KINSELLA: Canada's political winner of 2025 has been a disappointment

Figuring out the Canadian political winners of 2025 is pretty easy.

Mark Carney, Ontario’s Doug Ford, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Tony Wakeham: They all won elections in 2025.

But Carney, Ford and Wakeham aren’t winners simply because of that. They’re winners because they all made a little history, as Nick Cave sang.

For his part, Ford increased his share of the popular vote with a third majority win, and he kept his political opponents marginalized. Wakeham’s achievement was also winning a majority government, and ending a decade of Liberal rule — stunning many in the province.

And Mark Carney? In 2025, Carney is the biggest winner of all. Because his Liberal Party wasn’t supposed to win anything.

Liberals went from bleak to winners

Just one year ago, Ipsos was reporting that Pierre Poilievre’s Tories had a 25-point lead over Justin Trudeau’s beleaguered Grits. The CBC poll tracker, an aggregator of all polls, showed the same thing. Other polls actually showed the Conservative lead to be closer to 30 percentage points — a massive parliamentary majority.

Then came January, and seismic political shifts. Trudeau left, Donald Trump returned, tariffs hit, and Carney made his debut.

This year has been a political roller coaster, with plenty of twists and turns. But Carney’s April victory was truly extraordinary. Never in recent Canadian political history had a party overcome a nearly-30-point-deficit to win a near-majority — within just a matter of weeks.

What made it even more remarkable was Carney himself. A former banker, with no experience whatsoever in elected politics. Growing up in Alberta, Carney didn’t even bother with student council politics. He successfully advised Conservative and Liberal governments, true, but his name appeared on no ballots.

Not a typical prime minister

Becoming prime minister is a lifelong quest. Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, Stephen Harper, my former boss Jean Chretien: All of them reached the top job only after plenty of hard work and sacrifice — eating lots of rubber chicken, shaking hands in remote community halls, making thousands of calls to raise money to fund their campaigns.

Mark Carney did none of that. And, when he overwhelmingly won the Liberal leadership in March, he was the most improbable of politicians. As I wrote the night he won:

“Carney’s bland, boring banker persona is not his weakness: Paradoxically, it is actually his secret power. At a time when the world is quite literally on fire and when we are facing a threat to our very existence, being dull is arguably a big asset, not a liability…Carney is a typical Canadian: He is calm, collected and courteous. He is the polar opposite of the ugly American — in this case, Trump. Carney reminds us of our better selves. We don’t want a prime minister who acts like the guy we despise.”

If you’re being in any way objective, you have to agree all that is quite an achievement. Carney was the un-politician, and he arrived at precisely the moment Canadians were looking for that. He was Prime Minister Dad, when the country desperately needed one.

Carney hasn’t delivered on promises

As prime minister, he has yet to deliver on his big promises — most importantly, a way out of the trade chaos Trump has unleashed on America’s allies. Eight months into his mandate, Carney is no closer to a trade deal, and he has been seemingly frozen out by the White House.

He’s been a disappointment on other fronts, too — the explosion in antisemitism, the foreign policy misfires, the tendency to over-promise and under-deliver, the lack of legislative achievements.

But Carney is going to secure a parliamentary majority in the next few weeks. He’s moved the Liberal Party back to the political centre, which is where the votes are. And he’s still very, very popular.

Mark Carney is the total political newbie who overcame a huge political deficit, and is now on the precipice of a majority:

Any way you slice it, that’s a big winner.