Liberal Sean Fraser changes his mind about spending time with family

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Only three months after former cabinet minister Sean Fraser announced he was leaving politics to spend more time with his “amazing family,” he announced Tuesday that he’s diving back in as a Liberal candidate.

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“There is too much at stake in this election for me to be comfortable sitting on the sidelines,” Fraser said in a Tuesday statement, adding that he’d re-entered politics at the request of Liberal Leader Mark Carney.

This is something that Carney would confirm in a campaign stop at the Irving Shipyard on Tuesday. “I and my colleagues have wanted Sean Fraser to come back and serve Canada at this crucial time,” he said.

Fraser was serving as the minister of housing when, on Dec. 16, he announced that he wouldn’t be seeking re-election as the MP for Central Nova in Nova Scotia.

“I’m going to be spending a little more time with the people closest to me, and I couldn’t be happier about it,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

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Fraser was among an exodus of more than 30 Liberal MPs who announced their intention not to run for re-election in the 2025 campaign. While many cited personal reasons for doing so, Fraser was particularly explicit in expressing the familial reasons for his decision.

His announcement featured a crayon drawing by his daughter and cited his family members by name. “I’ve got an amazing family at home — with an 8 year old daughter 3 year old son who could use more time with their dad,” he wrote.

Fraser’s reversal of the decision acknowledged as much, but added that he and Carney would figure out a way to both be a working politician and “still be there as a Dad to my kids.”

“Honestly, it’s high time that we make these jobs sincerely family-friendly and I trust him to do it,” he wrote.

Fraser’s sudden re-entry pushed aside the Liberal candidate who had been pegged to run in his stead in Central Nova. Ottawa lawyer Graham Murray, who grew up in Nova Scotia, had reportedly run his Central Nova campaign for only a few hours when word came down that he had been replaced.

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Fraser’s December announcement came when the Liberals were posting some of the worst poll numbers in their history.

Electoral projections just before Christmas showed that the party was on course to be sent to fourth place in the House of Commons — with Central Nova likely to flip to the Conservatives.

In bowing out early, Fraser was following in the footsteps of another Central Nova MP, Peter MacKay.

In the lead-up to the 2015 general election, MacKay — then the attorney general — was one of the most high-profile members of the government of then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper to announce his departure from politics. At the time, it was seen as a harbinger of doom for the Harper government, which would indeed be defeated in 2015.

Fraser is returning to politics with Liberal electoral projections having become decidedly better. Polls are consistently showing a Liberal lead, including in Central Nova. Whereas Fraser’s most likely fate in December was to lose his seat at the end of an unsuccessful re-election campaign, he now faces the prospect of regaining a cabinet post in a re-elected Liberal government.

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Fraser is the second high-profile Liberal to reverse their plans to leave politics following an apparent turnaround in the party’s fortunes.

Anita Anand, who was serving as transport minister in Justin Trudeau’s last cabinet, announced her departure from federal politics in January, only to reverse the decision a month later.

Anand’s four children are grown, and her initial statement was light on pledges to spend more time with family, saying instead she looked forward to returning to academia.

“Now that the Prime Minister has made his decision to move to his next chapter, I have determined the time is right for me to do the same, and to return to my prior professional life of teaching, research and public policy analyses,” she wrote only a few days after Trudeau announced his intention to resign.

In February, she said that when she decided not to run again, Canada was not facing an “existential crisis.”

“However, we now face threats of annexation, we are being called the 51st state and we are facing the potential 25 per cent tariffs across the economy, including on steel and aluminum,” Anand said. “I simply cannot leave.”

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