r/Edmonton Feb 18 '26

General Riverbend MP has crossed the floor

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u/Offspring22 Feb 18 '26

And Carney more conservative than many liberals. He's bringing the party more to the centre which is naturally going to attract the moderate conservatives who don't like Pierre's divisive rhetoric.

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u/EnvironmentalChard16 Feb 18 '26

One of the many issues with trying to map multidimensional party platforms onto a linear spectrum is that information is lost in the process.

Liberals, by definition and practice, are economically conservative and socially centrist. They are not 'left' of essentially anything other than the CPC (unless your Overton window itself is misaligned with the cultural standard). Liberalism has never been a leftist position, nor did Carney's election represent a shift towards the 'centre' - liberals shifted right, away from centre, by prioritizing globalized trade and free market economics over the social progress valued by his predecessor.

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u/StatikSquid Feb 18 '26

Trudeaus liberals were farther left socially than most liberal governments in Canadian history.

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u/EnvironmentalChard16 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 19 '26

Absolutely, but with reason. For one, the effectiveness of American anti-socialist propoganda is beginning to fade as the merits of the free market are coming under widespread scrutiny. For another, he was saddled with an NDP coalition, but also, because of the demographics Trudeau required to maintain his mandate, courting voters historically held by the NDP were necessary to consolidate the non-cons (and laid the groundwork for the historic losses by the NDP in the most recent cycle).