MP Matt Jeneroux: a harbinger of Conservative leadership crises?

Strictly speaking, elected members of parliaments are supposed to represent their constituents. They’re are not recognized by the Speaker as member of any particular party. Some voters don’t get that a party-affiliated candidate has made a deal to vote with that party in the parliament in return for it bankrolling a successful candidacy, and not always for a particular position those voters expected their MP to represent. Pro-life voters, for example, have been frustrated that conservative candidates who sympathize with anti-abortion sentiment are stymied by their party leaders for the purely psephological reason that the issue doesn’t win enough votes —indeed, might actually repel some voters. During two, back-to-back minorities, Stephen Harper told pro-life caucus members to put a sock in it until the CPC won a majority, only to hear their leader pointedly announce, after winning its (so far sole) majority that the abortion issue would not be on his government’s agenda (one CPC MP “crossed the floor,” you might say, to sit as an Independent to protest Harper’s betrayal).

The potential tenuousness of the party-loyalty quid pro quo with campaign funding is reflected by every party’s use of the whip. Insofar as whipped votes don’t go pro-lifers’ way, they caterwaul loudly that vote-whipping should be banned (a position they share with pro-reppers, if for a different reason), calling for “free votes” so that MPs can “vote their conscience.” Certainly every governing party is existentially bound to whip any vote that’s a matter of parliamentary confidence, but some opposition parties, most often of the right, whip every vote whether a confidence matter or not, on pain of expulsion, in order the leader shows leash and command of a unanimously loyal caucus. Other parties risk looking wobbly if they try to appease party unity by allowing an MP to vote against the party for some exceptional reason; abstention is preferred, naturally, but many parties don’t allow even that.

But nothing is more befuddled than pro-life conservatives decrying whipped votes that don’t advance their agenda while also crying “treason!” if a conservative parliamentarian dares disobey the leader—or freak in especial outrage when one crosses the floor. Indeed, dishonouring the deal all party-affiliated MPs have made to vote with their respective caucuses is generally disapproved by citizen of any stripe: note how few floor crossers ever get re-elected.

Perhaps d’Entremont will be safely re-elected because, like Scott Brisson before him, who was re-elected many times after crossing to the Liberals (when the ProgCon party was treacherously merged with the homophobic Canadian Alliance party to form the CPC—Mr Brisson was the first openly gay MP), d-Entremont represents a relatively Liberal-friendly riding (he barely bested the Liberal candidate in last April’s election).

Wild indignation from his erstwhile CPC colleagues was of course expected, yet soon eerily muted when a second CPC MP, Matt Jeneroux, announced his resignation as those same colleagues instead heaped praise and well-wishes upon him—doubtlessly relieved that he didn’t cross to the enemy too. Their quandary is, naturally, their party’s delicate circumstance dangling between the Liberals’ decreasing margin of minority— just three seats short of majority, now only two— with a major confidence vote on an exceptional budget approaching and the Loyal Opposition fragmenting , it appears, over Pierre Poilievre’s unloved leadership style which will be put to yet another, presumably final test under mandatory party review thus coming January. If any more CPC MPs defect—as some pundits consider likely—is it possible that
Poilievre will relinquish leadership before the January review?

So far it’s come down to one seat away from a dramatic, single-vote judgment of the Liberal budget and government. Pundits are speculating that if things keep going like this, Carney might get his majority without going to an election. This confluence of a questioned leadership with hung-parliamentary confidence is fairly rare (one, I’m guessing, was the dying Diefenbaker minority government in 1962-63 during which the PM faced caucus and cabinet revolts over his leadership), but the one-vote confidence scenario isn’t unknown.

Floor-crossing to another party is career-risky; leaving a party caucus to sit as an Independent is almost always suicidal. Whether perceived as betrayal of the MP’s party-deal or an involuntary expulsion from caucus by the leader, the Independent almost never wins incumbency. The floor-crosser, whether to another party or to Independent MP status thus seems best deployed as a non-reusable political torpedo, Independents especially being psephologically non-recyclable—which is probably why Independents style themselves as “parties” even though not officially recognized as such in parliament—the one-seat Green “party” for example.

Partisan morphing is often rationalized by personal conscience, but some is personally salacious as well as politically critical: who can forget the hapless CPC deputy leader Peter MacKay’s mortification after CPC caucus colleague, Magna heiress Belinda Stronach with whom he was intimate for several months, left their prenuptial bed on the very day of a crucial confidence vote aimed at toppling Paul Martin’s Liberal minority and, much to his surprise, appeared on the other side of the HoC aisle, now a new Liberal cabinet minister ready to supply the confidence-saving vote. MacKay returned to his Nova Scotia riding to lick his wounds while his spaniel played his fiddle nearby —whom he said was more trustworthy than his high flown ex-lover (bitchin’ thing to say, there Pete). If there’s a similar situation in PP’s CPC, it is indiscernibly under wraps—so far.

The most tragic switcheroo: Chuck Cadman—whose teenage son, murdered by street thugs, motivated his political agenda to reform criminal law—held the crucial single vote that would topple or save the Martin Liberal minority in 2005. Originally elected a Reform MP in ‘97, then re-elected as an Alliance MP in 2000, his 2004 nomination was passed over by Harper for a South Asian candidate the CPC expected would garner more votes from the large Sikh community in the Surrey North riding. Nevertheless, Cadman became the only Independent to win a seat that election, and was apprised of his victory whilst in hospital being treated for cancer. Conservatives shamelessly tried to recruit him in order topple the Liberals (Harper nearly got busted for trying to bribe Cadman to vote with the CPC). Cadman arrived in Ottawa for the critical confidence vote while taking chemotherapy for yet another cancer, and ended the suspense by voting for the Liberal bill (the resulting tie was broken by the Speaker on the government’s behalf). Cadman said his constituents told him which way to vote.

After snubbing Cadman in favour of better ethnical odds, the CPC tried to get him to either “cross the floor” back to the CPC—or at least help them topple the Liberals. Cadman died soon after. In a lengthy investigation, his widow swore the allegation that Harper’s attempt to bribe him to vote with the CPC was false—but only after Harper offered to nominate her CPC candidate in Surrey North for the 2008 election. She had endorsed an NDP candidate who won the riding in 2006, served a single term as a CPC MP and was defeated by another NDP candidate in 2011.

The sleaziest floor crossing was in 2004, perpetrated by the victorious Liberal candidate for traditionally left-leaning Vancouver-Kingsway, David Emerson, big corporate executive who, while campaigning against Harper was subsequently proved to have actually been negotiating to cross the floor to the CPC (only revealed when the Liberal-funded turncoat showed up at the Governor’s residence to be sworn in as a CPC cabinet minister). As a Liberal he’d narrowly beaten longtime Van-Kingsway NDP MP Ian Waddell, but did again by a much larger margin as a CPC incumbent in 2006 and, perhaps realizing he was a stark exception to the rule, declined to run in 2008.

A more salacious but convoluted floor-crossings happened when Liberal leader Gordon Wilson took the party from nowhere to BC’s Official Opposition to the NDP majority in 1991 (the Socred regime effectively wiped out). Also elected was the pregnant 26 year-old Liberal Judy Tyabji, youngest BC MLA ever and first to give birth while in office. Wilson named her environmental critic and then house leader. In 1993, after TV news showed up at Wilson’s house to surprise his wife on camera that he was having an affair with Tyabji, inciting caucus to challenge his leadership, the naked ambition of Vancouver Mayor, Gordon Campbell, was suspected of heartlessly using Mrs Wilson as pawn in a sleazy smear to oust Wilson, win the leadership, and turn the party sharply rightward (thereafter called the “BC Liberals” to distinguish from all other Liberal parties which are typically centrist).

Tyabji and Wilson divorced their spouses and “crossed the floor” to their own caucus of two in the Progressive Democratic Alliance Party. Parliamentary confidence was at no time an issue for the ruling NDP majority. Tyabji and Wilson married in 1996 but in that year’s election Wilson was the only PDA candidate (of 65, including Tyabji) to retain his seat. The NDP won a thinner majority with less than the BC Liberal Opposition’s popular vote; a year later Wilson crossed the floor directly into to the NDP cabinet to rivals’ usual peels of faux outrage.

An evening police visit to NDP Premier Glen Clark’s modest house in 1999, search warrant in hand, resulted from an allegation that he took a bribe. As police arrived with TV news whilst the Premier was not yet home, his wife naturally assumed something terrible had happened to him and appeared on the evening news gaunt and terrified as she answered the knock. For that cruelty, whoever alerted news media to the raid ought to have been horsewhipped, commented pundit and former Socred MLA Rafe Mair. It looked like Mrs Wilson’s mortifying media exposure six years prior—suspicion again falling on Campbell whose ambition was certainly advantaged by forcing the Premier to step down while under investigation —which wouldn’t conclude until after the approaching 2001 election. Clark was eventually exonerated, but not until after a leadership race (which Wilson briefly contested), elected Ujjal Dosanjh, Clark’s AG (who sanctioned the raid on his house); the incumbent NDP was reduced to just two seats, not even Official Opposition status. (Dosanjh thence became a federal Liberal MP while the BC Liberals bamboozled BC for the next 16 years.)

The whole thing involved five parties: the Socreds and PDA (officially two Independent MLAs) were exterminated, the NDP had a near-death experience, and the Liberals were usurped by neo-rightists and colloquially rebranded “BC Liberals.” Perhaps it’s surprising that over this decade-long gong-show there were only three “floor-crossings” —but two by the perennially peregrine Mr Wilson who, after losing his seat in the general massacre, endorsed the BC Liberals in the 2013 election, victorious premier Christy Clark (no relation to Glen) appointing him to a $150K/yr position to promote BC LNG which was subsequently terminated when the NDP regained power in 2017. He and Tyabji divorced in 2022. No info on whether a loyal dog was involved.

My all-time favourite floor-crossing was in 2014: that of Wildrose Opposition leader Danielle Smith who, with most of her cabinet, suddenly crossed to the long-ruling ProgCon majority which had recently elected former CPC cabinet minister Jim Prentice leader, a move so unpopular that Alberta voters punished both parties of the right by electing an NDP majority where for 30 years it had held only a handful of seats. I like to say Smith was instrumental in destroying two parties of the right, and might well be on her way to a third.

Her UCP won its second term with fewer MPs in 2023 than in 2019 while the NDP formed an Opposition several time larger than it had had for decades after its 2015-19 term, and the largest Opposition in Alberta history in 2023. Two UCP MLAs have hived off to sit as Independents and the “poop-cookie” MLA which the UCP booted out of the party during the last election for her homophobic campaign comments (Smith apparently learned from her disastrous tardiness in condemning a Wildrose candidate’s homophobic “Lake of Fire” comment which lost her party the 2012 election it was forecast to easily win) could be said the have “crossed the floor” from Independent MLA (which she won despite being booted from the UCP) back into Smith’s fold. No info on whether any doggie-doo was involved.