Good morning. Nunavut MP Lori Idlout has left the NDP for the Liberals, nudging Mark Carney even closer to a majority government – more on that below, along with Iran’s drone advantage and the Tumbler Ridge lawsuit against OpenAI. But first:

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Mark Carney’s road to a majority government got a little shorter this week, after Nunavut MP Lori Idlout said she was ditching the NDP for the Prime Minister’s Liberals. Actually, interim NDP leader Don Davies beat her to the announcement, expressing his disappointment in her floor-crossing late Tuesday night. Idlout’s own statement arrived in the wee hours of the morning, confirming that she’d joined the party to better respond to threats facing the North.

Maybe not the splashiest of rollouts, but no matter: It was all smiles yesterday ahead of the Liberal caucus meeting on Parliament Hill. Appearing with Idlout in a tiny stairwell, Carney said it was a great honour to welcome her to the team. That’s almost exactly the language he used in Edmonton three weeks ago, when he met for a photo op with another floor-crosser, Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also stuck to the script yesterday, once again accusing Carney on social media of using “backroom deals to seize a costly majority.” If it didn’t quite strike the fiery tone of his post in mid-February, that’s presumably because – unlike Jeneroux – Idlout didn’t abandon Poilievre’s ranks. She’s the first MP in the past four months to leave the skeletal New Democratic Party; Chris d’Entrement and Michael Ma crossed over from the Conservative bench, as well.

Those four defections aren’t enough to give the Liberals a majority government – they now have 170 seats in the House of Commons, just shy of the 172 needed. Three seats are currently vacant, and last week, the Prime Minister said he’d hold by-elections to fill them on April 13. Two of the races are in Toronto ridings that the Liberals have held for a decade: Scarborough Southwest and University-Rosedale, both won by double digits in the previous federal election. If what’s past is prologue, then Carney only needs to wait a month for his coveted majority.

Except the 172-seat threshold is a bit misleading, because one of the Liberal MPs, Francis Scarpaleggia, is Speaker of the House – and Speakers don’t vote unless there happens to be a tie. Okay, but (you might reasonably wonder) wouldn’t they throw in with their party? In fact, the role is meant to be stubbornly non-partisan. The last Speaker had to apologize repeatedly after he filmed a tribute video to a former leader of the Ontario Liberals. Convention dictates that Speakers cast their ballots to maintain the status quo, which means they’d side with the government on confidence votes, but may not vote to limit debate on legislation that could otherwise be pushed through.

So Carney would much prefer to sweep all three by-elections next month, though it’ll be a trickier task in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, just north of Montreal. The Liberals won that seat by a single ballot over the Bloc Québécois last year, but the Supreme Court recently annulled the result owing to an error by Elections Canada. Days after the decision, Carney showed up in Terrebonne alongside Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste, popping into local restaurants and walking around town in the junior hockey team’s jersey. It seems likely he’ll appear again before April’s by-election. Carney knows that every vote counts.

The U.S. and Israel may have wildly expensive, extremely advanced anti-missile systems, but Iran is now straining those systems with swarms of cheap, easily replaceable drones. Read more here about the arms race in the air.

At home: Ottawa is preparing to reintroduce its shelved border-security bill today, with a suite of changes meant to address widespread privacy concerns.

Abroad: China is making a strategic choice to remain on the sidelines of the conflict in the Middle East.