The Liberals will return to the House of Commons with a majority government — its first since 2019 — after sweeping three byelections Monday night.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government now has 174 seats in the House, and has become the first federal government in the nation’s history to switch from a minority to a majority between elections.
While the byelection victories in University–Rosedale, Scarborough Southwest and Terrebonne helped secured that achievement, Carney’s government has been aided by five opposition MPs who crossed the floor to the Liberals in recent months.
Once the Liberals’ new MPs are sworn into office, the government will have far greater control and reduce the chance of an early election. The next federal election doesn’t have to be called until 2029.
“Tonight, voters have placed their trust in the new government’s plan,” Carney said on social media after the results came in.
“We are building a stronger economy to make life more affordable, to create high-paying jobs, to take care of each other and to determine our own future.”
Under Carney, who was elected Liberal leader in March 2025 following the resignation of Justin Trudeau, the party was elected to a fourth straight government mandate last April with 169 seats, just shy of the 172 needed for a majority.
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Several Liberal MPs have retired since then, fluctuating the seat count. Two of those retirees, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair, prompted the byelections in their respective former ridings of University–Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest.
The byelection in Terrebonne was triggered after the Supreme Court of Canada nullified Tatiana Auguste’s one-vote win for the Liberals over incumbent Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné in the general election. The court sided with a Bloc challenge that highlighted a mail-in ballot processing error.
Auguste, Danielle Martin (University-Rosedale) and Dolly Begum (Scarborough Southwest) were the Liberal candidates who won their byelections Monday.
“The Carney Liberals did not win a majority government through a general election or today’s byelections,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social media statement.
“Instead, it was won through backroom deals with politicians who betrayed the people who voted for them.”
While Poilievre has warned against giving the Liberals “unchecked power” with a majority, political experts say there will still be ways to hold Carney and his government to account — both within and outside the Liberal caucus.
“Mr. Carney still has to keep that majority together, he still has to keep the votes within the Liberal caucus on his side,” Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, told Global News.
— with files from Sean Boynton, Uday Rana and The Canadian Press
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