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Floor-crossing MP Lori Idlout is even worse than we thought
Remember when Lori Idlout crossed the floor? Yeah, that was bad. Nunavut voters elected her as an NDP MP by just 41 votes. A handful of families changing their minds would’ve flipped the result.
Then she handed that seat to Mark Carney’s Liberals anyway. A quiet deal in Ottawa that erased the choice voters made.
But now we know more. It turns out Lori Idlout wasn’t just playing politics. She was also billing taxpayers for purchases from her own business.
House of Commons disclosures show four transactions in 2025 tied to her company, Carvings Nunavut, totalling about $1,756. That includes multiple smaller purchases and one larger one just under $1,400.
Only after media questions did she suddenly realize this was a problem.
Her explanation? It was an “error.” Right. Because apparently, running purchases from your own company through your parliamentary expense account just… happens.
And we’re supposed to believe this wasn’t noticed until reporters started asking questions?
She paid it back. But let’s be very clear about what that means: she didn’t stop — she got caught. Now zoom out because this is where the pattern matters.
Idlout’s own ethics disclosures show she has full ownership of Carvings Nunavut and full ownership of Nunavut Holdings. She’s also listed as a director in federal corporate records.
Long before this expense scandal broke, there were already serious questions about federal money flowing to companies connected to her interests and her household, including sole-sourced contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars while she was a sitting MP.
After all of that, she crosses the floor to join the very government that controls those contracts.
If you tried to design a textbook example of how public office and private interest can collide, you’d struggle to make it clearer than this.
As long as everything is technically within the rules — rules written by the same political class — nobody in power wants to pull the thread.
But Canadians aren’t stupid. They can see the sequence. Win as an NDP MP, have business interests tied to government money. Bill your own company through taxpayer expenses, call it an “error” after getting caught. Then cross the floor to the governing Liberals.
And the people of Nunavut are stuck with it.
If Lori Idlout thinks this is all above board if she truly believes she still has the confidence of Nunavut, then there’s a simple test: resign, run again as a Liberal and defend her record to voters.
Because right now, she’s holding a seat she didn’t win under the banner she’s serving.
REPORT by @SheilaGunnReid:
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