By Lori Turnbull

April 25, 2025

Whatever happens in Monday’s federal election, Canada’s political party system is likely to look very different when it is over.

The Liberal Party has been Justin Trudeau’s party for over ten years; what Mark Carney will make of it, win or lose, is not yet clear. The smaller parties have been struggling to be heard this entire campaign and might end up with a much-reduced role in the House of Commons.

And, the Conservatives’ fortunes have been turned upside down over the last four months. They were poised to win a big majority but now that looks unlikely. A loss for them may put the united conservative movement at risk.

When Justin Trudeau took over the Liberal Party in 2013, it was at its lowest point in memory. The Party was in third place in the House of Commons with just 34 seats, but Trudeau won a majority government just two and a half years later. He won by making the party his own. The Liberal Party brand, as well as its traditional position in the ideological centre, were wedded to Trudeau’s image and virtue-based priorities. He pulled the party to the left and formed an agreement of confidence and supply with the NDP that lasted for most of Trudeau’s third mandate.

When he left in January of this year, when his abysmal approval ratings were dragging the party down, this created an opportunity for Mark Carney to take over. Like Trudeau before him, Carney inherited a weak party. But his Liberal Party won’t be Trudeau’s. He’s wearing the Liberal jersey but often comes across like the sort of Progressive Conservative previously thought to be extinct.

Carney’s focus on the economy stands in stark contrast to Trudeau’s emphasis on social programs, reconciliation, and progressivism. He is appealing to those centrist voters who felt orphaned when Trudeau veered to the left. Whether Carney forms government or sits on the opposition benches, he will need to fortify a coalition of supporters and redefine the Liberal Party in a way that suits his identity and voice. This will likely be smack-dab in the middle of the ideological centre. His skills as an intra-party consensus-builder will be put to the test, in the event that the traditional left and right wings of the Liberal Party come back into the fold under his leadership.

It would be logical to conclude that a move back to the centre for the Liberals would leave some room on the left for the New Democrats to grow, but the opposite may be the case. The NDP has been polling consistently at less than 10 per cent since the campaign started. This is partly because of the “presidentialization” of this election campaign. It’s all about electing the right leader to stand up to Donald Trump and lead Canada through a period of existential uncertainty. Since the NDP are not in a competitive position to form government, they are unable to answer the ballot question.

But there’s more to it than that. Their decision to enter into a confidence and supply agreement with the Liberals in 2022 has left the NDP without a distinct identity as an autonomous force in the House of Commons. It’s hard for them to make the case for why we need more NDP MPs when they’ve been in the Liberals’ back seat for the last three years. The NDP is at real risk of losing party status, which would be a significant setback and a drain on their resources.

When it looked like the Conservatives were going to win big, there was a scenario where the Bloc Quebecois could have formed the Official Opposition. But not anymore. They are trailing the Liberals by around 15 points, depending on which poll you read, so their dreams of a higher seat count seem to be dashed.

The decline in support for the smaller parties, particularly the NDP, is no help to the Conservatives. Even though they are polling at over 38%, it appears to be not enough for a win because strategic votes are lining up behind Mark Carney. By pulling to the centre and overlapping with Poilievre’s platform, Carney has changed the game and taken away Poilievre’s edge. The people who were planning to vote Conservative for policy reasons, even though they don’t like Poilievre, can now just vote for Carney instead.

The contraction of the smaller parties will make the House of Commons look more like it did before the realignment of the 1990s, when Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative majority splintered off into the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party. The two large parties will be doing more interest aggregation internally – that is, unless the Conservative movement breaks down again, as it did in the 1990s.

Poilievre’s coalition of support is heterogeneous and its constituent parts are often hard to reconcile. Tim Houston’s “Nova Scotia video”, released during Poilievre’s only visit to Nova Scotia during this campaign, is fueling speculation that he’s eyeing the top job. He’s a self-identified red tory and has taken pains to distance himself from the federal Conservatives in their current iteration. Meanwhile, former Reform Party leader Preston Manning is threatening a national unity crisis if the West is not prioritized.

If the Conservatives don’t win, the various factions within it might not see much reason to carry on united. This would transform the party system entirely.

The ballot question in this election is all about leadership, but the composition of the House of Commons hangs in the balance. If the polls are right, it could look quite different after the votes are counted.

Policy Columnist Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.