The uproar over Vancouver Kingsway’a David Emerson accepting a Conservative cabinet post a couple of weeks after being elected as a liberal shows no sign of simmering down yet.

Emerson got publicly angry today as people continued to react to his decision.
In his first interview as Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the criticism of his decision is superficial.

In Parliament or a Legislature switching parties is called ‘crossing the floor.’ It is literal, the opposition sits on one side of the house, the party in power the other. So when someone elected as opposition decides to join the party in power, he or she ‘crosses the floor.’

Since 1921, 166 federal MP’s have crossed the floor.
Canada became a country in 1867. In 1868 during the first parliament, Nova Scotian Scott Cambell was the first to talk the walk.

I have a question. Has an MP ever switched right after an election as David Emerson has done?
Ideological/conscience issues would make sense for an MP or MPP to switch as would reaching for the power plum and financial rewards.

“I would say the most common reason [for crossing the floor] that I see now is what happened here,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. “They’re offered a Cabinet portfolio. It’s just too tempting. They’re bought off.”

The most common reason is consolidation of power, particularly for independents and smaller parties that rise and fall.

The “commonest single factor” prompting MPs to change their political stripes in the past has been changes to Canada’s party system, said Desmond Morton, the university’s Hiram Mills chair in Canadian history.

“The bigger lump of people [who cross the floor] are those who were in, for example, the old Social Credit Party wandering back, changing their name, taking some people with them, losing others,” he said.

Colby Cosh at his acerbic best - shredding Emerson’s media raging hiding behind his kids and his “I raised money for the Liberal party” better than any writer in this country.