🇨🇦 Marilyn Gladu Crosses the Floor and Calls It Patriotism — The Oldest Trick in the Book

Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu crossed the floor to the Liberals this week and is now calling it the best thing for her riding and for herself — in that order, presumably. She then performed at the Liberal convention. The voters of Sarnia-Lambton elected her as a Conservative. They did not elect her to hand Mark Carney a warmer majority and a photo opportunity.

Floor-crossing is the political class at its most honest: the career matters, the party label is negotiable, and the voters who put you there are an afterthought to be managed with press releases about serving constituents. Gladu's timing — crossing just as Carney approaches majority territory — is not coincidental. It is transactional. Whatever was offered, whether cabinet consideration, committee placement, or simple political survival calculus, the result is the same. A riding that voted Conservative now has a Liberal voice in Ottawa without casting a single new ballot. No by-election, no accountability, no recourse. Canadian democratic norms permit this. That is the real story.

🍁 Maple Chronicles