Prime Minister Mark Carney will have a majority government after the Liberals were projected to sweep all three federal byelections that were held Monday.
Global News projects Danielle Martin will keep the Toronto-area riding of University–Rosedale in Liberal hands, while Liberal candidate Dolly Begum will win Scarborough Southwest.
Liberal Tatiana Auguste is also projected to hold onto the Quebec riding of Terrebonne with a wider lead over the Bloc Québécois than her one-vote general election win that was nullified earlier this year.
That puts the party at 174 seats in the House of Commons, giving Carney a majority — something not enjoyed by the Liberals since 2019.
Carney offered congratulations to Begum and Martin on social media, saying the country would benefit from their experience. He did not acknowledge his newfound majority government in either statement.
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The win in Terrebonne came after midnight Eastern on Tuesday, with Auguste winning by over 700 votes with all polls reporting.
Global News has full byelection results for all three ridings:
The results mean the Liberals will be able to pass legislation without any opposition MPs or tie-breaking votes from the Speaker of the House of Commons if all Liberal MPs vote together.
The Liberals were elected to a fourth straight government mandate last April with 169 seats, just shy of the 172 needed for a majority.
Several Liberal MPs have retired since then, fluctuating the seat count. Two of those retirees, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair, prompted Wednesday’s byelections in their respective former ridings of University–Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest.
The byelection in Terrebonne was triggered after the Supreme Court of Canada nullified Auguste’s one-vote win for the Liberals over incumbent Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné in last year’s general election. The court sided with a Bloc challenge that highlighted a mail-in ballot processing error.
A number of MP defections to the Liberals from other parties set the stage for the government to cross the majority threshold Monday.
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“The Carney Liberals did not win a majority government through a general election or today’s byelections,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social media statement.
“Instead, it was won through backroom deals with politicians who betrayed the people who voted for them.”
3:45
Breaking down the federal byelections
Elections Canada said last week that 18,200 people in the Quebec riding cast ballots in advance elections in early April, which amounts to almost 20 per cent of people on the voters’ list.
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The riding saw 68 per cent voter turnout in the 2025 election.
Voters in the riding who spoke with Global News on Monday said they expected the byelection to be another tight race between Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste and Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, who were both running again.
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“It is the ultimate toss-up,” said Philippe Fournier, editor-in-chief of 338Canada, which tracks polling in Canadian elections.
The Toronto-area ridings saw lower degrees of voter turnout at the advance polls, with 10,300 ballots cast before election day in Scarborough Southwest and 9,400 in University — Rosedale. This amounts to 12 and 10 per cent voter turnout respectively.
In total, almost 38,000 people voted in advance polls.
Majority comes after 5 MPs crossed floor
Since December, five MPs have crossed the floor to the Liberals from the opposition benches in the House of Commons — four from the Conservatives and one from the New Democrats.
The most recent floor-crossing occurred just last week, when ex-Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu joined the government caucus.
Those actions have sparked accusations from the Conservatives and NDP that Carney was creating a majority with “dirty backroom deals” against the wishes of voters in those ridings. Carney, his party and the new Liberals MPs have all denied the accusations, and there are no rules prohibiting MPs from crossing the floor as others have done in the past.
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Conservative MP Billy Morin was caught on a hot mic before a press conference in Ottawa on Monday saying the Liberals are trying to get him to cross the floor, but added he has no intention of leaving the Conservative caucus.
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A senior government source tells Global News there are many ongoing conversations between the Liberals and Conservatives to get even more Tories to join the Liberal tent. A Conservative MP also told Global News that they believe more floor crossers will leave the Conservative caucus for the Liberals.
“I will continue to lead that fight every day and in every way in Parliament, across the country and in the next election, when Canadians will reclaim the country we know and love,” Poilievre said Monday after the Liberals were projected to form a majority.
The Liberals won a majority government in the 2015 general election that elevated Justin Trudeau to prime minister, but they failed to gain equally decisive mandates in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
A majority for Carney would allow for legislation to be passed faster in the House of Commons, where Liberals control the majority of seats, but they could still face delays in committees, where membership does not reset and is based on the minority numbers in the last general election.
Since coming into power, the Liberals has seen major bills on immigration, hate speech and bail reform stall, and passage of the government’s budget bill took months.
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The Liberals have put the blame for the delays on Conservatives, who helped fast-track Carney’s major infrastructure projects and internal trade bill last year but have raised concerns about other major legislation.
Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News and released Sunday found 53 per cent of Canadians want the Liberals to win enough seats in Monday’s byelections to give Carney a majority government.
The poll found 47 per cent were opposed to the idea.
4:31
Liberals near majority as Mark Carney gains ground in new Ipsos poll
While Poilievre has warned against giving the Liberals “unchecked power” with a majority, political experts say there will still be ways to hold Carney and his government to account — both within and outside the Liberal caucus.
“Mr. Carney still has to keep that majority together, he still has to keep the votes within the Liberal caucus on his side,” Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, told Global News in an earlier interview.
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Labour Minister Patty Hajdu said at a press conference Monday that Canadians expect the government to work with the other parties in Parliament, and suggested the Liberals don’t intend to change their approach.
“We’ve been in a minority government situation for a number of years, and the work gets done through collaboration,” she said. “Sometimes, that collaboration sounds and looks messy. But at the end of the day, that is how the work get done. I believe that’s important in a majority government as well.”
—With files from Global’s Touria Izri and Jillian Piper, and the Canadian Press