Good morning. Mark Carney’s Liberals edged closer to a majority government after coaxing Matt Jeneroux to abandon the Conservatives – more on that below, along with a pair of Olympic medals and a landmark social-media trial. But first:

• Former prince Andrew is arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office
• A judge sentences the men guilty of St. Michael’s Hospital fraud to several years in prison
• Alberta’s health authority destroys the remaining pediatric drugs imported during a 2022 shortage
• Birth rates across the country are down – so why not in Oshawa?

The rumours about Matt Jeneroux started last fall. Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont had just crossed the floor to join the Liberal caucus, and on his way over, he suggested other party members were willing to break ranks. Ottawa chatter swiftly zeroed in on Jeneroux, but the Alberta MP maintained he wouldn’t defect. Instead, he surprised pretty much everyone by abruptly resigning.

The plan, he said back in November, was to walk away from Parliament sometime in the new year. And the Liberals clearly made the most of those months – because yesterday morning, Jeneroux announced that he’d had a change of heart. He would not quit politics after all, but he would quit the Conservative Party, siding with the Liberals to bring Mark Carney’s government tantalizingly close to a majority.

Jeneroux chalked up his decision to the Prime Minister’s middle-powers speech at Davos last month, which led him “to reflect on the gravity of the moment that our country is living through.” It seemed “simply wrong to be sitting on the sidelines,” he said yesterday, so he ended up sitting across the table from a positively beaming Carney. The two met for a photo op in Edmonton Riverbend, the reliably Conservative riding that Jeneroux has represented since 2015.

“I deem it a great honour to be on the same team as you at a crucial time for this city, for this province, for this country,” the PM told his brand-new MP, whom he also named a special adviser on economic and security partnerships. “I couldn’t be more proud to be here,” Jeneroux said. The entire exchange lasted about four minutes; they left without taking questions.

Presumably, some reporter would’ve asked what Pierre Poilievre thought about all this. But the Conservative Leader wasted little time firing up social media to make his feelings known. He contended that “Matt Jeneroux has betrayed the people of Edmonton Riverbend who voted for affordable food and homes, safe streets, and a strong resource sector.” Poilievre also accused Carney of “trying to seize a costly Liberal majority government” through “dirty backroom deals.”

Carney hasn’t crossed that finish line quite yet. The Liberals now have 169 seats in the House of Commons, just shy of the 172 needed for a majority. Three seats are currently vacant, with two of them – held until recently by Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair – in safe Liberal ridings. The third is in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, where the Supreme Court of Canada, in a rare decision on Friday, annulled the 2025 federal election result. The Liberals won that seat over the Bloc Québécois by a single vote.

Still, Jeneroux’s defection gets Carney closer, after the Liberals persuaded d’Entrement and Ontario MP Michael Ma to leave the Conservatives last year. (Ma made his move in mid-December, just in time to be thoroughly feted at the Liberal holiday party.) It’s also the latest headache for Poilievre, who already spent the better part of this week accounting for his MP Jamil Jivani’s solo diplomatic mission to Washington.

In a nutshell: Jivani, an old college pal of Vice-President JD Vance, took it upon himself to help hash out a trade deal with the United States. (Jivani is not a member of Ottawa’s negotiating team, nor is he an opposition critic.) He left the White House empty-handed, but he did manage to squeeze in a Saturday interview with Breitbart News – blaming job losses in his Ontario riding on “the lack of progress on a trade agreement,” and not, you know, the Trump administration’s tariffs, then insisting that Canadians are “shooting ourselves in the foot” with an “anti-American hissy fit.”

On Tuesday, Poilievre tried to distance his caucus from Jivani’s take on Canada-U.S. relations. “He speaks for himself, and I speak for the party,” the leader told reporters. After Jeneroux, Carney must be hoping there’s another Conservative MP who doesn’t much like what Poilievre has to say.

No kidding: Team Canada survived a quarter-final scare to beat Czechia 4-3 in overtime on a Mitch Marner backhand. The men’s hockey team face Finland tomorrow – hopefully with Sidney Crosby back in the lineup – while the women’s team plays the U.S. for gold today at 1:10 pm ET. Elsewhere on the ice, speed skater Steven Dubois won gold in the men’s 500-metre short track, and Canada claimed bronze in the women’s 3,000-metre relay. For all our latest Olympics coverage, go to tgam.ca/olympics-daily.