. . . into Another Liberal Majority
In the chill of a Canadian winter that feels both literal and metaphorical, many voters are exhausted. Housing costs devour paycheques, groceries feel like luxury items, and the daily grind leaves little energy for the endless spectacle of federal politics. Into that fatigue steps Mark Carney—polished, credentialed, globally respected—and a Liberal machine that has learned how to campaign on competence rather than charisma. The result is something that looks less like enthusiasm and more like resignation: a slow, almost unconscious drift back to the party that promises stability, even if that stability increasingly feels like managed decline.
Pierre Poilievre has run an energetic, focused campaign. His messaging on housing, inflation, and government overreach resonates with anyone who has watched their quality of life erode over the past decade. Yet the opposition effort often feels like shouting into a wind tunnel. The daily “bird-dogging”—those pointed questions that once forced Liberal ministers into verbal pretzels—has largely evaporated. Scrutiny is sporadic, outrage is fleeting, and the government’s incremental announcements (a tweak here, a pilot project there) are presented as evidence of relentless progress. A thousand small improvements, carefully stage-managed, can create the illusion of momentum even when the big problems remain stubbornly unsolved.
This is not primarily about Poilievre failing; it is about a political ecosystem that appears engineered for inertia. When voters are tired, when the alternative requires sustained attention and belief in systemic change, the path of least resistance is simply to let the incumbents continue. Take the money through higher taxes and carbon pricing, absorb the diminished expectations, and hope the shouting stops. It is the political equivalent of changing the channel to something familiar, even if the programming has gone steadily downhill.
Mark Carney embodies that familiarity with a veneer of fresh authority. A former central banker who navigated the 2008 crisis and later positioned himself as a climate-finance guru, he projects the calm reassurance many crave after years of pandemic turbulence and economic anxiety. Put him in a leaders’ debate today and he would likely dispatch challengers with data-laden deflections and that understated banker’s confidence. Whether those answers would survive rigorous follow-up is beside the point; in a tired country, the performance of competence can be enough.
What we may be witnessing is the formation of a Liberal juggernaut—not the roaring, triumphant kind of 2015, fueled by optimism and selfies, but a quieter, more cynical version powered by voter exhaustion and institutional advantage. The media ecosystem, regulatory environment, and even the timing of government spending announcements all tilt in ways that reward continuity over disruption. Opponents are left swinging at shadows while the government accumulates modest wins that, in aggregate, look like forward motion.
None of this is inevitable. Canadians have overturned seemingly impregnable leads before when anger crystallized and turnout surged. But anger requires energy, and energy is in short supply when people are working two jobs, raising kids in basement apartments, and wondering whether their children will ever afford a home. In those conditions, the easiest choice is often to let the machine keep running, even if it runs on borrowed money and diminished ambition.
The danger is that we mistake this quiet acquiescence for endorsement. A government returned not because it has inspired hope, but because it has outlasted despair, is a government freed from the healthiest kind of accountability. And a country that chooses the devil it knows out of sheer weariness risks waking up one day to discover the devil has redecorated the house while everyone was too tired to notice.
Canada deserves better than governance by exhaustion. The question is whether enough of us still have the energy to demand it.
Inspired by Mack McColl | Written by Grok 4.1 | McColl Magazine