(LifeSiteNews) — On December 11, Conservative MP Michael Ma crossed the floor to join the Liberal Party, putting Prime Minister Mark Carney one seat away from a majority government. The day before, Ma had voted with the Conservatives twice and attended the Conservative Christmas Party, where he danced and posed for a photo with Conservative leader Pierre Polievre. He was at the Liberal holiday party the following night.
Ma’s move is so cynical it was almost funny, although Poilievre obviously didn’t think so. “Michael Ma was elected as a Conservative by the constituents of Markham-Unionville to fight against Liberal inflationary spending driving up the cost of living in his community,” he wrote on X. “Today, he chose to endorse the very policies he was elected to oppose … The people he let down the most are the ones who elected him to fight for an affordable future. He will have to answer to them.”
But some conservatives are already pointing out that Ma became an MP this year not because he successfully ran for and won the Conservative nomination in his riding but because he was personally appointed as the candidate by Poilievre himself.
“Michael Ma was one of the candidates appointed by Pierre Poilievre, thus denying grassroots members the right to vote in a nomination election for the candidate of their choice,” Campaign Life Coalition stated on X. “Poilievre should never be allowed to appoint another candidate. Ever. Markham-Unionville is one of the “~110 ridings where Poilievre robbed EDA members their right to vote in a nomination contest.”
“Yet, the new #CPC rules enshrined an official right for the Leader to appoint 8 candidates!” CLC noted. “Why? So he can appoint more like Ma?”
The short answer to that is probably yes. Several people had been campaigning for the Conservative nomination in Markham-Unionville, and they had collectively sold thousands of memberships. But Ma didn’t win the nomination. He was handed the nomination by the party insiders. They own this defection. They chose him. They vetted him. And then he walked. It’s almost as if he was never a conservative to begin with.
“Open nominations probably wouldn’t mean floor crossings never happen, but it probably would mean you would have less of a chance of MPs who aren’t ideologically committed to the party getting elected,” one pro-life commenter noted on X. “Just something (the CPC) can hopefully ponder.”
The criticisms of Ma are obviously correct. He is a sell-out. The Liberals clearly offered him something — what, we don’t yet know — to cross the floor. Carney hopes to buy his majority one MP at a time. But the CPC party apparatus has made it easy by filling their ranks with fair-weather political opportunists who are not conservative in any way except perhaps a vague appreciation for fiscal responsibility, making them easy marks for Carney, who is currently stealing the CPC platform and making better professional offers.
If your only conservative beliefs are, as Poilievre put it, your opposition to “inflationary spending” and fighting for an “affordable future,” then a Liberal Party that claims to be doing just that but actually has power is going to seem pretty attractive. It is worth pointing out to Poilievre that a social conservative would not be tempted by Mark Carney’s promises, because no social conservative could, in good conscience, join a party that makes support for abortion mandatory.
Conservative party insiders frequently find the consciences of their genuinely conservative MPs highly inconvenient and spend a lot of time promising that the CPC really is no different from the Liberals when it comes to social issues (with the notable exceptions of religious liberty and euthanasia for mental illness). If more MPs like Michael Ma decide to believe them, Mark Carney will have his majority in no time.
