Do We Need a Law to Stop MPs Switching Parties?

In just five months, five members of Parliament have crossed the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal caucus. B.C. MP Don Davies, the federal NDP’s parliamentary leader, has introduced — for the fifth time since he was first elected to the House of Commons in 2008 — a private member’s bill on Tuesday that seeks to rein in floor-crossing MPs.

If passed by Parliament, Bill C-278 would amend the Parliament of Canada Act to provide that a member’s seat in the House “is vacated and a byelection called for that seat if the member, having been elected to the House as a member of a registered party or as an independent, changes parties or becomes a member of a party, as the case may be.”

In a news release on the proposed legislation, the NDP states that it “would not prevent MPs from leaving their caucus or changing their political affiliation. Instead, it would require any MP who wishes to join another party’s caucus to either seek a renewed mandate through a byelection or sit as an independent until the next general election.”

Edmonton-born Davies, 63, who represents the federal B.C. riding of Vancouver Kingsway, told The Tyee that an MP who left a party and opted for Independent status would be “fine” because it would serve as “an important bulwark against party oppression or to protect a matter of conscience.”

“But if you want to sit in another caucus than the party you were elected with, my bill would deem your seat vacated in 30 days and a byelection would be called,” he explained.

“You can floor cross. You just have to make the case to your constituents, and if you think you have good reasons for it, you’ll get a mandate from voters. If you don’t, then you won’t.”

Davies’ riding predecessor famously switched parties but chose not to seek re-election.

In the 2004 federal election, David Emerson ran as a Liberal candidate in Vancouver Kingsway, won and was appointed industry minister in former prime minister Paul Martin’s cabinet.

Emerson was re-elected as a Liberal in the Jan. 23, 2006, federal election but two weeks later, on Feb. 6, 2006, switched parties to become international trade minister in Stephen Harper’s newly elected Conservative government. In so doing, Emerson made Canadian history by becoming the first MP to cross the floor before the government was sworn in following an election.

It also spurred the emergence of an NDP-aligned Recall David Emerson campaign and a Liberal-aligned De-Elect Emerson campaign.

But Emerson remained in Parliament and in 2008 briefly served as foreign affairs minister following the resignation of Maxime Bernier — the current leader of the People’s Party of Canada. However, Emerson did not run as a candidate in the 2008 general election.

Aisle crossings ‘corrosive’ to democracy: Davies

History has once again been made with the current federal Liberal government. The addition of four Conservative MPs — Matt Jeneroux (Edmonton Riverbend), Marilyn Gladu (Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong), Michael Ma (Markham-Unionville) and Chris d’Entremont (Acadie-Annapolis) — along with former NDP MP Lori Idlout (Nunavut) has resulted in Carney becoming “the first Canadian prime minister to form a majority government through floor crossing rather than a general election,” as the NDP highlighted.

In the April 2025 election, the Liberals formed a minority government with 169 House seats compared with the Conservatives’ 144.

As Davies told The Tyee, “in an election, voters get the opportunity to express their democratic choice. When a parliamentarian crosses the floor to join a different party than they were elected with, they are unilaterally — at the very least — altering the will of their electorate.”

He believes that it also creates a “corrosive effect on our democracy” and is “undeniably undemocratic.”

It also does little to instil voter trust in elections, in Davies’ view.

“We have a problem with voter turnout in elections, and this contributes to that,” he said.

“The prospect that MPs have been enticed by backroom deals emerges,” Davies continued. “The idea that only government members get resources for their constituencies brings pork-barrel politics to the table.”

“Marilyn Gladu has literally said that she thinks she will get more things for her riding because she’s on the government side.”

In an interview with the Sarnia Observer, posted online on April 9, Gladu was asked “what rewards, if any,” she was “expecting for crossing to the Liberals.”

She replied: “I did not get offered anything but, watching for 10 years, people on the government benches tend to get more for their ridings and their projects. Interestingly, after I crossed, I had a call yesterday from the infrastructure and housing minister’s office wanting to get together and talk about the things we need in Sarnia-Lambton. I had sent [Housing Minister Gregor Robertson], when I was re-elected in 2025, a one-page of all the things that lined up with his file that we wanted in Sarnia. It went really nowhere, until I crossed the floor. This is what I’m hoping will be the result.”

Robertson, who represents the federal B.C. riding of Vancouver Fraserview-South Burnaby in the Commons, later said that the federal government “doesn’t prioritize infrastructure funding in Liberal ridings.”

Meantime, Gladu is facing a potential civil lawsuit for “fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment” after moving to the Liberal caucus despite having run on “Conservative values” and accepting “Conservative donations.”

However, the Sue Gladu Legal Fund erroneously suggested that Gladu could face a criminal bribery charge, stating that “by her own public admission, federal funding flowed to [Gladu’s] riding within hours of her crossing,” which she never did.

One local media outlet has also gotten it wrong about Gladu, referring to her as a “Conservative” MP in a recent news story about an act of vandalism at her constituency office.

A ‘last resort’ for party rebels

Political scientist Lori Williams, an associate professor in the department of economics, justice and policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said in an interview that it’s not surprising the floor-crossing bill would originate from the NDP, which has “no realistic hope of forming government in the foreseeable future.”

(Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis recently said he would welcome former federal environment and climate change minister Steven Guilbeault, who announced last month that he will leave Parliament this summer, to run as an NDP candidate if he left the Liberal party.)

Williams said that for some MPs, “the rarely exercised outlet” of floor crossing could be “the last resort for people who have no other recourse when their principles are being compromised because of strict party discipline and a reaction to very concentrated power in the hands of the leader and senior party staff — and that arguably constrains democratic representation of constituents.”

She explained that it can also be the result of political opportunism, such as the case of former New Democrat Idlout. She barely held on to her seat in the 2025 federal election by a 41-vote margin against her Liberal challenger.

However, Williams doesn’t think floor crossing should trigger a “costly” byelection.

Sitting as an Independent is not a terrific alternative, she highlighted, since lone-wolf MPs “have much less in the way of resources and can’t sit on committees.”

“I would prefer to see changes to the rules for elected representatives so there’s room for honest debate about constituent concerns, principles and values,” said Williams, who echoed some of the recommendations made in the 2025 book No I in Team: Party Loyalty in Canadian Politics.

She would like to see “more free votes” in the House and committee members selected by secret ballot rather than by their party’s leader.

“Fewer confidence motions on government bills would free members to vote with their conscience,” said Williams.

“Party discipline has had the effect of diminishing the capacity of members to represent their constituents or the members’ principles.”

Will Conservatives back NDP bill?

According to No I in Team, 333 federal, provincial and territorial politicians left their party caucus to either sit as Independents or as members of another caucus between 1980 and 2021.

In December 2014, Danielle Smith, Alberta’s then-official Opposition leader, joined eight of her fellow Wildrose Party MLAs and crossed the floor to join the late Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservative government.

Early this century, eight MPs, representing all of the opposition parties in the House at the time — the NDP, the Progressive Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and the Canadian Alliance — crossed the floor to join former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberal caucus, half of them in 2000 alone.

Davies doesn’t expect his private member’s bill to advance through Parliament any time soon. As of June 1, it was number 236 in the private member’s bill draw and it could take a while before it’s debated in the House.

But it is on the order paper, “and any government that wants to act on it is certainly free to pick it up,” he said.

Davies’ past attempts at introducing a floor-crossing bill have met opposition from both Liberal and Conservative MPs.

This time, however, he thinks the Conservatives could support his Bill C-278, since their leader, Pierre Poilievre, has said he supports recall petitions that would force out a floor-crossing MP and trigger a byelection.

However, Davies does not like the recall idea, since “the onus should not be on the voters to try to rectify a negation of their voting preference. The onus should be on the MP to make the case for a renewed mandate and earn the trust of the voters.”