance of success as long as former prime minister Justin Trudeau was the opponent. Canadians might not love Poilievre, but were willing to accept him if the alternative was a prime minister they’d absolutely had enough of, or someone that resonated Trudeauism. Take that away and the Conservative campaign was cooked.

U.S. President Donald Trump is getting the blame for the Conservative collapse from some quarters, but the Trump factor resonated mainly because Poilievre so conspicuously resisted the need to deal with it. He’d constructed a campaign with a certain focus and he was either unwilling or incapable of shifting gears when events called for it. There was no Plan B.

To many, Poilievre came across as a guy so absolutely sure of himself, only an earthquake could shift him. He does what he does and that’s what he does, and if you’re on his team, you accept that. Does that remind you of any recent prime ministers?

The Conservative party will have to deal with this reality. Voters demonstrated Monday that, as far as they’re concerned, “change” can mean someone at the head of the Liberal party who is significantly unlike the previous head of the Liberal party. Conservatives might have had a better chance against Liberal Leader Mark Carney if they’d had a leader who was able to connect with a wider range of people. Carney did a better job of that than Poilievre did.

Poilievre was able to hold giant, enthusiastic rallies in Alberta, but was barely on speaking terms with the Progressive Conservative premiers of Ontario and Nova Scotia. He didn’t make the effort to congratulate Ontario Premier Doug Ford following his third consecutive majority in Canada’s most populous province, and hadn’t even spoken to him in his two years as federal leader.

He so annoyed Tim Houston that the Nova Scotia premier

disassociated

himself with the federal operation altogether and didn’t attend Poilievre’s appearances in his province. “I’m the leader of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives. There is a Conservative Party of Canada. It’s a completely different party with its own leader,” he declared.

Ford and Houston represent a wing of Canadian conservatism that supposedly lost the contest for the heart of the party when Stephen Harper negotiated a truce between the centrists and the right-wing reformists in 2003. Harper wasn’t a centrist, but he was better at handling the divide than his successors.

Andrew Scheer couldn’t hide his social conservative leanings, or admit to them in a tactical manner. Erin O’Toole was a moderate who pretended not to be and suffered when he got caught. Poilievre and his to strategists thought he could win without worrying about the sort of Tories who put Ford and Houston in office.

Conservatives now find themselves in a very tricky situation. Carney didn’t get the majority he wanted, but is close enough that, with competent management, he should be able to buy himself enough time to show what he can do.

Poilievre, on the other hand, couldn’t hold onto his own seat. Whether he stays on as leader won’t be up to him. The 144 Conservatives who appear to have won as of this writing will have it in their power to decide what sort of party they want to present to voters the next time they get a chance.

They are likely to keep losing if they can’t manage to broaden their appeal. Poilievre won more votes than any Conservative in history. More than Harper did for his 2011 majority. He won more seats than Harper did for either of his minorities. Yet he still lost because the dynamics of the country worked against him.

Canadian voters have rarely been in a greater mood to toss out an existing government, yet Conservatives couldn’t manage it because they ran a campaign that couldn’t bring itself to court the sort of people who put leaders like Ford or Houston in office.

Scheer and O’Toole both won the popular vote, but did so by running up huge margins in constituencies they were always going to win anyway. Poilievre must have known this but couldn’t resist the allure of western love-ins, even as eastern ridings were far from in the bag.

The extent that the Conservatives mishandled their opportunity is reflected in the collapse of the New Democrats. Tory prospects in any federal election depend to a considerable degree on the NDP drawing away enough votes on the left to make the Liberals vulnerable. Poilievre’s hard-edged approach had the opposite effect, driving NDP supporters into Liberal arms out of a determination to prevent a Conservative victory.

It was often pointed out in the latter days of the campaign that Poilievre’s polling numbers were quite impressive: he was in or around 39 per cent of the vote, the same number that won Harper his only majority in 2011.

But while New Democrats siphoned off dozens of Liberal seats in 2011, the current crop of nervous left-wingers fled wholesale to the Liberals. Carney made sure not to get in their way, releasing a last-minute platform so stuffed with spending baubles it could have been personally authored by Justin Trudeau.

You can’t win over a country if you limit your interest to one select portion of its inhabitants. When Doug Ford won his first mandate, he was routinely condemned by detractors in similar terms as Poilievre: he was Trump-lite, a northern version of the maladroit president then in his first term.

The criticism was not undeserved, but among Ford’s attributes is a willingness to recognize change and adapt to circumstances. In his latest majority, he cast himself as an essential ingredient to protect Ontario from Trumpist chaos,

advising

a recent policy forum in Toronto: “Sometimes I think the cheese slips off the cracker with this guy.”

Poilievre showed no similar ability to adapt until the very late stages of his campaign, when he finally put a damper on the cocky attack-dog tactics. Even then it almost worked: if the campaign had lasted another week or two and Trump had remained busy insulting other countries, the result might have been different.

Still, it will fall to Conservatives to build a better model for their next attempt. There is a very large number of conservative-minded Canadians, between a third and 40 per cent of the population, who consistently reject the Liberal view of the world. The party’s problem is a failure to find a formula capable of uniting its two wings rather than pitting them against one another.

If Conservatives can’t find a way to win the trust of a wider range of voters, they’ll be stuck with many more nights like Monday. It used to be that Tories got elected only every decade or so when Liberals had thoroughly worn out their welcome. Monday suggested they can’t even count on that.

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The Liberal party can thank leader Mark Carney for its stunning reversal of fortunes. In a matter of months, he revived a party that was thrashing in the death throes of the Trudeau era and led them to another term in government.

The Conservative party that nearly everybody believed to be ascendant has been badly stung. However, having greatly expanded their vote and seat share, the Conservatives positioned themselves to return to Parliament as an energized and strengthened Opposition.

Yet Carney had help. U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to annex the country left Canadians reeling. It created a moment for millions of voters that the Conservatives could not capture, seemingly no matter what they did.

The Carney campaign did what it had to do. By portraying himself as a boring technocrat with an impressive resume, Carney seemed to be the right man for enough Canadians. This is not a unique phenomenon.

Australia’s centre-right Liberal-National Coalition was marching ahead of the Labor government in its own federal election, campaigning on a populist platform that reflected the country’s discontent with the incumbent prime minister.

Trump did not even have to muse about annexing Australia to make frightened middle-class voters want to

run for cover

amidst the chaos created by his tariffs. As in Canada, Australians appear poised to give a mediocre, toothless government a second chance because of Trump’s “America First” rhetoric.

Carney’s new challenge will be staving off the reminders that his government is staffed by the same people and filled with the same politicians who oversaw the decline of Canada as a healthy, middle-class country. Since 2021, progressive governments around the world have been elected with tremendous mandates to deliver positive change, only to crash and burn.

Chile chose the left-wing Gabriel Boric as president in 2021, but he

failed

in his effort to impose a new progressive constitution, and is

poised

to be succeeded by a right-winger.

In Germany, the Social Democratic government was

overtaken

by the economic hangover of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, leading to a brutal drubbing in last fall’s election.

Keir Starmer’s Labour party in Britain won a smashing majority last year, only for its approval ratings to fall

off a cliff

after just a few months. British voters elected Starmer as the safe, boring candidate to end post-Brexit chaos, only to realize that simply having a new prime minister will not fix the country’s longstanding problems.

Granted, these countries all have vastly different political cultures than Canada, but they are all dogged by crises of

affordability

and

stagnant

economies

that do not deliver for middle-class families.

Affordability was the clear-cut top issue for Canadian voters before Trump upended everything and dashed the hopes of a Conservative government. Yet Carney’s victory will not automatically restore the dream of home ownership or even reasonable apartment rentals.

The Liberals were returned to power on the backs

of older Canadians

who have every reason to believe Canada is not broken, having made good lives for themselves when it was still possible here. Unless the Grits prioritize affordability with as much vigour as the crisis posed by Donald Trump, their eventual decline will be inevitable.

The coalition behind Carney benefited immensely from the

objectively laughable

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. In the midst of a crisis of relations with the U.S., Singh proved just how unserious he was as a politician when half his party’s supporters bolted for a millionaire central banker and former chairman of a multinational investment firm.

Also rallying to Carney were a

smattering

of moderate, disaffected and often spiteful business-first types, who are

uncomfortable

with the evolution of the Conservatives into a younger, brasher, more populist party. People voted for Carney, not the Liberals, and his coalition of party loyalists, adulterous NDP supporters and homeless Blue Liberals and Red Tories will be very difficult to hold together.

Despite winning the largest share of the popular vote in the modern Conservative party’s history, over 40 per cent, it still was not enough to secure a victory in this strange moment in history. Nevertheless, the Conservatives are well-positioned to return to Parliament as a determined Opposition, and it will be very difficult to shake the perception that they remain a government in waiting.

The sheer variety of interests and pressures — including national defence, building energy corridors, affordability, trade diversification, Trump and more — will be impossible for the Liberals to satisfy. Promises made to earn votes, like attainable housing and national unity, may be broken, and Carney’s premiership may represent a mortgaging of the future rather than a revival of Liberal fortunes.

Still, in the immediate aftermath of an election that polarized the nation, it is the duty of every loyal and patriotic Canadian to wish Carney well, at least for now. Yet Conservatives and those who voted for them must not relent. They have to scrutinize every misstep of the Liberal government and zero in on the inevitable failures and broken promises so they can make the case that they are still the party of change.

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OTTAWA — A political titan in western Canada is vowing to examine all options for the region’s future, including “independent-oriented proposals,” after Monday’s federal election result.

It’s part of Preston Manning’s plan to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, after the federal Liberals secured a fourth consecutive term in power.

“Polling is currently being done to ascertain whether the election of yet another Liberal government has increased the growing estrangement of western Canada from Ottawa and the Rest of Canada,” the founder of the defunct Reform party said in a statement released on Tuesday.

He did not provide further detail on efforts to gauge public opinion on the issue, such as who is funding that project.

Throughout the campaign, the former leader of the federal opposition warned a Liberal win could trigger a wave of western alienation, going so far as to call Liberal Leader Mark Carney “a threat to national unity” in a Globe and Mail op-ed.

Speaking by phone to National Post on Tuesday, he framed Carney’s ascent to power an existential threat.

“Carney can throw on an Edmonton Oilers jersey and call himself an ‘Alberta boy’ as much as he wants, but the fact of the matter is that he’s fronting the same cast of characters that drove a wedge between east and west under (his predecessor, former prime minister Justin) Trudeau,” said Manning.

Manning added Carney still hasn’t committed to reversing some of Trudeau’s most regionally divisive policies, such as the federal cap on oil and gas emissions.

His statement did raise the possibility of a policy shift, while doubting the Liberal leader will seriously pivot Ottawa’s approach to the west.

It references Carney’s “assurances that his minority government will make a 180 degree turn on climate change, pipelines, unregulated immigration, proliferate deficit spending, and other distinguishing characteristics of the discredited Trudeau regime.

“The first test of the truthfulness and believability of those assurances will come via the content of the June Throne Speech and the follow-up actions of the federal government,” he wrote.

Manning told National Post the stubbornness of regional divisions was visible from the electoral map.

”All you have to do is look at the swath of blue cascading from Manitoba all the way into British Columbia.”

Manning said that he was in the early stages of putting together “Canada West Assembly” to deliberate next steps, adding he hoped to bring in participants from all four western provinces and the three territories.

He added the assembly would most likely meet for the first time in the summer, after Carney had a chance to give his first throne speech.

The assembly would “provide a democratic forum for the presentation, analysis and debate of the options facing western Canada (not just Alberta),” he wrote.

Those options could range “from acceptance of a fairer and stronger position within the federation based on guarantees from and actions by the federal government, to various independence-oriented proposals, with votes to be taken on the various options and recommendations to be made to the affected provincial governments.”

Manning said that the initiative is “operationally independent” from the post-election panel being put together by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, but added that he welcomed the participation of members of the panel.

Smith said on Tuesday that she was “deeply frustrated” with the Liberal win but would let the people of Alberta take the lead on how to respond.

The Liberals picked up seats in three of the four western provinces, and looked poised on Tuesday to win the same number of seats in Alberta that they did in the last federal election in 2021.

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will have his first in-person meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the “near future” after both leaders spoke on the phone Tuesday.

In a readout of the call

, Carney’s office said that Trump congratulated the newly elected prime minister. The release also said both leaders agreed to work together as independent nations.

“The leaders agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment. To that end, the leaders agreed to meet in person in the near future,” notes the readout.

The call came less than a day after Carney led the Liberals to a fourth straight term and a third consecutive minority government.

Neither the White House nor Trump’s social media accounts have yet published their readout of the conversation with Carney.

The Canadian readout did not mention if Carney spoke to Trump about current American tariffs on foreign-made automobiles and steel and aluminum imports, both key Canadian exports to the U.S.

Trump was expected to sign a new executive order Tuesday afternoon relaxing some his 25 per cent tariffs on autos and auto parts in a significant reversal as the import taxes threatened to hurt domestic manufacturers.

Earlier in the day, Carney also spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Following the Prime Minister’s meeting with the President in Paris last month, the two leaders discussed their ongoing work to deepen defence and commercial ties between their nations,” reads the statement by PMO.

National Post, with additional reporting from The Canadian Press.

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OTTAWA — While Conservatives weren’t quite able to beat the Liberals in Monday’s federal election, they can take some solace in the fact that grade school students brought it home for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the 2025 Student Vote.

The students’ votes led to a Conservative minority government, with Pierre Poilievre’s party earning a hypothetical 165 seats from 36.4 per cent of the vote. This is a major jump from the 2021 Student Vote results, where the Conservatives placed third. The Liberals earned the second most seats among students this time around, securing 145. Essentially, the results between the main two parties were flipped from the current real-world projections.

While the NDP had a disappointing election, they performed better in terms of seat count among student voters. The NDP won 13 seats, with 14.5 per cent of the vote to barely hold onto official party status in the student vote scenario.

This is far from a positive for the NDP’s future though, as they lost hypothetical 95 seats from the 2021 Student Vote. They previously earned 108 hypothetical seats, which was only ten fewer seats than the governing Liberals.

The Bloc Quebecois did slightly worse than their projected seat total, earning 17 seats from 2.19 per cent of the vote. The Green Party earned 7.5 per cent of the students’ votes, giving them two seats, with longtime party leader Elizabeth May and Kitchener Centre incumbent Mike Morrice maintaining their spots in the hypothetical Parliament.

The Student Vote is an initiative run by CIVIX, an organization dedicated to “strengthening democracy through civics and citizenship education for school-aged youth.” For the vote, they polled over 900,000 students across the country, with representation in each riding.

CIVIX, in collaboration with Abacus Data, also ran the Student Budget Consultation between December 2024 and March 2025. This consultation surveyed students about what the government’s financial priorities should be. The most important issues per surveyed students were the cost of living, housing and health care.

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If all politics is local, Bruce Fanjoy had a headstart in his race against a national figure. Looking him up in the archives of his local newspapers turns up the kind of stories people cut out and put on the fridge.

Here he is, an assistant coach of for 10-year-old hockey players, successfully encouraging them to raise money for pediatric palliative care at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario by reading 100 books in 30 days, and then meeting Roch Carrier and getting a signed copy of The Hockey Sweater as a reward. Here he is volunteering with Bike Ottawa at a vigil for a cyclist killed by a motorist.

And here he is, a hockey dad with some connections, getting former Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson in touch with a 12-year-old boy who broke two vertebrae playing defence for the local peewee AA team.

That kind of reputation is campaign gold on the front porch of ridings like Carleton, south of Ottawa, even if you are running against

Pierre Poilievre

, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who has held it since it was recreated in 2015 out of three ridings, one of which he also held since 2004, seven wins in all. Fanjoy estimated he knocked on 15,000 doors before the campaign even began, often encountering skeptics.

“One of the impacts of someone holding a riding for as long as Pierre Poilievre has held Carleton is some people forget it doesn’t have to be that way,” Fanjoy recently

told the Ottawa Citizen

. “I believed from the beginning that there was a path to victory…. A lot of people are looking for an alternative. I wanted to make sure I gave Carleton a strong, thoughtful, solutions-focused alternative to someone who hasn’t accomplished anything in 20 years of service.”

Fanjoy has a business degree and previously worked in marketing for a large consulting firm. His wife Donna Nicholson is a cardiac anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Ottawa. They have two grown children. Lately, he has overseen the construction of a new family home in Manotick, on the Rideau River near the historic mill, built according to “passive” design principles to minimize the home’s energy consumption, which he promotes as an environmentalist.

National politics has a way of feeling local for the people of Carleton, and local politics has a way of feeling national.

It wasn’t just that the local MP was a prime minister in waiting for so long. It was also that the way he got there involved giving sympathetic attention to the Freedom Convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa in 2022.

Local attitudes on the convoy protest were not exactly the same as some national attitudes, the ones about pandemic skepticism and federal government overreach that aligned with Poilievre’s project to form a government to replace Justin Trudeau and his Liberals. Donald Trump’s trade wars were a shock campaign issue that focused attention on Poilievre’s response, evidently to Fanjoy’s benefit.

In the end, it was Poilievre who got replaced. The race was tight, but

Fanjoy won by almost 4,000 votes

, with more than 50 per cent of the total in a race that included 89 other candidates in a strange electoral reform protest that made ballots awkwardly long.

In a speech late on election night, Poilievre spun an upbeat message about high vote share and increased seat count that bodes well for the party he pledged to continue leading. But for a leader to lose his own seat is electoral embarrassment, especially when it comes as a late surprise.

Before the election, Fanjoy told National Post’s Stephanie Taylor that he saw Poilievre’s status as an apparent prime minister in waiting as an opportunity.

“Carleton, because of circumstance, has a remarkable opportunity to make a statement on the type of politics and direction that we want Canada to go in,” he said. “Although it’s technically just one of 343 ridings in the election, this one carries extra significance.”

Rumours started spreading that Carleton was in trouble for the Tories just before election day, with stories that internal Liberal polling suggested a possible upset, a ten point Conservative lead dropping to five. Then, Carleton reported the highest advance turnout in the country. Something was happening.

The Ottawa Citizen reported Fanjoy was unavailable for comment when his close victory was first projected by media “because it’s 4 a.m.” But he made a brief speech to supporters around midnight at the Manotick Legion, when victory was starting to look possible.

“I will never forget what this feels like,” he said.

Poilievre, watching the results in downtown Ottawa having already conceded the Liberals won the election that so recently seemed his to lose, probably felt the same thing.

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As election day got underway on Monday, and went well into the night, Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney, remained by his side. They were seen together at the polls in Ottawa in the afternoon. And then, as Carney’s Liberals were voted into power, she was in the crowd as he addressed the country in his victory speech.

“Thank you, Diana. Thank you, Diana, for your work on this campaign. Thank you, Diana, for the commitment and compassion you bring to everything that you do,” Carney, 60, said in his speech Monday night. “Tonight simply would not have been possible without you, and without the support of our four children who inspire me to service every single day.”

Here’s what to know about Fox Carney.

Who is Diana Fox Carney?

Fox Carney is a climate activist and economist, who holds both U.K. and Canadian citizenships.

She

attended Oxford University

, graduating with a master’s of arts degree in philosophy, politics and economics in 1987. She earned a master’s of arts degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. She later returned to Oxford and went on to earn a master’s of science degree in agricultural economics in 1992.

It was at Oxford where Fox Carney met the future Liberal leader, the

Toronto Star reported

. According to the

university’s Ice Hockey Club

, Fox Carney was an excellent hockey player “known for her ability to skate rings around her opponents and move effortlessly through the opposing defensive line.”

Fox Carney moved to Canada after she

married

the future prime minister in 1994.

Where has Diana Fox Carney worked?

She has worked in Canada and the U.K. at various think tanks dedicated to climate-related policy. However, she started her career in Africa.

According to

her bio at the Balsillie School of International Affairs

, where she was a fellow, Fox Carney worked in Zanzibar for the U.K. government.

She then went on to became a vice president of Canadian think tank, Canada 2020, dedicated to sparking conversations about the country’s future and hosting events to inspire change. In 2013, she addressed Parliament about income inequality.

“One of the key features of income inequality is that it tends to be self-reinforcing, so that the poorest groups are less able to invest in their children and in their health and education and in other things that make for success, so inequality is typically transmitted from generation to generation,” she said,

as reported by OpenParliament

. “Absent policy action, we can expect income inequality to continue to rise.”

Fox Carney served as the executive director of

Pi Capital, a membership club

that “convenes extraordinary events with the world’s most sought-after thinkers” based in London, England, according to her

bio on Canada 2020.

“Her professional experience prior to Pi Capital ranges from agricultural research in Africa to assessing new and advanced energy technologies,” her bio says. “In particular, Diana has helped develop frameworks for thinking about getting to ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions, the role negative emissions will play in this effort, and how capital can be channeled to the right companies.”

In 2021, she became

a senior adviser at Eurasia Group

, a risk research and consulting firm.

She has also served as a Trustee of the Friends of the Royal Academy and a World Wildlife Foundation Ambassador, her Oxford hockey bio says.

According to the Oxford Society for International Development

, she has worked with charities such as Save the Children.

She later became a director of strategy and engagement at the Institute for Public Policy Research, the

Ottawa Lookout reported

. However, she left the position in 2025,

according to People Magazine

, adding that her current employment is unknown.

How many children do they have?

The Carneys have four children: Cleo, Tess, Amelia and Sasha,

according to the Ottawa Lookout

Cleo Carney introduced her father in March, when he was elected as Liberal leader. She is

studying at Harvard University

. Just like her mother, she is interested in climate policy. She’s on the

board of Bluedot Institute

Sasha Carney, who uses they/them pronouns,

attended Yale University

, graduating in 2023. Sasha was a 2022 Yale Farm Summer Intern as part of the university’s sustainable food program. According to

publisher TinHouse

, Sasha is an award-winning writer and editorial assistant whose work has been published in Yale Literary Magazine, The Forge, and Barren Magazine and, in 2019,

longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize

Amelia Carney reportedly graduated from the University of Edinburgh last year.

. The Tatler

and

Daily Mail

reported that Tess Carney has largely stayed out of the public eye.

Where is Diana Fox Carney from?

Fox Carney was born into

a wealthy pig farming family

and raised in England.

What are some of Diana Fox Carney’s interests?

According to the Ottawa Lookout, Fox Carney enjoys going for runs, skiing, and “making ceramics in her cottage studio.” She told the publication that she was “gearing up to garden” at home. The Carneys also appear to enjoy watching tennis together.

People Magazine reported

they attended the prestigious Wimbledon tournament twice.

Where do the Carneys live?

They have lived in

Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood

since 2020,

the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Carney’s office has not responded to National Post’s requests about where he and his family will live while he is prime minister.

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With the votes still being tabulated on Tuesday, it seems likely that the New Democratic Party, which had entered the election race with 24 seats in Parliament, will emerge with only seven. This would result in the NDP losing official party status. But what does that mean?

What is official party status?

In addition to the governing party and the official opposition, many Westminster-style parliaments (including Canada’s) recognize additional parties.

In 1963, with three of the four previous elections having resulted in minority governments, the government amended the Senate and House of Commons Act to provide an additional annual allowance to party leaders other than the prime minister and leader of the opposition.

Party leaders were defined

as Members of Parliament who led a party with a “recognized membership of 12 or more persons in the House of Commons.” Thus, an official party needs at least that many sitting members in Parliament.

Why is official party status important?

Christopher Cochrane

, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, tells National Post: “The main thing is it means a significant loss of parliamentary funds for the party. It’s things like support for having a research office for the party, staff support that they get based on party size, even to smaller things like phone plans for staffers (and) support for a party office.”

He adds: “The NDP didn’t have a lot of time to develop a quote-unquote war chest for this election, and now they’re going to have to continue more or less with all the exact same struggles that they’ve been dealing with, and yet with considerably less, actually virtually no support from Parliament for their party operations.”

The relevant information regarding official party perks is spelled out in a document called

Members’ Allowances and Services Manual

, published by the House of Commons, but it’s not easy to navigate. To begin with, the term “official party” only appears twice in the manual’s 343 pages, when it refers to termination of national caucus research offices, “in the event that the Member’s party loses its official party status.”

“What they mean by official party is spelled out in different language,” says Cochrane. “The term that is used here for the most part is ‘recognized party,’ but that’s what is meant by official party. And a recognized party starts at 12 members.”

Official status also gives members

What are some of the perks for an official (or recognized) party?

In the section of the manual titled “Budget Formula Following a General Election,” it notes that each opposition party with 12 to 25 members will receive $1,116,920 for a party leader office budget, $111,700 for a house leader office budget, $148,910 for a chief whip office budget, and $79,520 for a caucus chair office budget. Those numbers go up if the party has more than 25 members, but 12 is the minimum.

The manual also lists an information technology budget allocation of $73,280, a translation services budget allocation of $177,880, a national caucus meetings budget allocation of $65,470, and a national caucus research office budget of $744,630.

These items alone add up to just over $2.5 million, but there are many smaller items, such as one smartphone and up to two Apple iPads per member, which can cost up to $2,500 each. “Expenses associated with the monthly data plan and roaming charges of iPads are charged to the MOB (Member’s Office Budget),” the manual says.

Is official party status the same as registered party status?

No. Elections Canada lists

16 registered federal parties

, including the usual suspects — the Bloc Québécois, the Green Party of Canada, etc. — as well as some well-known fringe movements like the Marijuana Party and the Parti Rhinocéros Party, and a few you may never have heard of, like the Animal Protection Party of Canada or the Canadian Future Party.

Has a party lost its official status before?

Yes. In fact, it happened to two parties in 1993. The Progressive Conservatives under Prime Minister Kim Campbell went into that election with 154 seats and emerged with just two. Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party fell to nine seats from 44. Gains were seen by the Liberals, the Bloc and the Reform Party. Both the PC party and the NDP regained official status in the next election, in 1997.

How bad will it be for the NDP this time?

Cochrane thinks it will be a rough time for the New Democrats, especially since fundraising laws have changed since 1993, forcing parties to rely more on their Parliamentary perks.

“I think the challenge for the New Democrats is going to be to just continue to keep themselves relevant in the minds of the public at a time when their capacity to advertise and their basic outreach and basic functional operation of a party is significantly undermined both by lack of fundraising capacity and now by lack of Parliamentary support because of the loss of official party status,” he says.

Is there a silver lining?

If the Liberals wind up just a few seats short of a majority, even a weakened NDP could help get their numbers to 51 per cent on votes. And that would make them an important ally to the ruling party.

“There is an opportunity for the NDP in a minority Parliament to exert leverage beyond its electoral weight,” says Cochrane. “The fact that the NDP could play a pivotal role in the stability of Parliament despite getting so little of the support is incredible.”

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OTTAWA — With a handful of ridings still too close to call, the Liberals still had a faint hope on Tuesday to form a majority government.

Elections Canada resumed counting in the morning, including advance polls and special ballots for Canadians who are either travelling, living abroad, incarcerated or cast their votes on college or university campuses.

Liberals picked up a seat in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne in Quebec. Liberal challenger Tatiana Auguste won by 35 votes ahead of Bloc Québécois incumbent Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, but the close result will likely lead to an automatic judicial recount.

More election results were expected to be unveiled later in the day.

That means that Liberals are on course to win a projected 169 seats — three seats short of a majority — but that could change again, depending on if they manage to pick up enough seats to get to the magic number of 172 seats they need to serve a full four-year term.

In Nunavut, NDP incumbent Lori Idlout was elected with 77 votes ahead of Liberal candidate Kilikvak Kabloona. Her NDP colleague Don Davies also managed to hang onto his seat in Vancouver Kingsway by 310 votes against Liberal challenger Amy K. Gill.

In New Brunswick’s Miramichi—Grand Lake riding, Conservative candidate Mike Dawson managed to hold on to the seat previously held by fellow Tory Jake Stewart. Dawson faced a fierce battle from Liberal candidate Lisa Harris, who was behind with 394 votes.

Liberals also officially lost seats to the Tories by a few hundred seats in a handful of Ontario ridings.

In Windsor—Tecumsek—Lakeshore, Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk lost to Conservative challenger Kathy Borrelli by 233 votes. Conservative candidate Parm Gill also picked up the riding of Milton East—Halton Hills South with 298 votes.

Conservative candidate Matt Strauss won against Liberal incumbent Valerie Bradford in Kitchener South—Hespeler by more than 1,000 votes. In Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Liberal incumbent Chad Collins lost to his Conservative challenger Ned Kuruc by nearly 1,500 votes.

In the Quebec riding of Shefford, Bloc incumbent Andréanne Larouche held on to her seat with 571 votes ahead of Liberal challenger Felix Dionne.

In British Columbia, the riding of Cloverdale—Langley City was one to watch for the tight race between the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the end, Conservative candidate Tamara Jenson won against Liberal challenger

Kyle Latchford by 769 votes.

In Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, Conservative incumbent Marc Dalton was holding on to his seat with less than 1,500 votes but there were still eight polls left to count.

Liberals were also leading with tight margins in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova—The Peninsulas with 46 votes.

In the B.C. riding of Kelowna, Liberal candidate Stephen Fuhr will be making a comeback in Parliament. He won against Conservative incumbent Tracy Gray with a slim margin of 235 votes.

In the Quebec riding of Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, Liberal candidate Natilien Joseph won against Bloc incumbent Denis Trudel by 749 votes.

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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Source: National Post (Politics)

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What is official party status?

Why is official party status important?

What are some of the perks for an official (or recognized) party?

Is official party status the same as registered party status?

Has a party lost its official status before?

How bad will it be for the NDP this time?

Is there a silver lining?

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