What I Learned at the Liberal Convention as Carney Clinches His Majority

Liberal party members milled, decked in red lanyards, taking photos. “Welcome to Libcon2026” read a banner high on the wall at the top of the escalators in Montreal’s Palais des congrès. On a merch table nearby lay piles of red shirts and crewnecks, emblazoned with the Liberal logo. Two rows of black hats were amongst the items. The words “Canada Strong” printed across the front in solid block letters, cold and direct, like the name of a construction firm.

• The Liberal Party of Canada has secured a majority government
• The 2026 Liberal National Convention outlined a shift in party ideology
• Carney’s political vision is rooted in pragmatism rather than Trudeau’s reliance on hope

It was Friday, day two of the first convention since the 2025 election. It was also the party’s first since Mark Carney’s ascent to prime minister this past spring. At its peak, the convention would apparently boast 4,500 people. A record number, if you like to keep track of those things, which Team Carney definitely does. Carney’s anti-flashy, technocratic governing style, paired with ambitious public spending proposals on housing and defence, has pushed the Liberals far ahead of the Conservatives and New Democratic Party in national polls.

And today, thanks to three by-election wins, Carney’s Liberals have a majority.

The new Liberal era, now just over a year old, has eschewed the usual sloganeering in favour of a one-word mantra: pragmatism. The concept is displayed most prominently in the way Carney’s government conducts itself. A day before the convention, the Liberals welcomed yet another floor-crosser—the fifth since November—Marilyn Gladu, who was once such a fervent Conservative that she ran for that party’s leadership. Bygones be bygones, apparently.

In a statement to the CBC that followed Gladu’s arrival, Carney said she would be a great team member, noting her “energy, ideas, advice on a wide range of issues, including execution, getting things done.” What it mostly “got done,” in the immediate term, was it gave the Liberals a cleaner shot at a narrow but meaningful majority, something they haven’t had in a decade, despite never quite losing hold on government during that time. Pragmatism.

It’s a noticeable shift. The Justin Trudeau Liberals developed over time into a party with a defined moral mandate—that is, exuding a form of dogmatic progressivism that eventually, for some, bordered on exclusionary.

Carney has set forth on a more corporate vision. There may still be lines in the sand as to what the party can tolerate, but they are variable and shifting, drawn as the situation dictates. With Carney, you get the feeling that what the party truly believes is now negotiable. Being a partisan has always meant drinking the Kool-Aid, but under Carney, the mix is noticeably diluted, right down to that phrase “Canada Strong.” These words, bland and broad, are indeed reflective of a genuine desire to hold firm against an outside threat. But they also, maybe purposefully, echo the language of memorialization—Boston Strong, Vegas Strong, and so on. The language we tend to speak in the aftermath of disaster.

Not to say the convention itself was heavy. Just the opposite. It was light, as far as conventions go, with hardly any genuinely interesting moments. But I’m not sure anyone really noticed. Overall, the mood was upbeat (and why not, when you’re winning?)

Among those upbeat attendees was Julia Necheff from Edmonton. She’s a new Liberal. Necheff joined because she felt Carney “was literally the right man for the perilous times we’re in,” she told me. “And I just thought there was just no other person who could possibly do this job for Canada.” Necheff is focused on energy issues—a topic as much at the heart of Alberta’s future as Canada’s. And she believes in Carney’s approach and his message, such as it is. “I have respect for somebody who doesn’t make facile promises or talk in three-word slogans but who has a vision and is playing the long game.”

Carney appears to believe that long game is not only the right approach for Canada but for the world. In his speech earlier this year at Davos, Carney invoked Václav Havel to suggest that continuing to support the global post-war consensus is to live within the lie, giving tacit credibility to a system that they understood to be false—much like the greengrocers of the Soviet Union who hung a Workers of the World Unite sign in their windows. Not because they believed the message but to signal status quo maintenance.

“Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down,” Carney said then, speaking from experience—for this is what he has already done within the Liberal party.

Years ago, in this Montreal building, it was the start of another era. It was winter 2014 and cold in that Montreal way. Across the walls and in the speeches were words like “Hope” and “Hard Work.” Security was light. The Winter Olympics played on a TV screen on the main concourse. Star candidates were rolled out. Team Trudeau. I was here then, as a journalist, but that didn’t last long. As the convention ended, I ran into one of Trudeau’s advisers in the lobby of the Westin across the street. He said we should talk, and five months later, we met at a burger joint on College Street in the Toronto summer heat.

I joined the party as a speechwriter, inheriting the language I’d seen on the walls back in February, adopting a voice, even a kind of persona that was somewhat antithetical to my previous role as a journalist. The transition was weird, I’ll be honest, and the fit was awkward at times, like a hand-me-down shirt with the elbows already worn in low in the sleeves. It wasn’t rigid, but it wasn’t fully mine to shape.

But that’s the job, or anyway that’s the way it was. But there’s no denying its effect. The messaging worked, for as long as it did and for as long as it needed to. It helped secure a huge majority—the very thing that Carney now has done via more straightforward, less literary means.

The only person who I heard utter the words “hope and hard work” at this convention was Justin Trudeau, via a video address broadcast to the convention hall on Thursday evening. “Remember,” Trudeau, dressed informally in a black button-down, told the hall from the giant screens, “the Canada we’ve built together didn’t happen by accident. It won’t continue without effort. It takes”—well, you know the rest. The crowd clapped warmly, politely, like they were dropping an applause emoji on a LinkedIn post. Yes, great, very nice. Scroll.

But I don’t know; honestly, maybe there is something to be said for it. For a party that has stopped trying to define its individual members, be they pro-this or anti-that, and is instead happier to be defined by something much blander but at least safe. Especially at a time when nobody feels terribly secure.

Saturday morning was bright and chilly, the stiff breeze largely from the west, a headwind for the runners on the Lachine Canal, those of us who made it through the previous evening’s drinks events with enough left over for a jog in the sun.

Back in the convention’s main hall a little later, Liberals proposed policy resolutions. The hallways were quieter, muted by late nights. The policy plenary ran over time, pushing the schedule and Carney’s speech later into the afternoon. The room was full well in advance, volunteers handed around narrow placards affixed to tall sticks for people to wave. A quieter alternative to the thundersticks of the Trudeau era. But the place was buzzing, and frankly, the closest analogy in memory to the vibe in the room was all those years ago when Trudeau was about to take the same stage.

“This is not the time for politics as usual, for petty differences and for political point scoring,” Carney intoned when he finally took the stage. “The founding insight of our country is that unity does not require uniformity,” Carney said. This founding insight “is neither a myth nor a miracle” but rather the result of a series of decisions made across generations, he said. “Pragmatic decisions” (of course) “that have become a moral conviction.” Liberals stand in that tradition, Carney said. Laurier’s federation building. Pearson’s social programs. Then Trudeau. The Canada child benefit. Indigenous reconciliation. And “a true compact with future generations.” The crowd cheered. Many around me got to their feet.

“The world is changing, not gradually but suddenly,” Carney said. “Some are still in denial. Rather than starting on this journey, they’re waiting for the past to return.” He paused as the crowd clapped. “But hope is not a plan and nostalgia is not a strategy,” Carney said.

“That’s right!” I heard someone shout to my right. So long, hope. All that’s left now is the hard work. Everyone in the room Saturday seemed okay with that.

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Carney’s leadership win and the subsequent federal election were more than a year ago. But Saturday, in the packed convention hall, finally felt like the formal end of the Trudeau era as much as the proper launch of the Carney one. A goodbye the party needed, closure via continuity. The Trudeau story, a kind of technicolour dreamscape of a sunny, progressive future Canada filled with possibility, is finally and truly done. The party somehow, against all odds, outlived it—or at least had the wherewithal to admit that it no longer reflected lived reality and replaced it with more of an owner’s manual, directions on how to build something sturdier and defined. It doesn’t make the latter story any less true, just not true in the same way anymore.

On my train ride to Montreal, I read back, for the first time since I’d written it, the journal I’d kept during the 2015 campaign. I had forgotten much of the monotony of it. Churning out speech after speech, the language nearly always the same—the stump, as it’s known—with a section that could be switched out depending on the announcement or region of the day.

“Busy week,” I wrote then in a typical update on the pace of things. “Had the following announcements: Sudbury clean tech, Aboriginal school funding, Rally in YVR. Then to start this week, we had a huge vets funding announcement, followed by a rally later in Belleville + Peterborough respectively.” None of these were new speeches wholesale but rather messaging frameworks, windows if you will, into which we could post the sign of Hope and Hard Work.

This is just what campaigns are like—not a creative pursuit as much as sustained perseverance. That summer of 2015 melted into autumn; the days passed without much variety. One note, however, stood out in my journal as I read it last week. “The big one this week will be a massive rally the party is holding in Brampton on Sunday. I’m writing that speech.” This rally was, later, the backbone of a rousing late-campaign TV advert, a final confirmation of the energy and momentum Trudeau was carrying. As far as campaign speeches go, it’s one for the books. But I have no recollection of writing any of it.

Eventually, we all take the signs down, I guess. This is usually called growth, but it could just be a specific kind of amnesia. Maybe they’re the same thing.