RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2026. On the happily less than altogether crazy North American politics in my own backyard, Canadian federal New Democrat MPs have criticized Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum for “announcing she will run federally as a Liberal for the seat vacated by former MP Bill Blair.”

Interim federal NDP Leader Don Davies, eg, has urged : “I’ll leave it to Ms. Begum to explain to the people of Scarborough Southwest [in the east end of today’s City of Toronto] why she’s abandoning the progressive policies she claimed to believe in to run for a party that is clearly governing like a conservative party.”

My own mere progressive voter’s sense of what Doly Begum is doing is different. To start with, the first year of Trump 2.0 next door has proved even worse than predicted — for most Canadians and many Americans (arguably now even a clear enough majority?).

For we the Canadian people President Trump, eg, unambiguously wants Canada as the 51st state, no ifs, ands, or buts. He is not willing period to back down on this front. And, unlike in Minnesota, he does not seriously have to back down even in some small degree. Even among the many US citizens friendly to the country Canada is just not something that Americans pay attention to. (Or care about, as Roger Stone has recently stressed on TwitterX.)

The rise of Mark Carney from Laurier Heights

What democracy in Canada — in its legendary circuitous, roundabout, wandering style — has happily given Canada at this crucial moment in the country’s already much longer than many recognize history is Prime Minister Mark Carney. He was born in the Canadian Northwest Territories, and then largely raised in a post Second War suburb of Edmonton, Alberta intriguingly named Laurier Heights, after the present 1867 confederation’s first French Canadian (if not quite first Liberal) prime minister.

I could go on about why I think PM Carney is what many call the right man for the times in Canada today. About how he’s so smart he managed to go straight from his Edmonton high school to Harvard in the US and then Oxford in the UK. About how he then became Governor of the Bank of Canada, then Governor of the Bank of England, and then a Brookfield Asset Management private businessman (who, imagine that, actually made a lot of money from shrewd financial investments).

Not surprisingly in someone who grew up in Edmonton’s Laurier Heights I also sense in PM Carney the ordinary strong patriotism that I and many other Canadians from all the different parts of the country apparently do actually feel (with many sound practical reasons behind our feelings of course).

I think Mark Carney believes in a Canada that has a future as well as a great enough (and certainly intriguing) past. I think he’s smart, experienced, and well traveled enough to keep Canada and its future alive and even well, in troubled times in many places. And I guess I finally think there is a streak of genius in him somewhere as well, yearning for release.

The key progressive principle behind Doly Begum’s move

As it happens, there have already been two Conservatives on the right crossing the floor to join the Liberals. And this was at least partly on grounds that uniting behind PM Carney’s leadership (and bringing it closer to a parliamentary majority) was important in these hard, tricky times for “Canada, Canada, Canada” (as the US annexationists moaned to no avail back in the War of 1812) — Chris d’Entremont, from Acadie-Annapolis in Nova Scotia, and Michael Ma from Markham-Unionville, just north of Toronto.

Now Doly Begum from the New Democrats on the left (albeit provincially) will be running for the Liberals federally, in the same east-end Toronto riding she has sat for as a New Democrat provincially. As illustrated by Interim federal NDP Leader Don Davies, some have found in this a blatant lack of principle on Ms Begum’s part (Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star is another example). I couldn’t disagree more myself.

From my highly esteemed secret sources in the depths of Canadian progressive politics I understand that Ms Begum is a seriously impressive, popular, and highly regarded Ontario NDP deputy leader — who will now almost certainly keep Bill Blair’s old riding Liberal in federal politics.

I believe, as I am sure many many other Canadians do, that what Doly Begum is doing in moving to the Liberals just reflects the strength of her faith in Canada and its future, and her conviction that PM Carney is the guy best able to defend Canada in these trying times.

Recognizing that almost nothing is normal now in Trump’s USA

You may disagree, as is your right of course.

But even for the substantial segment of the Canadian population that does not like Mark Carney (25% on the recent Nanos Preferred Prime Minister numbers?) I believe Ms Begum is at least standing up for an important principle in Canadian democratic politics.

And as a longtime supporter of co-operation between what seem to me Canada’s two progressive political parties, I am all for it! As PM Carney has noted almost nothing is normal in Washington, DC nowadays. I think those who see what Doly Begum is doing as somehow without principle have still not quite recognized or at least accepted what this increasingly non-normal USA means for Canada (and even the rest of the world).

There are bigger fish to fry right now than Liberal-NDP progressive rivalry. And Ms Begum deserves at the very least a rousing two cheers!