Good Sunday Morning!! And Happy New Year!
2026 is off with a bang, pun intended, with Trump’s illegal assault on Venezuela.
Here is our press release from yesterday:
Green Party of Canada Condemns U.S. Actions in Venezuela as Violation of International Law
January 3, 2026
“Ottawa — The Green Party of Canada, in solidarity with the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas (FPVA), strongly condemns all military actions, including the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, carried out by the United States government on Venezuelan territory on January 3, 2026.
“In an increasingly destabilized world, our North Star must remain respect for international law,” said Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May.
Violation of International Law
We denounce this action as a flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the fundamental principles of national sovereignty. The unilateral use of military force contravenes international law and undermines the global rules-based order.
Threat to Continental Stability
An attack against Venezuela constitutes an act of aggression that threatens the peace, security, and territorial integrity of the region as a whole.
Defence of Life Over Politics
The FPVA emphasizes that, while Green Party members in Venezuela oppose the current government, they equally reject armed intervention. The protection of life and territory must transcend partisan political differences. Violence will never be a pathway to representative democracy or respect for human rights.
Call to the Global Community
As an integral part of the Global Greens, we call for decisive action from the international community and from human rights organizations worldwide.
We urge world leaders to condemn this dangerous precedent, which sacrifices the future of coming generations and jeopardizes planetary security. In this context, Canadian Greens call on the federal government of Canada to denounce the illegal actions of the United States government.
“We can’t stand by while one man’s insatiable and violent thirst for oil makes an already perilous time in the world even less safe and even more unstable,” said Green Party of Canada Deputy Leader Mike Morrice.”
If not for the US aggression in not only deposing the Venezuelan leader but announcing Trump’s intention to “run Venezuela,” this morning’s letter would have focused on the issue of floor crossings.
Over the last month, we have had significant shifts in the relative balance between parties in the current minority Parliament. So far, two Conservative MPs have crossed the floor to join the Liberal ranks (Nova Scotian Chris D’Entremont and Ontario MP Michael Ma) while a third, Matt Jeneroux, who was in serious talks with the Liberals about crossing the floor and apparently had such disturbing threats from his party’s leader’s office that he has announced he will quit parliament altogether. Whenever he finally does leave the House, a by-election will be required in Jeneroux’s seat of Edmonton Riverbend. Matt Jeneroux is well liked across party lines. The various rumours I have heard should, like most Ottawa gossip, be taken with a grain of salt. The most credible version involve the Conservatives’ former campaign manager, senior advisor to Stephen Harper and Pierre Poilievre, Jenni Byrne. She has a well earned reputation for nasty, bare-knuckled politics. Whatever occurred has not increased affection for PP in his own caucus.
There are many hints of more defections to come. Currently, the Liberals are one MP shy of a majority.
These moves are hugely consequential for our country. With a majority, no matter whether from First Past the Post distortions or defections after the election, with 43.8% of the popular vote Mr. Carney will have 100% of the power. In Westminster parliamentary democracy there is no such thing as the “checks and balances” built in to the US Constitution after the former British colonies won the Revolutionary War of 1776 and set up a new system within a Republic. (Now, obviously, the famous checks and balances of US democracy are on the rocks).
For many reasons, I prefer our system of Westminster parliamentary democracy. One reason Canada urgently needs electoral reform is this feature of our system: Any party leader with the majority of the seats has total control over the Executive (PM and Cabinet) and Legislative (Parliament) branches of government.
In reviewing the history of floor-crossing in Westminster parliamentary democracies, perhaps none was as memorable as Winston Churchill, who famously crossed the floor twice! Churchill left the Conservatives in 1904 over free trade policy, joining the Liberals, only to return to the Tories in 1924.
He famously quipped, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
Not mentioned in the recent spate of news articles about floor crossings in Canadian politics, the most consequential was that of Lucien Bouchard in 1990. I will always be grateful to Lucien Bouchard as an outstanding Minister of the Environment. In fact, and I owe this personal reflection to the late NDP MP Jim Fulton, (a dear friend who went on to be the first Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation,) both Bouchard and Fulton were at the 1990 climate negotiations in Bergen, Norway. The Bergen climate conference was a key milestone on the way to the 1992 Earth Summit and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Bouchard was one of 34 environment ministers in attendance. He committed Canada to our first international goal – to ensure that emissions in 2000 would not exceed our 1990 levels. It was a fateful time for Bouchard to be out of the country as the Meech Lake discussions moved in a direction he believed had betrayed his old friend Brian Mulroney’s commitments to Quebec. He left the Conservative ranks, bringing four other Conservative Quebec MPs and two Quebec Liberal MPs to eventually form the Bloc Quebecois. Incredibly, within three years, the Bloc had become the Official Opposition.
There have been other stunning defections. Some created a wave of public revulsion, such as in 2006 when former Liberal member of Paul Martin’s Cabinet, David Emerson, crossed over and directly into Stephen Harper’s Cabinet.
Overwhelmingly the 80 MPs who crossed the floor over the last 25 years represented personal decisions. Whether momentarily breathtaking, like Belinda Stronach’s move from Stephen Harper to Paul Martin, or accepted as principled, as Scott Brison who shifted to the Liberals as a former Progressive Conservative. He felt his party had left him. Most of floor crossings have been one at a time, small moves; personal and individual, and non-consequential to the parliament as a whole.
That is why I think of the Bloc. Lucien Bouchard’s move shifted Canadian politics in consequential ways over decades. Not since that shift has something as profound been moved by floor crossings as those Mr Carney is engineering. I believe we will see more. They are in keeping with Mr.Carney’s style. As our first CEO prime minister he needs total control and total power. He has been acting as though he had it since the April election. If he does get a majority in the House, it is unlikely there will be another election before 2029.
Floor crossing is an unusual process. Unlike gaining approval to stand as a candidate for a particular party by winning a nomination, an MP can join another party by writing the Speaker a letter. The MP merely instructs the Speaker to list that MP as a member of party X. During trials and tribulations of Bloc leadership after the 2011 election, variously a number of Bloc MPs described themselves in their letters to the Speaker as members of “Quebec Debout” or of “Force et Democracie”. These parties did not exist under Elections Canada rules, yet they had sitting members of Parliament. The rules allow for more creativity than is generally known.
One hope is for MPs from other parties who feel betrayed by their own leadership (whether Conservative or Liberal or NDP) to either form a new progressive party, or a coalition?, or best hope, join the Greens. The benefit of joining Greens is that MPs who do so can always vote their conscience, as they feel their own constituents want. No whipped votes means more democracy.
The reality of Mark Carney’s shifting positions, aligning with Trump in anti-refugee policies and with Poilievre on climate, creates the need for a review of this Parliament, not seat by seat, but at a 40,000 foot level. Canadians voted for MPs to keep “elbows up” in dealing with Trump. Not dropping the Digital Services Tax because Trump demanded it. Nor to drop retaliatory tariffs and invite foreign corporations to benefit from lower tax rates than in the US, leaving us once, as forever, a raw resource colony for other countries.
We have 343 MPs. In theory, we are all equal. We have huge challenges as a nation. Maybe Mark Carney is the best hope for our time. I am not sure, but I am sure that working together and finding cooperative parliamentary arrangements will bring better results than trusting Goldman Sachs to figure it out for us.
And with that I leave you for this week. John and I are on board the famed train the “Canadian” heading to Vancouver. We arrive on January 8th. Until then I am working on New Year’s Resolution numero uno! Take better care of myself!! We are without wifi on board, hooray! So thanks once again to my volunteer team in sending this out.
All my love and THANKS!! To everyone who sent along a donation, we finished 2025 in good shape! Details to come, but many thanks are in order!!
love,
Elizabeth