Poilievre will survive as CPC leader, and Canada will stay golden in men’s hockey: The Hub predicts 2026

Polish off your crystal balls, consult the stars, call up the scryer in your life—2025 is creeping to a close, and it’s time to turn our attention to what’s to come in 2026. But if the future still feels fuzzy, don’t panic: The Hub has you covered. Once again, our best prognosticators are here to provide some foolproof predictions for the headlines and happenings ahead. 1. Poilievre will win his leadership review The year will open with a Conservative leadership review in Calgary. Notwithstanding a recent spate of floor crossings, Pierre Poilievre should win handily—and for good reasons. The party continues to command something like 40 percent support among voters. No previous leader of the modern Conservative Party has been able to achieve such a record on a sustained basis, and it’s hard to envision an alternative leader achieving it now. Poilievre isn’t perfect by any means. But politics isn’t about perfection. It’s an exercise in tradeoffs. And after sustaining 40 percent or more of popular support for nearly two years, Conservatives will (rightly) trade off the devil they know for the devil they don’t. 2. The decline of the NDP will continue Last year’s federal election saw many traditional NDP supporters desert the party in favour of Mark Carney and the Liberals. One consequence is that the NDP’s leadership election in March will be decided by a small, self-selected group of ideologically hardened progressives. These conditions advantage Avi Lewis, whose “stiff-glass-of-whisky progressivism” is precisely what the NDP’s far-Left members want. As a party leader, he’ll energize the base voters but will also reinforce its low electoral ceiling. In the short term, that probably helps Prime Minister Mark Carney and hurts Pierre Poilievre, who’d be ahead in the polls if the NDP’s support was restored from the lows of April’s 2025 election to its historic norms. But over the long run, it will hasten the realignment whereby the NDP ceases to be a voice for a working-class politics in favour of its more activist (and unrepresentative) elements, which will ultimately be good news for the Conservatives. 3. Economic nationalism will be all the rage There will be a growing effort to push federal and provincial policy in the direction of economic nationalism, aided by the posture and rhetoric of the Trump administration. This is among the collateral damage of Trumpism. It will be costly and distortionary precisely because it will be used by Canadian politicians to “invest” public monies into non-economical private sector companies and projects under the auspices of “sovereignty.” The recent push for a home-made AI tech stack is a good (or bad) example. The federal government’s Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy allocates $2 billion to various domestic companies in the name of developing a “sovereign AI backbone.” It’s just enough to be expensive for taxpayers and absurd in the face of the hundreds of billions being spent annually by U.S.-based AI companies. As in the past, though economic nationalism may be self-satisfying in the moment, it will doubtless be a hugely expensive and unsuccessful effort that will leave taxpayers worse off. 4. Alberta’s brave reforms will pave the way In more positive terms, the most significant policy development in 2026 will be the implementation of Alberta’s new dual-practice model for doctors in the province. The legislation, which recently received Royal Assent, is easily the most important health-care reform in my lifetime, precisely because it breaches the Medicare wall hitherto assumed to be impenetrable. There will be technocratic questions in 2026, including what, if any, constraints the government imposes on physicians working in the public and private systems. The biggest consequences, however, will be political. One can envision the Overton window opening up around the country such that Alberta’s “two-tier” health care will become the norm. Maybe not this year. Maybe not the next one. But eventually, Alberta’s bold and courageous reforms will sweep across Canada. And patients will be better for it. 5. Canada’s men’s hockey team will win Olympic gold Canada’s men’s hockey team beats the Americans in the gold medal game at the Winter Olympics in Milan. I’m not prone to the knee-jerk nationalism of the past year or so, but beating the U.S.—particularly in what will likely be Sidney Crosby’s international competition—will still feel pretty good.