Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, left, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, prepare for the start of the federal election English-language Leaders debate in Gatineau, Que., on Sept. 9, 2021.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
With the NDP’s announcement Wednesday that it is pulling out of the parliamentary alliance that has helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stay in power, Canadians have finally got what they voted for in the last election: an honest-to-God minority Liberal government.
It’s what they always should have had. The supply and confidence agreement the NDP and Liberals signed 30 months ago, and which is now over, has resulted in the longest lived minority government in Canada’s history (and counting). An aberration, in other words – and one whose benefits for the parties involved and for the voters caught up in it are questionable, at best.
It may have allowed the Liberals to present three budgets without fear of them being defeated in the House of Commons, which would have led to the collapse of their government. And it may have given the Liberals a tighter hand on committees and the ability to push legislation through opposition roadblocks more easily.
But in that same period, the party has fallen 20 points behind the Conservatives in poll after poll and is on a path toward a crushing defeat in the next election, which must be called by Oct. 21, 2025.
The NDP under Jagmeet Singh has fared no better. The same polls have it possibly losing more than half its 24 seats if the election were called today.
The upshot is that a left-wing party and a centre-left party have worked assiduously together to set the table for a decisive Conservative Party majority government some time in the next 14 months. It’s difficult to see how the outcome could have possibly been worse for the Liberals and NDP had they not struck a deal.
As for Canadians, the gains have been slim. The biggest have been the launch of an income-targeted dental care program and a modest step in the direction of pharmacare in the form of a program to fund a number of contraceptives and diabetes medications.
But people who need medications for AIDS, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression and so many other ailments have been left out in the cold.
And if you’re not a federal government worker or a union member in a federally regulated industry – and there is only about a one in 20 chance that you are – you get no benefit from the 10 paid sick days a year federal employees are now entitled to, or from the law that bans the use of replacement workers during strikes in those workplaces.
In fact, those last two will cost Canadians more money, especially with the rapid growth of the federal bureaucracy under the Liberals, and cause them more frustration by ensuring that strikes in critical industries like telecommunications, air travel and train travel last longer.
It must also be noted that the so-called “anti-scab” law would have passed without the NDP-Liberal arrangement, given that the always opportunistic Conservatives voted in favour of it.
With the end of the agreement, Parliament will now revert to the way it always ought to have proceeded – on a case-by-case basis with each budget and on any opposition non-confidence motion.
This doesn’t mean the Liberal government will fall any time soon; it would be beyond foolhardy for the Liberals and the NDP to go to the polls now.
But it does mean that the Liberals will have to earn the support of the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to pass its next budget, and to defeat the non-confidence motion the Conservatives, thirsty for an election, will likely put forward.
What it really should mean, though, is the end of supply and confidence agreements – or at least a promise to give voters advance warning of the possibility of one.
Canadians never asked for a parliamentary alliance that has done very little good that couldn’t have been accomplished without it, and which has ended in tears for Liberal and NDP voters.
The NDP should now make it clear to voters whether they ever intend to entertain such an agreement again, should the opportunity present itself.
Canadians deserve to know in advance whether their MPs will tie themselves to another party on a formal, ongoing basis, rather than do their job of holding every government – minority or otherwise – accountable every day of the year.