An MP floor-crossing is becoming just like any other day in Ottawa as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party welcomes a new addition to the political tent.

Four-time Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong, became the fourth crosser to join the Liberal Party.

Gladu framed the move as a response to her constituents calling for “serious leadership” and economic action.

The crossing gives Carney’s Liberals a modest boost in the House, tightening their grip on power just days before Monday’s byelections in Toronto area ridings, University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, and Montreal area riding of Terrebonne .

Gladu’s crossing brings the Liberal caucus to 171 seats in the House of Commons.

“The past year has been like no other that Canada has ever faced, and I’ve heard clearly from constituents that you want serious leadership and a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy,” Gladu said in a statement on Wednesday.

Sydney Ko has more. 

Stay excited for the upcoming byelection, readers.

If the Liberals — as expected — hold onto to long-time party strongholds University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest in Monday’s votes, they will have 173 seats in the House.

That’s one more than the 172 needed for a majority. But it’s crucial as it means the Liberals won’t need to rely on the speaker to break ties. The speaker is a Liberal MP, but only votes in the case of a tie, which could create a challenging situation when it comes to using time allocation or other measures that limit debate to speed up passage of legislation.

It could also complicate efforts to pass a motion to reconfigure committees. Right now, the Liberals can be outvoted by Bloc Quebecois and Conservative MPs. But the Liberals could use their newfound majority to change the composition of committees to give themselves a majority on each one.

But that brings us to our next question — how stable of a majority are we looking at here?

As our very own Kady O’Malley has noted in the past, a majority isn’t a magic power in the Commons. The Liberals need to have enough votes to pass their bills and motions, and to stave off non-confidence pushes.

Stay with Marco Vigliotti on this one. 

Shifting gears, Bill C-9 is coasting through the Senate, and the Liberals have yet to say whether they will act on calls to criminalize residential school denialism.

The House passed the bill at report stage late March without adding new provisions, after MPs rejected a final amendment and advanced the version already revised by the justice committee.

The legislation expands Criminal Code provisions around hate propaganda and hate-motivated offences, including new measures to protect access to religious and cultural sites, sometimes referred to as the “bubble zone” protections.

Currently, it still leaves the question whether the federal government is willing to extend hate speech laws to cover the denial or minimization of residential schools.

At the end of 2025, the Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution at its special assembly demanding the Canadian government criminalize residential school denialism. The AFN called on Ottawa to either amend the legislation or introduce a standalone bill, arguing it should be treated as a form of hate speech against Indigenous Peoples.

Read more form Sydney Ko. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Elsewhere, world leaders expressed relief on Wednesday that the United States, Israel and Iran had agreed to a temporary cease-fire, with President Trump backing off his apocalyptic threat to escalate a war that had already set off a cascading series of global crises.

But the relief was tempered by the profound powerlessness that most countries have felt over the last six weeks as they watched Mr. Trump wage a war that has rattled their economies, their energy supplies, their domestic politics and their relationships with the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

World leaders have been swept up in Mr. Trump’s personal and geopolitical gyrations since the war began in late February. They have been left guessing whether he would lob new strikes at Tehran or call an end to hostilities — both of which he has signaled at various times. They have endured long rants about the United States receiving insufficient help and gratitude from allies, laced with threats about quitting NATO, all while suffering oil and gas price shocks and supply shortages caused by the war.

Officials in some of those countries noted the hurdles that remain for the two-week cease-fire to become permanent, including addressing the thorny issues of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and securing the Strait of Hormuz for global shipping. They acknowledged how difficult, and time-consuming, it would be to repair the cracks this war has opened in the global economy and security environment.

The New York Times has more. 

Meanwhile, JD Vance has pushed back against claims that the US is interfering in Hungarian politics, describing the accusations as “darkly ironic”, as a set of polls suggested the opposition Tisza party could win a supermajority in the forthcoming elections.

After spending his first day in Budapest excoriating the EU and accusing it of being behind one of the “worst examples” of foreign interference, the US vice-president spent part of Wednesday morning speaking at a thinktank and educational institution linked to Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán.

With four days to go until Hungarians cast their ballots – and with Orbán trailing the opposition in most polls – Vance acknowledged the singular nature of his visit.

“It’s unprecedented for an American vice-president to come the week before an election,” he said. But he said he had decided to come because of what he described as the “garbage happening against” Orbán in the election.

Read more from The Guardian. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

Later in the evening, Prime Minister Mark Carney will be phoning Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut and the rest of Artemis II crew.

The conversation will be livestreamed by the Canadian Space Agency.

As a way to conclude this newsletter, here’s an X post in reaction to today’s newest floor-crosser:

Steven Guilbeault seeing Marilyn Gladu walk into the caucus meeting: pic.twitter.com/3MKUEhqjU5

— Fraser 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦 (@fp_905) April 8, 2026

Have a great evening!