Canadians Are Suing: The Lawsuit Against Carney's Floor-Crossing Majority

Five MPs crossed the floor to hand Carney a manufactured majority. Now constituents are fighting back — and one crosser called for byelections before crossing herself.

For the first time in Canadian history, a sitting Prime Minister has used floor-crossing to manufacture a parliamentary majority from a minority election result. Five MPs — elected under Conservative or NDP banners — crossed the floor to the Liberals, giving Mark Carney the slim majority he never won at the ballot box. Now, at least some of their constituents are fighting back in court.

The Five Who Crossed

Between late 2025 and April 2026, five opposition MPs defected to the Liberals:

• Michael Ma — Markham–Unionville, Ontario (Conservative → Liberal, ~December 2025)
• Chris D'Entremont — West Nova, Nova Scotia (Conservative → Liberal, ~December 2025)
• Matt Jeneroux — Edmonton Riverbend, Alberta (Conservative → Liberal, February 2026)
• Lori Idlout — Nunavut (NDP → Liberal, March 10–11, 2026)
• Marilyn Gladu — Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong, Ontario (Conservative → Liberal, April 8, 2026)

The Math: A Majority No One Voted For

Carney's Liberals won approximately 166 seats in the April 2025 federal election — a minority government, 6 seats short of the 172 needed for a working majority. Five floor crossings brought them to 171 Liberal voting MPs. Combined with byelection wins in two safe Toronto seats on April 13, 2026, the Liberals crossed the majority threshold.

No prime minister in Canadian history has achieved majority status through floor-crossing from a minority election result. The CBC noted: "no prime minister has relied on floor-crossing to reach majority status. Carney could be the first."

Pierre Poilievre called it plainly: "Mark Carney is seizing a costly Liberal majority that voters denied him, and doing so through dirty backroom deals."

An Ipsos poll found that 62% of Canadians say MPs should not be allowed to switch parties after an election. ~70% say floor-crossing should trigger an immediate byelection. And 111,158 Canadians signed a parliamentary petition (e-7025) — sponsored by Conservative MP Lianne Rood — calling for exactly that before it closed on April 17, 2026.

Marilyn Gladu: The Hypocrisy on Record

Of the five crossers, none has generated more outrage than Marilyn Gladu — 11-year Conservative MP from Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong, who won her seat in 2025 with 53.1% of the vote (40,597 ballots), defeating the Liberal candidate by 11,657 votes.

In January 2026 — just three months before her defection — Gladu publicly backed a Conservative petition calling for automatic byelections when MPs cross the floor. She told The Independent (Lambton County):

"We elected you under this banner, and if you don't want to be under that banner, then we deserve a chance to have a redo."

On April 8, 2026, she crossed the floor herself to the Liberals.

Watch Gladu in her own words — slamming Carney and calling for byelections when MPs cross the floor. She later deleted this video after crossing the floor herself:

The same day she crossed, Gladu received a call from the Office of the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure — projects she'd been pushing for years in Sarnia suddenly got traction overnight. She acknowledged it herself: "It went really nowhere, until I crossed the floor."

Her explanation for not calling a byelection? "I also said that in order for that to happen, the Elections Act has to be changed… that law has not been changed."

The Sarnia mayor called for a byelection. The Conservative riding association president called for a byelection. Constituents protested outside her office the same day. The Conservative Party Whip called on her to "show the courage of her convictions and resign her seat."

SueGladu.ca: Constituents Organize a Lawsuit

A group of Gladu's constituents has taken things a step further. The campaign, organized at SueGladu.ca, is building a claimant registry for a civil lawsuit against Gladu personally.

As of April 27, 2026, no lawsuit has been formally filed in court and no counsel has been retained. The campaign is still at the organizing stage — but the legal grounds it intends to pursue are substantive:

• Fraudulent misrepresentation — she misrepresented her political platform and intentions to voters and donors
• Breach of fiduciary duty — as MP, she owed a duty to the constituents who elected her as a Conservative
• Promissory estoppel — voters, donors, and volunteers relied on her representations and changed their position accordingly
• Unjust enrichment — she retains an MP salary of $217,700/year and office funding obtained under false pretences

The campaign cites the $102,000+ in campaign donations raised by Gladu's 2025 Conservative campaign, and the 40,597 Canadians who voted for her as a Conservative, as the foundation for the claimant class. The site states no donations will be accepted until counsel is retained and a dedicated trust account is opened. If you live in the riding, you can register at SueGladu.ca.

There is no direct precedent in Canada for suing an MP civilly for crossing the floor. The legal path will face significant hurdles — Canadian courts have historically treated floor-crossing as a matter of parliamentary privilege. But the campaign argues this is about contract and fraud law, not parliamentary procedure.

The Criminal Angle: Section 119

Beyond the civil claims, there is a more serious question that has not been acted upon — but has been raised publicly.

Section 119 of the Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence for a member of Parliament to "corruptly accept… any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted… in their official capacity." The maximum sentence is 14 years.

Gladu herself tied her crossing directly to the promise of federal infrastructure funding for her riding. She stated that her requests had "gone nowhere" on the opposition benches — and hours after crossing, received a call from the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure's office. She described the immediate result: "It went really nowhere, until I crossed the floor."

The Liberals have denied pork-barrelling. No criminal charges have been laid. The SueGladu.ca campaign acknowledges that any determination would be for the courts. Proving corrupt intent under Section 119 requires a high evidentiary threshold — internal communications showing a conditional quid pro quo. Still, the question has been formally raised in the House of Commons by opposition members.

Legal but Not Democratic

Floor crossing is entirely legal in Canada. No federal law prohibits it. No byelection is required. The Supreme Court has never ruled against it. Manitoba was the only jurisdiction in Canadian history to ban the practice legislatively — and that law was repealed in 2018.

Legal doesn't mean democratic.

When you vote for a candidate based on their platform and party — when you donate to their campaign, knock on doors for them, attend their events — you are buying into a specific political contract. When that MP hands their seat to the opposing government weeks or months later, the question of who they actually represent becomes urgent.

Carney won a minority. His Liberals did not win a majority. Five MPs, elected under different banners, crossed the floor and gave him one. That's not a constitutional violation. But it is, arguably, a democratic one.

If you live in Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong, Markham–Unionville, West Nova, Edmonton Riverbend, or Nunavut — your MP crossed the floor. You didn't vote for this. And now, some of them are doing something about it.

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