The only thing Liberals need to fear are Liberals themselves
The Liberals have their Majority Government.
For the past few years, politics in Ottawa has been about counting votes, negotiating support between parties, and legislative gridlock. For Liberals it’s been about surviving, not thriving.
That problem is now gone.
It has been replaced by a new challenge: managing a diverse caucus. The Liberals no longer need opposition parties to stay in power. Instead, they must manage their own internal coalition, where discipline and alignment will determine whether they can govern.
This past weekend, at the Liberal convention, that tension was already visible.
The most common conversations were about floor crossers. Strange bedfellows. Who belongs. Who doesn’t belong!
The real important question shouldn’t be about who is coming and going. It should be about what holds the new coalition together.
This is not a problem today, of course. They just secured their mandate and strong polling is keeping everything aligned. But that alignment is conditional. If the numbers move, the underlying pressures will move with them.
Left unmanaged, it moves into more difficult places. Into closed door caucus rooms. Into private conversations over dinner or drinks. That’s where unforeseen resentment will build.
The task now is to get ahead of it. To be clear about what holds the coalition together, and to start managing it deliberately.
For the past week, you have probably heard of the Liberal Party of Canada described as a “big tent.” Sometimes as praise. Often as a critique. This past weekend, at the Liberal Convention, it was thrown around like a punchline.
The critique is familiar. That the party has no principles and that Liberals stand for little beyond winning.
There’s a reason that critique resonates. At times, unfortunately, the party has blurred its own edges.
But the conclusion is wrong.
The Liberal Party is not a broad coalition because it lacks principles. It is broad because it has a clear set of principles that holds it together.
In my view, there are three primary principles.
First, national unity.
The party, when it is at its strongest, is unapologetically patriotic. It believes in national institutions and nation-building projects. It champions Canadian federalism and stands firmly against separatism. It is the party of the flag.
Second, pragmatism.
A focus on outcomes. A willingness to follow evidence over ideology. To change course on policy when something isn’t working. To do what delivers results for the most Canadians. It’s why they can support tax cuts for businesses one day, and universal childcare the next.
Third, pluralism.
Not diversity as a slogan, but as a governing reality. The idea that differences in this country are permanent, and must be managed, not eliminated. From the very beginning, we have been a heterogenous society. The Liberal tradition has been to work with that fact, to organize it, and to make it function, rather than to resist it
That’s it. Everything else is on the table. It always has been.
This is what allows the party to bring together unlikely coalitions. French and English. Business and labour. Urban and rural. New Canadians and families who have been here for generations.
And to be clear, Liberals didn’t invent this model. They stole it. And then they perfected it.
The founder of the Conservative Party of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald, understood that in a country this fragmented, you either build broad coalitions or you don’t govern at all. And more importantly, the country suffers when you fail.
Liberals took that strategy and ran with it. Federalism. Evidence-based policymaking. Pluralism, later embedded in the Charter.
Over the past decade, across Western democracies, politics has increasingly been shaped by culture war dynamics that demand ideological purity tests. Politicians are expected to signal where they stand on an ever-expanding list of issues, often with little room for nuance.
Modern politics recently has rewarded sorting over persuasion. Proving you belong rather than expanding the definition of who does.
That instinct runs directly against pluralism. It replaces coexistence with alignment, and persuasion with exclusion.
But it’s not clear that voters are looking for that. In the United States, this approach has, at times, narrowed the Democratic Party coalition and contributed to a growing perception that the party is out of touch with everyday concerns.
That’s the lesson. When politics becomes about passing tests instead of solving problems, you stop building coalitions and you start shrinking them.
There’s also a broader point about the electorate. The number of persuadable voters is finite. The Liberal strategy has been to build the widest possible coalition. The Conservative strategy has been to deepen and mobilize a more cohesive one.
A broad coalition risks internal fracture. A narrower one risks running out of room to grow.
Right now, we appear to be in a moment made for a broad coalition.
The phrase “natural governing party” has been used to describe the Liberal Party of Canada for nearly a century. Of course, more recently it is used as a criticism. A shorthand for Liberal arrogance or entitlement.
In a country as large and diverse as Canada, governing is not about ideological purity. It is about maintaining alignment across regions, languages, and interests that don’t naturally align. That’s not easy.
Being a “natural governing party” is not a birthright or a boast. I would argue that it’s a burden.
It requires discipline. It requires clarity about what is non-negotiable. And it requires flexibility everywhere else.
The catch, of course, is that these principles require active management. Pragmatism can become slow, when decisions are postponed in the name of insufficient data. Pluralism can become avoidance, where real disagreements between groups are poorly managed instead of resolved. Unity can become an excuse not to choose at all. When that happens, the Liberal voter coalition starts to come apart.
That will be the test of this majority government.
With a majority secured, the Liberals no longer need to manage Parliament the same way. They need to manage themselves.
If they stay effectively anchored in national unity, pragmatism, and pluralism, they will hold their coalition together and the country will benefit. And in turn, Liberals will be rewarded for it.
The only thing Liberals have to fear are Liberals themselves.