Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet speaks to journalists in the House of Commons foyer on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 18.Blair Gable/Reuters
Yves-François Blanchet wasn’t worried that there wasn’t much time for his press conference.
“Five minutes?” the Bloc Québécois Leader said. “That’s plenty of time.”
“The question is simple. The answer is simple.”
Then Mr. Blanchet swiftly killed any suspense about the government falling next week.
It was only a few hours after the Conservatives had released the wording of their proposed non-confidence motion, asking MPs to vote on a simple declaration that they no longer have confidence in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his government.
But Mr. Blanchet flatly rejected it as an empty proposition designed only to trade Mr. Trudeau for a Conservative prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, or, as the Bloc Leader put it, to replace “a viper with a tarantula.”
That puts the freeze on any real prospect of the government falling, but only for the short term – weeks, or possibly a few months. But it comes with the suggestion that the Bloc will be ready to defeat the government soon enough.
What Mr. Blanchet wants is to make a deal: He wants Liberal support for a Bloc proposal to boost Old Age Security for seniors aged 65 to 74.
He said bluntly he doesn’t have confidence in the Liberal government, but he’s reasonably confident he can squeeze a concession from it.
After that, he said, “We’ll have lots of time to bring down the government in a reasonable amount of time.”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget the extent to which the Bloc’s sovereigntist raison d’être makes it something of a free agent in Parliament. Mr. Blanchet doesn’t have to pretend he’ll be running for prime minister, or even that he cares which federalist party is in power at the moment. Making deals with whoever is by definition part of what the Bloc does.
For the moment, that has taken the sting out of Mr. Poilievre’s non-confidence threats, but the Bloc doesn’t want to make supporting Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals its main line of business. It has other demands it is saving for later – such as more power for Quebec over immigration – that it knows Mr. Trudeau will reject.
So how long will this go on?
Mr. Blanchet’s specific request now is for the Liberal government to provide royal recommendation for a bill put forward by Bloc MP Andréanne Larouche that would enact the Old Age Security increases the Bloc wants. Without government endorsing a bill by providing royal recommendation, Parliament cannot pass a bill that requires government spending.
The Liberals put through the increase for seniors over 75 just before the 2021 election as a blatantly political effort to win seniors’ votes. So a desperate Liberal government could surely find room now to negotiate a similar increase for seniors 65 to 74.
Negotiating royal recommendation could be pretty quick. The Bloc could insist it be a matter of weeks.
But giving a royal recommendation to a Bloc MP’s bill doesn’t make it law. Opposition bills don’t move through Parliament as quickly as government bills so the Liberals might include the measure in one of its own bills – perhaps the one to implement the fall economic statement.
That could drag things out to November, December or even after the holidays – depending on how long Mr. Blanchet is willing to wait.
In the meantime, the government could give opposition parties several opposition days – seven must be scheduled before Dec. 10 – so that they are used up before the Bloc changes its mind on non-confidence.
The Liberals have another potential partner in the NDP. New Democrats won’t be itching to trigger an election before the provincial elections in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are behind them.
After two-and-a-half years of propping up the Liberals with pharmacare a key part of the bargain, New Democrats will face a choice of triggering an election before it becomes a reality. The pharmacare bill is still before the Senate and negotiations with provinces on public coverage of diabetes drugs and contraceptives could take till spring.
For the moment, the election cliffhanger is on pause. Mr. Blanchet thinks he can make a deal. If he succeeds, he might look for another. Perhaps the deal-making can last months. Even so, the offer is time-limited. Mr. Blanchet is already promising it will end “reasonably” soon in the government’s defeat.