Murray Wood: Conservative floor crossers could hand Mark Carney a majority government
Murray Wood says Prime Minister Mark Carney is happily accepting floor crossers from the Conservatives, but maybe it's t...
HALIFAX — When former Conservative party president Rob Batherson heard rumblings that Chris d’Entremont might be leaving the opposition caucus, he reached out to talk.
“I’ve known Chris for over 25 years. He didn’t call me back. Didn’t text back. And then I saw the news of his resignation,” Batherson said in a phone interview Wednesday.
“I’m gutted. There’s no two ways about it,” he added.
Batherson made the comments a day after d’Entremont, the MP for the federal riding of Acadie-Annapolis, stunned political observers in Ottawa as he crossed the floor in the House of Commons, abandoning Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and joining Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals.
Batherson called the floor-crossing the “worst personal betrayal” he’s experienced in his 30-year political career.
“Every time we talked since the election, he stressed both publicly and privately, that not only would he be the MP that the people of Acadie-Annapolis elected, but that he would be a voice for Conservative voters across Nova Scotia,” Batherson said.
“Now Chris has deprived Nova Scotians of that alternate voice.”
Acadia University political scientist Alex Marland speculated that d’Entremont’s decision to cross the floor was due in part to feeling “marginalized” by Poilievre.
Marland, who co-authored a book on party loyalty and floor-crossing in Canadian politics, said these decisions depend heavily on a politician’s relationship with their party leader.
“Was he considered part of Polievre’s inner circle or not? Previously, he had been deputy speaker and now he’s not. He probably felt like he had declining influence,” Marland said Wednesday.
“If Poilievre had given Chris d’Entremont a real platform to be Nova Scotia’s kind of representative in the Conservative caucus… we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he added.
Another factor likely at play is the fact that Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservative Premier Tim Houston “doesn’t get along with Pierre Poilievre by all accounts,” Marland said.
The premier did not invite Poilievre to join him on the election campaign leading up to his decisive majority win one year ago. He did not attend Poilievre’s rally in Trenton, N.S., and he criticized the federal party immediately after the April federal election.
“The Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in,” Houston said on April 29.
D’Entremont, who was first elected as an MP in 2019 after sitting as a Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative MLA for 16 years, beat his Liberal challenger by about 530 votes.
The MP says he feels he’ll be able to solve more issues for his community by leaving the Conservatives and joining the government caucus.
“I didn’t find I was represented there … my ideals of an easterner, of a red Tory and quite honestly of trying to find ways to find solutions and help the community rather than trying to oppose everything that’s happening,” he said on Wednesday.
D’Entremont said he does not feel aligned with the Opposition leader and “it’s time to actually try to lead a country, to try to make it better, and not try to knock it down, not to continue to be negative.”
Batherson, who ran for the Conservatives unsuccessfully in a Halifax riding earlier this year, said he doesn’t believe d’Entremont took issue with Poilievre’s leadership style.
“I don’t buy it.. Since the election, Chris has been very supportive of the leader, supportive of the party,” Batherson said.
Mount Saint Vincent University political scientist Jeffrey MacLeod said whatever the reason may be for d’Entremont jumping the Conservative ship, it may serve him well to distance himself from Poilievre’s style of governing.
MacLeod said in an email Wednesday many Nova Scotians would identify as moderate conservatives, and they may appreciate Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approach over Poilievre’s “brand of MAGA-light social conservatism.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2025.
Lyndsay Armstrong, The Canadian Press
