Longtime Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to the Liberals, putting Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government a single seat shy of a majority.
The Liberals announced Gladu is joining their ranks in a statement Wednesday morning.
“The past year has been like no other that Canada has ever faced, and I’ve heard clearly from constituents that you want serious leadership and a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy,” Gladu wrote in a statement.
“That is why I have decided to join Carney and Canada’s new government as the newest member of his caucus,” she added.
Gladu is a longtime Conservative who has held several opposition critic roles. In 2020, she announced her bid for the Conservative leadership, but was disqualified when the party deemed her ineligible.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Carney said he is “very much looking forward to working with Marilyn,” adding she “brings tremendous experience” as an engineer and businesswoman.
She has represented the Southwestern Ontario riding of Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong for the Conservatives since 2015. The riding is a major producer of oil and gas in Canada, and the petrochemical industry is one of the region’s largest employers.
In 2021, Gladu apologized for comments she made about COVID-19 vaccines. During an interview on CTV Question Period, she compared COVID-19 to the polio disease that spread in the first half of the 20th century, and said the coronavirus doesn’t pose the same “frequency of risk.”
Speaking to reporters in Terrebonne, Que., on Wednesday, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the ideological gap between the Liberals and Conservatives is narrowing, and credited his own party as “the only party that still stand strongly with the population, who supports this idea that there is a problem called climate change.”
“Each day that passes demonstrates that the ideological differences between the Liberals and the Conservatives are getting thinner and thinner by the minute,” Blanchet said. “If you are a progressive Liberal in that Liberal caucus, you must start asking yourself, ‘who the hell is talking for me in that caucus, in that party.’”
Liberals one seat shy of a majority
She is the fifth MP to join the Liberal ranks in as many months, and the fourth Conservative.
In January, she told a local news outlet in her riding, The Independent, that she agrees a by-election should be called for any MP who wishes to cross the floor.
The Liberals have hovered around the 172-seat threshold for a majority government since last April’s general election. Despite some former Trudeau-era cabinet ministers picking up diplomat posts and resigning their seats, the Liberals have made up the difference a stream of floor crossers since November, putting them at 171 seats as of Wednesday.
There are three by-elections set for Monday, and the Liberals are expected to hold onto their stronghold seats in Toronto: University—Rosedale, and Scarborough Southwest.
Carney is also hoping to pick up a seat in Terrebonne, where the Supreme Court of Canada invalidated last year’s general election result, after the Liberals won by a single vote and it was later reported a mail-in ballot for the Bloc wasn’t counted.
