It took nearly a full year and a handful of byelections and defections for Prime Minister Mark Carney to assemble enough members of Parliament to turn his minority government into a majority — a feat that has never happened in Canadian politics before.
The Canadian Press projected Liberal wins in two byelections in the Toronto area on Monday, giving the Liberals 173 seats in the House of Commons. The wins make Carney’s government the first federal government in Canada’s history to switch from a minority to a majority between elections.
Results were still being counted in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, a traditional Bloc Québécois stronghold, when Danielle Martin took the stage to celebrate her victory in University—Rosedale.
“As of tonight, Mark Carney and our entire incredible Liberal team have earned an even more powerful mandate to continue building a better Canada,” she said Monday night.
“This is not a mandate to be quiet. It is not a mandate to take our time. It is a mandate to get to work.”
Carney congratulates Martin
Carney congratulated Martin in a social media post.
“Danielle has spent her career building better public health care for Torontonians and all Canadians,” Carney said on X.
“Now she’s bringing her experience and determination to the House of Commons, and our country will be stronger for it.”
Doly Begum was projected to win in nearby Scarborough Southwest, the seat left vacant when former cabinet minister Bill Blair left politics to become Canada’s high commissioner in the U.K.
Begum surprised many when she left her seat in Queen’s Park as a member of the provincial NDP to run federally.
She also represents the growing Liberal tent that Carney has been building for the better part of six months, as he courted five opposition MPs to join the governing party — four from the Conservative benches and one from the federal New Democrats.
First Liberal majority since 2019
Wins in two ridings on Monday mean the government will soon be able to pass legislation in the House of Commons without the support of another party, something the Liberals have not been able to do since 2019. They will also be able to control House committees.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused Carney of spending a year on “a cynical power grab.”
“The Carney Liberals did not win a majority government through a general election or today’s byelections. Instead, it was won through backroom deals with politicians who betrayed the people who voted for them,” he said in a post on X.
The suburban riding of Terrebonne, near Montreal, featured a rematch between Liberal Tatiana Auguste and Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné a year after it produced the closest result in the country in the last federal election.
After a judicial recount of the results from last April, Auguste won by a single vote. Sinclair-Desgagné challenged the results all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which invalidated them because of a clerical error in the return address on some mail-in ballots.
— With files from Kyle Duggan and Catherine Morrison in Ottawa, Erika Morris and Morgan Lowrie in Terrebonne, Que., and Diana Mussina and Rianna Lim in Toronto
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on April 13, 2026.