I guess that Liberal-NDP coalition wasn’t fake news
Whatever Erin O’Toole’s faults were as Conservative leader, he was bang on when, just a couple of months after last fall’s election, he envisioned a Liberal-NDP coalition giving Justin Trudeau a de facto majority.
Critics will point out the supply and confidence agreement the Liberals and New Democrats announced yesterday isn’t technically a coalition. No, a formal coalition would have been far more fruitful for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.
As Aaron Wudrick pointed out, “Jack Layton negotiated a deal for six NDP cabinet ministers; Jagmeet Singh managed to squeeze Trudeau for quarterly meetings.”
The last time a serious coalition talk came up in Canada was in 2008, when the Liberals and NDP planned to topple Stephen Harper’s newly reelected government with the support of the Bloc Québecois and Green party.
Instead, the NDP will receive regular audiences with Trudeau, which seems like a punishment more than a perk. The big policy win for Singh is a national dental care plan, which has been an NDP campaign pledge in the last two elections.
When the Parliamentary Budget Officer reviewed the proposal in 2020, it pegged the cost at $1.3 billion in the year following the plan’s announcement and $4.3 billion in the first year of implementation.
Numbers this high are abstract to most Canadians – certainly to the NDP, whose fiscal policy has little more depth than hashtagging “#TaxTheRich” and grumbling about “paying your fair share.”
Singh is also trumpeting the pharmacare plan as an achievement, even though the Liberals have been promising it for years, and under this deal have just agreed to “continuing progress.”
Progress and meetings. My goodness, who needs an official coalition when this is on offer?
The NDP was already wielding a giant, orange rubber stamp on Liberal legislation, so the next three years might not look all that different from the last few. I’d commend the NDP for at least trying to get something in exchange for their attempt at sycophancy, but this hardly seems like a big win for them.
It’s not clear precisely when these talks started, though some reports indicate they’ve been in the works for quite a while. I can’t help but wonder if they were underway when the media and the Liberals were mocking O’Toole for suggesting a coalition was afoot.
Conservative MP John Brassard pointed out on my show yesterday that energy security and defence spending were absent from the agreement, suggesting its text was worked out before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought those two issues to the forefront.
If his theory is correct, it means the Liberals and NDP were likely negotiating a deal around the same time the Liberals invoked the Emergencies Act to shut down the trucker convoy protest.
When Trudeau insisted parliament’s vote on the Emergencies Act would be a confidence motion, he was really telling NDP members of parliament they needed to fall in line. And they did.
According to the published agreement:
NDP would not move a vote of non-confidence, nor vote for a non-confidence motion during the term of the arrangement. Other votes which impede the government from functioning may be declared confidence by the government, in which case the government will commit to informing the NDP as soon as possible if a vote will be declared confidence, and the NDP will inform the government of their vote intentions before declaring publicly to permit discussions around confidence to take place.
In other words, the Liberals can call anything they believe will “impede the government from functioning” a confidence vote, and the NDP will be expected to go along with it or lose out on their dental boondoggle.
Will Trudeau’s internet regulation bill be a confidence vote? How about firearms legislation? Or the bill bringing back speech limitations to the Canadian Human Rights Act?
On many of these things, the Liberals and NDP are ideologically in lockstep, so this agreement may make little difference. It’s possible the NDP might be permitted a bit of independence, though it’s equally possible its MPs will have a short leash held by Trudeau and the Liberal whip.
When voters deny a governing party a majority, that party needs to reach across the aisle to advance its policy agenda. It is also far more accountable to the House of Commons when ethics probes and other investigative committees arise, which has been a frequent necessity under Trudeau’s government.
Whatever my grievances are with the NDP, they have been formidable in the committee hearings about WE and SNC-Lavalin scandals. This was significant with the combined opposition parties holding the majority on Commons committees.
The days of NDP opposition, such as they were, are over.
This isn’t a subversion of democracy – Canadians elected enough Liberal and NDP MPs to command a majority in the House of Commons if they choose to work together. They’ve made that choice, using “stability” as their justification.
It’s not undemocratic, but that doesn’t mean Canadians aren’t in for a rough ride.
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