Mark Carney is under a microscope. (Yes, that would be a Markroscope, but let’s not make the term a habit.) Since his landslide victory in the Liberal Party’s race to replace Justin Trudeau on the weekend, Canada’s attention has turned to Carney to lead us into a trade war and/or general election.
But there is an orderly process to follow when transferring power from old prime minister to new. And because our country is a constitutional monarchy, naturally it involves English King Charles’s designate to Canada, Governor General Mary Simon. First Trudeau offers his resignation to Simon, then Simon offers the job to Carney. He will be prime minister at that point, but who cares—everybody knows the real power in the country is with the Governor in Council, the prime minister plus the cabinet. So Carney will have to pick cabinet members and get Simon to swear them in before he does much of anything else.
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The Halifax byelection finally started, but it might not finish
From there Carney can revel in his fancy new job and do anything he wants. Except not really. Before jetting off to state dinners around the globe or inviting dignitaries and celebrities to Canada, he has to figure out what to do about parliament. Boring.
Trudeau and Simon prorogued the legislative body to buy some time for the Liberals to get their new leader, and it is scheduled to resume March 24. And Carney doesn’t have a seat. And the Carney Liberals don’t have much of a mandate, unless you count being deeply unpopular under Trudeau. And America’s felon-in-chief is picking fights. And once parliament is sitting, the opposition parties could force an election themselves anyway.
The obvious move is for Carney (well, the Carney-led-and-picked Governor in Council) to just call the election before parliament starts up on March 24. That’s more than a week away, however, and Trudeau’s visit to GG Simon hasn’t even been scheduled (as of Wednesday, March 12). So the country waits and watches and wonders, as political pundits spend the time extolling the virtues of a snap election, and political candidates prepare to hit, probably, the campaign trail.
Except in the federal riding of Halifax, the one place in Canada where candidates are officially running for office. This is the byelection to replace Andy Fillmore, who resigned as a Liberal member of parliament in September to launch his (successful) bid for mayor. The campaign is on, with byelection voting day slated for Monday, April 14. Soon, but maybe not soon enough.
If Carney makes a general election call any time before April 14—and before parliament’s March 24 return would definitely count—the byelection is wiped from existence. The whole country goes on the same general election clock, and Halifax remains without a representative in parliament a little longer.
The work Conservative Party candidate Mark Boudreau, Liberal Shannon Miedema and the NDP’s Lisa Roberts are doing to meet Halifax voters during the byelection campaign wouldn’t be for naught in that scenario. To the contrary, a longer campaign period is probably good for both voters and candidates—it doesn’t matter if some of that time is a byelection and some’s a general election. But given these are the only working candidates in the country right now, and the fate of the byelection has a real bearing on them, The Coast asked each their opinion on Carney’s potential election call. Do you think Carney will trigger the general election in time to wipe out the byelection?
Politicians tend to answer yes-or-no questions with anything other than a “no” or a “yes”—this must be one of the reasons people tend to distrust politicians. So The Coast is thrilled and kind of shocked to report that most candidates in the Halifax riding did give a simple, clear, declarative answer. And that answer is: Yes.
Both Boudreau and Roberts say yes, they believe Carney is going to call the snap election and nullify the byelection. Things can’t get clearer than that.
They can get less clear, though. The Carney call question was sent to Miedema through her campaign email address, and the answer back did not take a firm side. To be fair to Miedema and her team, they are Liberal like Carney, so saying anything in any direction about the election call might be construed as a kind of insider trading. The only ethical answer could be the non-answer.
Considering that case, giving a non-answer might be more than an irritating political tic—it could be an important political skill. So if you’d like to know how it’s done, here’s an emailed example from Miedema’s team: “We can’t specify as to what is happening nationally. What we and what Shannon knows is that we are in an important by-election here in Halifax and Shannon is working hard every day to listen to Haligonians and earn their vote, no matter in a by-election or a general.”
This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2025.
