Liberal party members are gathering in Montreal and, for the first time in more than a decade, Justin Trudeau and his personal brand of politics won’t tower over the party’s proceedings.

Party faithful will gather as Mark Carney’s ever-expanding big tent of MPs stands on the cusp of achieving a majority government following a series of floor-crossings in Parliament.

The convention, which runs Thursday through Saturday, starts just ahead of three byelections set for Monday, and a day after a fifth opposition MP crossed the floor to join the Liberal caucus.

It comes at a high point for the Liberals, who a little more than a year ago felt like they were marching their way out of office. Polling aggregator 338 Canada has the Liberals at a staggering 45 per cent support nationally.

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Longtime Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu crosses floor to Liberals

“There’s strong support across the country right now for the prime minister and for the party,” said Jonathan Kalles, a consultant with McMillan Vantage who formerly served as Quebec adviser to Trudeau.

“It’s not about patting themselves on the back, but momentum and energy are important in a political party. Right now the Liberals have it, so it’s an opportune time to get everyone together.”

While Carney handily took the party’s helm at a leadership convention in Ottawa last year, the last party policy convention was held in 2023 — when Trudeau issued a rebuttal to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s claims that the Liberals were too “woke” and were ignoring the real challenges facing Canadians.

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Then the Liberals ousted Trudeau and won the 2025 election, and Poilievre lost four of his own caucus members to Carney, who pointed to his economic agenda as a reason to switch.

Carney is set to address the convention on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET — the first time he has done so since winning the leadership.

Kalles said many at the party level still know little about Carney and the convention offers a way for them to get to know him, and for party brass to check the pulse of the grassroots.

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NDP floor-crosser brings Carney’s Liberals to brink of majority

That’s key as the party becomes more diverse and more challenging to manage as MPs from widely different political persuasions join Team Carney.

“With people that have such diverse points of view and are fairly ideological, that becomes a challenge. Most Liberals may lean one side or the other, but I would say they are not particularly ideological,” Kalles said. “I don’t know that it’s sustainable in the long term.”

Zita Astravas, a consultant with Wellington Advocacy and Trudeau’s former director of issues management, said Liberals from across the country are “feeling pretty good” right now.

“There’s a spring in people’s steps being a Liberal in politics right now,” she said.

The party needs just two more seats to govern with a clear majority, and it’s all but certain to get them.

Two of the byelections are Toronto-area seats considered safe for the Liberals, while the third is a hot contest with the Bloc Québécois for Terrebonne — an off-island Montreal suburb that’s conspicuously close to where the party convention is being held.

The party machine is expected to crank out a steady stream of canvassers and several francophone cabinet ministers have already knocked on doors in the riding.

But after the latest floor crossing, the byelections are no longer make-or-break for Carney. The Liberals now face what looks like an easy path to a 173-seat majority in the 343-seat House of Commons as of Monday.

Other guest speakers at the convention include Carney’s wife Diana Fox, accessibility activist and former athlete Rick Hansen, and one of godfathers of artificial intelligence, Yoshua Bengio, who is slated to appear on a panel with AI Minister Evan Solomon.

Several top cabinet ministers are also scheduled for panel talks. Friday’s panel on Carney’s economic agenda and Buy Canadian policies includes Canada-U.S. Relations Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Finance Minister François‑Philippe Champagne and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly.

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3 byelections called as Liberals near majority

For seasoned party brass, such conventions are schmooze-fests. Government backroom denizens and lobbyists gather for friendly behind-the-scenes meetings while party activists take the stage to push for the adoption of new policies, though such resolutions are non-binding.

The convention will feature policy discussions on electoral reform, strengthening social media restrictions for minors, and limiting the pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause by provinces.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser has already shot down the idea of restricting provincial governments’ use of the notwithstanding clause through the constitutional provision known as “disallowance,” which can serve as a federal veto. Disallowance hasn’t been used in some eight decades, though before that point it was used fairly frequently.

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Before he’d even been prime minister for a week, Mark Carney was in the air, en route first to Paris, for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and then over to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Since then, Carney has hardly stopped, and by the time he marks his first anniversary as prime minister, he will have spent one of every five days in office out of the country.

Global News analyzed the itineraries of Carney and former prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau and found that Carney has been on the road more than his two predecessors, a reflection of Carney’s promise, made during last spring’s election campaign, to diversify and strengthen Canada’s trade and security relationships beyond the United States.

“This prime minister has made trade diversification a real centrepiece of his time in office. And so it makes sense that he’s going out there trying to make deals,” said Roland Paris, a University of Ottawa professor who briefly served as a foreign policy advisor to Trudeau.

On Monday, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Carney will be wheels up again this week.

The Royal Canadian Air Force CC-330 Husky aircraft that carries the prime minister, aides, the media and others on these delegations will, beginning on Thursday, circumnavigate the globe, flying east from Ottawa to touchdown in Mumbai, New Delhi, Canberra, Sydney and Tokyo before returning to Ottawa.

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And it will be Carney’s second circumnavigation in as many months.

In January, Carney flew west to Vancouver and then kept going to Beijing, Doha, Davos and back to Ottawa.

By the time he returns home on March 7, Carney will have spent 68 days abroad in his first year, which, when you subtract the 36 days of the 2025 general election, represents more than 20 per cent of his time in office. By comparison, Trudeau was abroad for 34 days, or 9.3 per cent of the time, while Harper was abroad for 54 days, or 15 per cent of his first year.

Liberals say Carney’s travel is paying off.

“We live in a world where Canada continues to develop trading relationships, other strategic partnerships right around the world, and if I look at the job numbers, it’s sure yielding dividends,” said government House leader Steven MacKinnon.

But the pace — and cost — of Carney’s travel has been a frequent target for opposition MPs.

“He has flown enough kilometres to circle the earth four times, but after all that globetrotting, Canadians still get no deals, no relief, higher tariffs and higher bills,” said Carole Anstey, the Conservative MP for Long Range Mountains, in the House of Commons on Nov. 21.

“Every time the prime minister steps off a private jet, Canadians get hit with another tariff hike. After the U.S., there were higher tariffs. After China, there were new tariffs on seafood and grain.”

Mark Strahl, the Conservative MP for Chilliwack-Hope, told the House of Commons on Nov. 19: “What does he have to show for all of his gallivanting around in a private jet? He just has expensive photo ops, empty announcements and no real results for Canadian workers. Not only have these trips failed to get the deals he promised but tariffs and costs for Canadians seem to go higher each time he takes off.”

Carney does not, as the Conservatives claim, fly on a private jet. Just as Harper and Trudeau did, Carney flies on a Royal Canadian Air Force plane.

That said, Paris, the foreign policy expert, agrees that it is incumbent on the government to show how Canadians are benefiting from Carney’s travel.

“It makes sense for people to look at these trips and to ask whether they’re advancing those objectives,” said Paris.

Carney himself has made the case for the value of travelling to have to have face-to-face meetings with foreign political and business leaders.

His trip to China, for example, resulted in an agreement by China to drop punishing tariffs on Canadian canola. Indonesia agreed to drop tariffs on 95 per cent of Canadian goods after Carney travelled to Jakarta. A trip to the United Arab Emirates won a commitment by Emirati interests to invest $70 billion in Canada (though details have yet to be released).

But the big deal — a renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement and the end of tariffs on Canadian aluminum, steel and cars — has yet to be landed.

And of all the places Carney has visited in his first year so far, Washington has been the most frequent destination, with a total of five days spent by Carney in the American capital.

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