circleLIVECANADA VOTES: BYELECTIONSByelections to decide whether Carney’s Liberals form majority governmentUpdated5 minutes agoLiberal sweep in Ontario and Quebec ridings would bring party’s seat count to 174 Liberals poised to secure majority

How did we get here?12 hours ago|Duration 2:05CBC News chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton breaks down the comings and goings since the last federal election that lead to the Liberal Party to be just one seat shy of a majority government

They need just one win in three byelections taking place Monday

The LatestPrime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals have the chance to form a majority government on Monday with three byelections underway in Ontario and Quebec

The Liberals are just one seat shy of a majority after five opposition politicians broke ranks to join the ruling party in recent months

The party cruised to victory in the Toronto ridings of University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest last year, so all eyes will be on the hotly contested rematch between the Liberal and the Bloc Québécois candidates in Terrebonne, Que

Featured MediaSkip Featured Media Pinned17 minutes agoCarney’s Liberals have a shot at a majority government tonight

Here’s where to find resultsSunday Scrum | Liberals move closer to a majority, Conservatives react to latest defectionApril 12|Duration 20:18Chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton and this week’s Sunday Scrum – Toronto Star Ottawa bureau chief Tonda MacCharles, Hill Times managing editor Charelle Evelyn and CBC News writer and producer Jason Markusoff – discuss the Liberal Party potentially reaching a majority government in the upcoming byelections

Plus, the Sunday Scrum talks about the reaction from Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Official Opposition, to the recent defection from his caucus and how it could impact the Conservative Party’s strategy

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s minority government could become a majority if the party’s candidates win at least one of three byelections in Ontario and Quebec tonight

Five politicians from other parties have crossed the floor in recent months to bring the reigning party’s seat count to 171 — just one shy of a majority

Live results for University-Rosedale

Live results for Scarborough Southwest

Live results for Terrebonne

Victories in either University-Rosedale or Scarborough Southwest, two Toronto ridings the Liberals won comfortably less than a year ago, would bring the party to the 172 they need to form a majority

At that point, the government could have some assurance of its ability to at least survive any confidence votes in the House

A win in both Ontario ridings would bring the Liberals to 173 seats

At that point, the Liberals could gain a majority on House committees and have a freer hand to advance legislation without having to negotiate compromises with the opposition

Getting to a majority would also be, by any measure, a historic achievement for Carney and the Liberals, particularly given the prime minister was a private citizen 16 months ago and the Liberals were polling 20 points behind the Conservatives

– Aaron Wherry and Rhianna Schmunk UpdatesLatest firstApril 135 minutes agoHow rare is it for a prime minister to attract 5 floor-crossers in 5 months?Darren MajorFloor-crossing has always been a feature of Canadian politics dating back to the first Parliament, but it’s still rare to see opposition MPs jump ship to join the government in a matter of months

Macdonald, Robert Borden and Jean Chrétien attracted a swath of MPs to their respective governments, though all under vastly different circumstances

Macdonald holds the distinction for welcoming the most MPs into his government during a session

Nine opposition members crossed the floor to sit in Canada’s first prime minister’s caucus, including five who crossed on the same day in 1869

Borden, who served as prime minister during the First World War, got a total of 17 MPs to join his ranks — though only one crossed the floor in the middle of a parliamentary session

During Chrétien’s decade in office, eight MPs from the opposition benches joined his government

As in Carney’s case, the new MPs came from multiple parties, including the NDP, the Progressive Conservatives and even the Canadian Alliance (formerly the Reform Party)

7 minutes agoA blast from the past in TerrebonneDarren MajorHi folks, I’m a senior writer with the politics team in Ottawa — I’m also a sometimes history nerd

I’m borrowing the adage from Mark Twain that history “often rhymes,” because election results in Terrebonne have been thrown out by the courts in the past — albeit at the provincial level

In the 1935 Quebec election, a judge threw out all the ballots that had been cast in the riding because of a printing error, according to archives of the Montreal Gazette

The result was a 0-0 tie between the Liberal and Conservative candidates

But rather than redoing the vote, the returning officer cast a deciding vote for the Liberal candidate who had the most votes before they were voided

The Conservatives appealed but the result was upheld

Therefore, Liberal Athanase David won the riding with only a single vote being cast

8 minutes agoAnalysis: What happens if — or when — Carney secures a majority?Aaron WherryPrime Minister Mark Carney and Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste campaign in her riding of Terrebonne last week

(Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)If or when Carney’s Liberals succeed in cobbling together a majority in the House of Commons, it will surely be one of the most unique majorities in Canadian political history

Voters might not worry too much about how Carney gets his majority, but they likely will care about what he does with it

If the Liberals do get to a slim majority, what leverage remains in the House of Commons could actually shift to the Liberal backbench — one that has shown itself at various points to possess some amount of independent thought

If the Liberals are sitting at 173 or 174 seats, it would only take two or three backbenchers dissenting to endanger government legislation

Such a majority would also be vulnerable to the personal decisions and events that regularly lead to resignations and byelections during the life of a Parliament

So, wins for the Liberals tonight would be less the end of the story than the start of an interesting new chapter

12 minutes agoFloor-crossers bring the Liberals’ majority within reachAaron WherryLiberals inch closer to majority as Tory MP crosses the floor April 8|Duration 1:40The Liberals have picked up another Conservative floor crosser, bringing them one seat closer to a majority government

Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said on April 8 that she is joining the government benches

It makes her the fifth MP to cross the floor and the fourth Conservative since Mark Carney was elected prime minister

Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont was the first Conservative MP to leave his party to join the Liberals, in November of last year

He led the way for Ontario MP Michael Ma, Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux and, most recently, Ontario MP Marilyn Gladu — who broke from the Conservatives on Wednesday

The Liberals also picked Nunavut MP Lori Idlout from the NDP last month

Five party-switchers would be remarkable enough

But they have now come from two different parties that are, for the most part, diametrically opposed

Not long ago, it might have been hard to imagine Jeneroux, elected four times as a Conservative in Edmonton, and Idlout, elected twice as the NDP MP for Nunavut, could sit in the same caucus

16 minutes agoMeet the byelection candidatesRhianna SchmunkDon Hodgson and Dr

Danielle Martin are two of the candidates running in the central Toronto riding of University-Rosedale

(Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press)Four candidates in downtown Toronto’s University-Rosedale riding campaigned to replace former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland

The Liberals ran family physician Dr

Danielle Martin and the NDP have Serena Purdy, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto

The Conservatives put Don Hodgson on the ballot, while the Greens are represented by Andrew Massey

In Scarborough Southwest, the Liberals are represented by former Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum after she left her role in the provincial legislature to run

Fatima Shaban is running for the NDP, the Conservatives are represented by Diana Filipova and Pooja Malhotra is the candidate for the Greens

Terrebonne, a suburb north of Montreal, is playing host to a rematch between the Liberals’ Tatiana Auguste and the Bloc Québécois’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné

Elections Canada had declared Auguste the winner over Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote after a judicial recount

But the Bloc candidate challenged the results after a supporter complained that she had tried to vote by mail using a special ballot that was never counted

Sinclair-Desgagné lost in Superior Court, but later won the case at the Supreme Court of Canada — triggering a byelection

The Conservatives are running Adrienne Charles, the NDP is represented by Maxime Beaudoin and the Green Party by Benjamin Rankin

17 minutes agoCarney’s Liberals have a shot at a majority government tonight

Here’s where to find resultsSunday Scrum | Liberals move closer to a majority, Conservatives react to latest defectionApril 12|Duration 20:18Chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton and this week’s Sunday Scrum – Toronto Star Ottawa bureau chief Tonda MacCharles, Hill Times managing editor Charelle Evelyn and CBC News writer and producer Jason Markusoff – discuss the Liberal Party potentially reaching a majority government in the upcoming byelections

Plus, the Sunday Scrum talks about the reaction from Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Official Opposition, to the recent defection from his caucus and how it could impact the Conservative Party’s strategy

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s minority government could become a majority if the party’s candidates win at least one of three byelections in Ontario and Quebec tonight

Five politicians from other parties have crossed the floor in recent months to bring the reigning party’s seat count to 171 — just one shy of a majority

Live results for University-Rosedale

Live results for Scarborough Southwest

Live results for Terrebonne

Victories in either University-Rosedale or Scarborough Southwest, two Toronto ridings the Liberals won comfortably less than a year ago, would bring the party to the 172 they need to form a majority

At that point, the government could have some assurance of its ability to at least survive any confidence votes in the House

A win in both Ontario ridings would bring the Liberals to 173 seats

At that point, the Liberals could gain a majority on House committees and have a freer hand to advance legislation without having to negotiate compromises with the opposition

Getting to a majority would also be, by any measure, a historic achievement for Carney and the Liberals, particularly given the prime minister was a private citizen 16 months ago and the Liberals were polling 20 points behind the Conservatives

– Aaron Wherry and Rhianna Schmunk