By Lori Turnbull

July 27, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced three federal by-elections for Monday, August 31st. The government needs to win at least one of these to hold onto its majority status in the House of Commons.

In two of the three seats, the suspense is minimal. It’s unlikely that the Liberals could lose either Beaches-East York or North Vancouver-Capilano — previously held by departed Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith and former Liberal cabinet minister Jonathan Wilkinson, whom Carney recently appointed as Canada’s ambassador to the European Union.

The riding to watch is Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, where Prime Minister Carney created the vacancy when he made the surprise move of appointing incumbent Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate. A Liberal win here would serve as proof of Carney’s exceptional popularity in Quebec, not to mention his ability to poach yet another seat from the Conservatives — this time through a by-election rather than a floor-crossing.

Ever since Carney became Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, the Liberals have won every federal by-election except for the one in Battle River-Crowfoot, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre ran in August of last year following his loss in Carleton in the April general election. Let’s be honest: the Liberals wanted him to win that one.

But a Liberal victory in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, though very possible, is far from a sure thing. Carney is staking his winning streak on a three-way race that, if the 2025 election is any indication, will be a nail-biter to the very end.

Martel first won the riding in a by-election in 2018. In every election since, the Bloc Quebecois candidate came second with over 30% of the popular vote. In 2025, Mr. Martel had both the Bloc and the Liberal candidates breathing down his neck, each with roughly 31% of the vote compared to his 34%.

It’s also worth noting that in 2025, both the Conservatives and the Bloc lost support compared to 2021, but the Liberal share of the vote went up by 12%. If that momentum holds, the Liberals could sweep the night.

Per the Tip O’Neill-ism, all politics is indeed local, but we often treat a by-election as a referendum on the government, as though the voters in the affected riding are proxies for the rest of the country. A Liberal win in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord would be interpreted as a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Carney’s leadership and his handling of the ongoing trade war with the United States.

Per the Tip O’Neill-ism, all politics is indeed local, but we often treat a by-election as a referendum on the government, as though the voters in the affected riding are proxies for the rest of the country.

It would also be a galvanizing moment in the lead-up to the Quebec provincial election, scheduled for October 5th.

A Leger poll in June showed that nearly than half of the Quebec voting population has not yet decided who to support. The provincial race is very much in play. Among decided voters, 30% plan to vote for the Parti Quebecois, compared to 27% for the Liberals and 21% for the CAQ.  A Liberal win in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord could be seen as proof of the influential role that Carney could play in the provincial election and on the larger question of national unity.

But the Conservatives will and should be nothing short of desperate to hold onto that seat. For weeks now, the Conservative Party has been making headlines because of infighting among its various factions that has become loud enough to spill out into the public domain. And rather than attempt to unite the party, Mr. Poilievre joined in the fight instead.

While speaking at the Calgary Stampede, he congratulated Kerry-Lynne Findlay for winning the leadership of the British Columbia Conservative Party against “Liberal lobbyists” – a not so veiled reference to longtime Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, who was the campaign manager for second-place candidate Caroline Elliott.

Maybe Poilievre got a rise out of his supporters when he made this comment, but this kind of behaviour makes him look like he’s sitting at the kid’s table while Mark Carney is running the country.

Losing another seat to the Liberals would be a kick in the teeth and, this time, they could not blame it on “dirty backroom deals”, which is how Mr. Poilievre described the circumstances surrounding the four Conservative MPs who decamped for the Liberal caucus since last fall.

Frankly, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives can take a single vote for granted because the Bloc Quebecois has a solid ground game in the riding too. All three parties will need to mobilize their bases and their volunteer networks in the last days of summer.

Given the high probability of Liberal victories in both Beaches-East York and North Vancouver-Capilano, the result in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord will likely not be decisive with regard to the government’s majority status. But it will be important for what it says about the state of play in both federal and provincial politics.

While a win for the Liberals would be another testament to Mark Carney’s popularity, a loss for the Conservatives would no doubt add to their current malaise, and to the pressure on Pierre Poilievre.

Dr. Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.