Please Advise! Why Do Conservative MPs Keep Bolting?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Another Conservative MP has crossed the floor to join Mark Carney's Liberals. Edmonton Riverbend MP Matt Jeneroux had earlier announced he was leaving Parliament in the spring, but now has decided to join the government ranks instead. If Carney's Liberals win all three pending byelections they will have a parliamentary majority.

Does this mean no federal election, Dr. Steve?

Signed,

Major Ritty

Dear Major,

The Calgary Stampede, a fast-paced, rip-roaring spectacle, takes place in July. The Edmonton Stampede, a slower, more furtive affair, was held last week — perhaps not so much a stampede as a jailbreak. As for Prime Minister Mark Carney, he seems to be doing pretty well for a guy at his first rodeo.

Jeneroux was rumoured to be planning a party switch last fall but then announced he would eventually be resigning his seat after 10 years. One can imagine how that intra-party discussion must have played out, since we have already heard about how a similar event went for Nova Scotia MP Chris d'Entremont. When d'Entremont decided to cross the floor last fall, he says, he was called a “snake” and a “liar” by Andrew Scheer and Chris Warkentin, his erstwhile Conservative caucus mates.

Similarly uplifting sentiments may well have been directed at Jeneroux months ago, perhaps involving other zoological descriptors like “weasel” or “rat” or “raccoon that looks super cute until one day your backyard is strewn with half-chewed garbage and your beagle has PTSD.”

The Conservative caucus threats, if threats were indeed made, seemed to work for a while. But at some point — we're speculating here — the guards, Scheer and Warkentin, must have taken a bathroom break, giving Jeneroux his opportunity. After fashioning a decoy MP out of an empty suit stuffed with crime statistics, Jeneroux must have crawled beneath the barbed wire divide, avoiding the Conservative searchlights and sprinting into Liberal territory.

In a subsequent appearance with Carney, Jeneroux told the prime minister his reason for the move. “Quite honestly, it was the speech in Davos where you took everything head-on, and I think for me that’s where a lot of the world changed.”

In the history of breakup lines, that is surely an original: “It's not you, honey. It's Mark Carney's Davos speech.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who last fall extended warm wishes to the retiring Jeneroux — “On behalf of our Conservative team, I wish you and your family all the best following your decision to step down as a member of Parliament next spring” — retracted those kind words like a frog's sticky tongue reeling in a dragonfly. “Matt Jeneroux has betrayed the people of Edmonton Riverbend who voted for affordable food and homes, safe streets,” Poilievre posted on the messaging/porn site X.

He was mad, all right. But maybe it's more than just Jeneroux leaving, or Michael Ma leaving, or d'Entremont leaving.

Maybe it's Jamil Jivani staying. If somebody's going to jump ship, Poilievre must be wondering, why not Jivani? If there's going to be a slow drip-drip-drip of Conservative defections, why not the biggest drip of them all? The Oshawa MP and JD Vance mini-me recently dismissed Canadian anger at U.S. President Donald Trump as an “anti-American hissy fit.”

When the U.S. hockey teams both defeated Canada in overtime, Jivani probably cashed in big at BetRivers. At this point Poilievre would likely trade him for a five-ounce package of salmon jerky and a parliamentary snow globe. But not even the federal NDP is that desperate.

On the other hand, could it be that Poilievre doth protest too much? Sure, last month's North Korea-style party vote landed him a big majority. But in the real world, Poilievre is underwater, with an approval rating of 36 per cent in one recent poll, versus Carney’s 51 per cent. The last thing the Conservative leader needs right now is a federal election. And if Conservative MPs keep defecting, there's little danger of that happening.

So, new scenario: maybe Poilievre baked a file into a cake, drugged the guards, rolled Matt Jeneroux into a carpet, threw him in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car, dumped him at Liberal party HQ, then wrote his angry message railing against Jeneroux's treachery. No one's the wiser.

Hey, leader of the Opposition may not be the top gig. But it’s a gig. Beats picking apples.