It was former Liberal Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent who famously quipped that the CCF (forerunner of today’s NDP) were “Liberals in a hurry.”
But what about New Democrats and fellow-travelling green lefties who start out on the far left but then gravitate to the federal Liberals? Are they no longer in a hurry? Or are they in such a big hurry that they can’t wait for the NDP to form a national government, so they seek to infiltrate the federal Liberals, one of the most successful political machines in the western world?
The most famous defector from a left-wing party to the federal Liberals was former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Before entering federal politics as a Liberal, Trudeau spent much of the 1940s and 1950s in the orbit of the democratic-socialist CCF, now the NDP. He even served as a CCF agent in the 1949 federal election.
But something has been going on more recently with defections and infiltrations from the green left and NDP to the federal Liberals. One of the epicentres of this “leftists-in-a-hurry” phenomenon is Vancouver.
In 2004, former British Columbia NDP Premier Ujjal Dosanjh was appointed by Liberal PM Paul Martin as the Liberal candidate in Vancouver South, a seat he won in 2004 and held until 2011.
And there are more recent examples of left-wingers “in a hurry” in Vancouver, and their stories are still playing out today.
The most celebrated green/NDP politician to switch to the federal Liberals is former Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. A one-time director of the notorious green-left “philanthropic” Tides Foundation here in Canada (now called “MakeWay”), Robertson entered public life as the BC NDP MLA for Vancouver-Fairview. Not satisfied with being an opposition backbencher, Robertson shrewdly jumped to municipal politics in 2008, was elected mayor and led the left-of-centre “Vision Vancouver” slate to victory that year.
For the next ten years, Robertson served as one of Canada’s most progressive mayors. His legacy involved pushing a hard-left green environmental agenda and, most controversially, setting in motion Vancouver’s notorious phased-in ban on natural gas. Approved in 2016, the ban was (thankfully!) terminated ten years later, in 2026, by the more sensible new Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.
After retiring as mayor in 2018, Robertson spent over six years in what passes (for progressives) as the “private sector.” He worked as the Global Ambassador for the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (2019 to early 2025), an alliance funded by a combination of Bloomberg Philanthropies and the European Union’s European Commission (in other words: the long-suffering taxpayers of Europe).
Robertson was recruited in 2025 to be the Liberal candidate in Vancouver-Fraserview-South Burnaby. Upon his election to Parliament, Robertson was immediately elevated to be Carney’s cabinet as Minister of Housing and Infrastructure and Minister for Pacific Economic Development.
While Robertson was serving as the Green Left (basically NDP) mayor, another Green Left-winger burst onto the political scene in the Vancouver area. Elected as part of Justin Trudeau’s 2015 landslide, Jonathan Wilkinson won his first election in the suburban Vancouver riding of North Vancouver (now North Vancouver-Capilano).
Like Robertson, Wilkinson got his political start in the NDP. A former head of the NDP youth wing in Saskatchewan and later an advisor to Saskatchewan NDP Premier Roy Romanow, Wilkinson went on to work for environmental tech, energy efficiency, water treatment, hydrogen and biomass energy companies. By 2015, this socialist-in-a-hurry had transformed himself into a federal Liberal and joined Team Trudeau, securing the nomination in North Vancouver. Wilkinson was elected three times under Trudeau and thrived under the green-left Liberal PM, serving successively as Trudeau’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Environment and Climate Change, and finally as Energy and Natural Resources – pushing a radical, left-wing, interventionist Net Zero agenda in all three portfolios.
Wilkinson served briefly in the Mark Carney cabinet and then sat in Parliament as a backbencher, waiting for his next assignment.
In April, Carney announced that Wilkinson, the green left-wing Trudeau operative, would become Canada’s next Ambassador to the European Union.
There is a third left-winger-in-a-hurry (to become elected as a Liberal) associated with Team Carney: Braeden Caley.
When Wilkinson was appointed Canada’s new ambassador to the EU, he had to resign his seat in the House of Commons, triggering the current federal by-election in North Vancouver-Capilano, to be held on Monday, August 31. Just days after leaving his job as Mark Carney’s deputy chief of staff, Braeden Caley was named the Liberal candidate for the North Vancouver–Capilano by-election.
It’s true that, unlike Wilkinson and Robertson, Caley didn’t spend his youth as an NDPer. This young leftist-in-a-hurry went straight into the Liberal Party of Canada and enjoyed a successful career there. Early on, he worked for Vancouver-area Liberal MP Raymond Chan, but Caley’s true left-wing bias was easy to see.
All in one year – 2008 – he joined the staff of former NDP Premier, then Vancouver Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh; supported former Ontario NDP Premier turned Liberal MP Bob Rae for Liberal leader (Caley was Rae’s Youth Director); and founded a group called “Canadians for Obama.”
Caley earned his green municipal stripes from 2011 through 2016 when he left his federal opposition Liberal job for a job with real power – in the office of (wait for it…) Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson! Caley eventually became Robertson’s Director of Policy and Communications. Indeed, Caley held this job in the crucial year of 2015, when he likely played a role in Vancouver City Council’s in-principle adoption of Vancouver’s “Renewable City Strategy” on November 4 – the policy that led to Vancouver’s 2016 ban on natural gas.
These were heady days for environmentalist fanatics on the Canadian Left.
While Robertson and Caley’s Vancouver – real leaders of the municipal environmentalist left – were laying the groundwork for the natural gas ban, Canada’s new PM Justin Trudeau was attending the COP21 conference in Paris, signing the Paris Accord on Climate Change. Around this time, Caley left Robertson’s office for Ottawa to take on the role of Senior Director of Communications for the Liberal Party of Canada. Meanwhile, weeks later, PM Trudeau met with the Premiers and released the Vancouver Declaration on Clean Growth and Climate Change in March 2016, which led to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.
Caley was there for all of this, every step of the way.
Trudeau’s choice of Braeden Caley was hardly surprising. A committed progressive Liberal with an interest in climate policy, Caley also had firsthand experience in Vancouver municipal politics, where some of the country’s most ambitious – and, in my view, misguided – green policies were taking shape.
In 2020, Braeden Caley became Executive Director of the progressive think tank Canada 2020, unofficially affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, and eventually became its President and CEO. At the same time, in May 2020, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney became Chair of Canada 2020’s new advisory board. Carney’s time chairing Caley’s board coincided almost exactly with his post-Bank of England role as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, from 2019/2020 to 2025.
Once Trudeau resigned, Carney left his various jobs, and so did Caley. Caley became the National Campaign Director for Carney’s successful campaign for Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and then one of the national campaign co-directors for the party’s general election victory in early 2025. He then served as a deputy chief of staff in Carney’s office.
On Monday, August 31, with Wilkinson settling into his EU job in Brussels, voters in his old riding will be asked to pass judgment on the first year of Carney’s government. As the Liberal candidate, Braeden Caley is Carney’s surrogate in North Vancouver–Capilano. His former boss, former Vancouver mayor and municipal green-extremist trailblazer Gregor Robertson, will undoubtedly be cheering on his former staffer. Carney, too, will be counting on adding Caley to his caucus, essentially swapping out one left-wing activist to Brussels to make room for another.
And yet many small- and large-C Conservatives continue to insist that Mark Carney is some sort of “moderate” or “centrist.”
Really? Look at the people around him.
The Carney Liberals are filled with former NDPers, left-wing activists and green policy zealots who have figured out that sometimes the quickest route to political power is to stop calling yourself a socialist, put on a Liberal jersey and get elected.
These “Liberals in a hurry” joined the Liberal tent because that is where the power is – and where they can now put their ideas into action.
And if you want to know where Mark Carney sits politically, don’t just listen to what he calls himself. Look at the people he chooses to surround himself with. Birds of a feather, after all.