On the surface, it is difficult to see what purpose is served by the new Liberal-NDP alliance – or “supply and confidence” agreement, to give it its proper name – for all the attention it has attracted. It’s a bit like the “metaverse”: you know you’re supposed to be excited by it, but damned if you can say why, or even quite what it is.
Supposedly the agreement commits the Liberals to certain pieces of legislation dear to the NDP, in exchange for the NDP’s promise to keep the Liberals in power until 2025: that is, they will vote with the government on budget bills (supply) and other matters of confidence. But the Liberals don’t need the NDP’s votes to remain in power – the numbers in the House are such that they can govern with the support of any one of the three main opposition parties – and in any case the NDP were not about to vote to defeat the government, with or without an agreement.
For their part, the Liberals would hardly need to have their arms twisted to enact most of the policies – on dental care, pharmaceuticals, a bank tax and so on – to which they have now “agreed.” Some of them were even in the Liberal platform. So it’s mostly an agreement for each to do what it would have done anyway – or not, as the case may be. Deals between political parties, after all, are not like deals in the real world. They are only binding until they aren’t – until one side or the other decides it does not want to abide by them any more.
What’s the point, then? If neither side needs what they supposedly get from the deal, what do they really get from it? What do they really need? Start with the NDP. It isn’t the government that needs to be protected from an election. It’s the NDP. Or rather – since the government can still call one at any time, the provision of the Elections Act forbidding such calls notwithstanding – it needs to to be protected from election speculation. It needs to take the whole idea of an election off the table.
Why? Every minority Parliament is an extended game of chicken. In this particular minority Parliament, the game is not so much between the government and the opposition – since all three opposition parties would have to vote to defeat the government at the same time, the government’s hold on power is actually quite secure – as it is between the opposition parties.
You can see it being played each time there is a confidence vote, such as after a budget. One or other of the parties will rush to the microphones to announce its intention to vote against the government, in hopes of putting its rivals on the spot. Do they want to be responsible, as it will be perceived, for bringing down the government, and most likely precipitating another election?
No one wants an election just now, of course. The problem for the NDP is that, of all the parties, it wants an election least of all – and all the other parties know it. After three elections in six years, without the fundraising capacity of its larger rivals, the party simply cannot afford another one any time soon.
So the likelihood was that, some time in the coming months, and again and again over the remainder of this Parliament, the NDP would be put in the humiliating position of being, in effect, the last one to the mike: forced to prop up the government, over and over, for no reason other than because it was too scared not to. Whereas now it can say it’s because “we are bound by the terms of our agreement.” We did it for dental care.
They may find, however, that this amounts to burning the furniture to heat the house. For when the election finally does come, what will be left of the party’s brand? How will the New Democrats differentiate themselves from the Liberals, having transferred title to some of their signature policies to them?
For their part, the Liberals are also using the agreement to satisfy a short-term need – again, at potential cost to their longer-term position. The short-term need is not to ensure they can pass legislation – that is not in doubt, for the reasons given – but to insulate themselves from parliamentary inquiries into matters the Liberals would rather not discuss: for example, the sudden dismissal of two Chinese scientists from a top-security infectious disease laboratory in Winnipeg.
You will recall the government went so far as to sue the Speaker of the House before the last election rather than yield to Parliament’s demands for documents related to the affair. Ultimately, the only weapon Parliament has to enforce its will upon the government is to vote no confidence in it, or to threaten to. The credibility of any such threat would now appear to be very much in doubt.
There is, as I say, a cost to this insurance: by aligning themselves so closely to the left-leaning NDP, the Liberals risk giving up the centre ground to the Conservatives. That, however, assumes the Conservatives have the wit to seize it. The Liberals may be calculating that the Tories have become so toxic to moderate voters as to make the gamble worthwhile: that they can expand to their left and still hold onto the centre.
Whether that proves to be the case will be decided, in part, by the Conservative leadership race. On the tenuous assumption that the Liberal-NDP pact makes an early election call less likely, the race will now be informed by two additional considerations: that whoever is elected will not have to be ready for a general election the day they become leader, but will have some time to prepare; and that by the time the election finally does roll around, they may be facing someone other than Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader.
Perhaps that may even cause one or more potential candidates to reconsider their decision: either to stay out of the race, or to enter it.
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Andrew Coyne