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The NDP’s deal to prop up an ailing Liberal government is done.
Was it worth it? The New Democrats claim with some justification that no fourth party has ever set the national agenda as they have done over the past two-and-a-half years. They maintain that millions of Canadians have benefitted from policies they have pushed. Among them, the national dental plan for those without coverage earning less than $90,000 that wasn’t in the 2021 Liberal election platform, yet is on course to be fully implemented next year.
But NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has called time before the deal’s scheduled end next June for a reason. In a video released on Wednesday, he said that Justin Trudeau has proven that “he will always cave to corporate greed” — an apparent reference to the decision by Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon to force binding arbitration to end the work stoppage at the country’s major railroads last month.
However, there’s more to it than that. The first responsibility of any political party is to win power to implement its agenda. From that perspective, the deal has been a failure, which probably explains why it is now wrapping fish.
When it was signed in late March 2022, the NDP were at 20 per cent in the polls, according to aggregator 338Canada.com. As Liberal poll numbers fell there was the prospect of a permanent realignment, with the NDP moving into second place.
But Liberal support seems to have stabilized in the mid-20 per cents and the NDP is currently sitting at 17 per cent in 338’s latest aggregation.
Singh’s personal popularity was much higher in the summer of 2022 and his negative impressions were much lower than they are now.
Backing Trudeau on crucial confidence motions while bad-mouthing him in the House was an exercise in organized hypocrisy that made it look like Singh — a fundamentally decent man — was a practitioner of guile and deceit. It did not become him.
Meanwhile, according to a Postmedia-Leger poll in July, while 84 per cent of Liberals thought the deal has been good for the country, only 60 per cent of New Democrats were sure they were getting full value.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s repeated reference to the “carbon-tax coalition” was likely hurting the New Democrats and, with more than eight in 10 Canadians saying it’s time for a change in government, it is no surprise that Singh now wants to distance himself from Trudeau.
It does not mean an election is imminent. The NDP could still vote with the Liberals on a case-by-case basis, though Singh’s scornful condemnation — “The fact is the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people” — makes this hard to imagine. The 154 Liberals could also maintain the confidence of the House with the backing of 32 Bloc Québécois MPs.
Maybe an election isn’t imminent, but this does make it a lot less likely that Trudeau’s government will be able to limp on until the scheduled election date next October.
Was it inevitable that shackling himself to Trudeau would end badly for Singh?
Confidence-and-supply agreements have a long history in the Westminster system of government and the NDP has enjoyed some success when it has previously cozied up to the Liberals.
When Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson won power in 1963, he relied on the NDP’s Tommy Douglas to push through his agenda, finding common ground on medicare and the Canada Pension Plan. In the 1968 election, the New Democrats saw a modest increase in seat numbers.
Yet, when the NDP’s David Lewis opted to prop up Pierre Trudeau’s minority government in 1972, he found that it was the Liberal leader who benefited from progressive policies like increasing the universal family allowance that the NDP had proposed. In the 1974 election, the New Democrats lost half their seats, including that of the leader.
In 2005, Jack Layton was clearly conscious of getting too close to Paul Martin’s government, winning concessions in that year’s budget before supporting a non-confidence motion that brought down the Liberals. Layton, who barely mentioned Stephen Harper’s Conservatives during the campaign, added 10 seats in the subsequent election.
Singh’s video on Wednesday suggests he’s more likely to follow in the footsteps of Lewis than of Douglas or Layton.
While claiming that the Liberals don’t deserve another chance, Singh’s main target was “the threat of Pierre Poilievre and Conservative cuts,” which he said would “give more to big corporations and wealthy CEOs.”
This might make sense given the looming by-election in Winnipeg’s Elwood—Transcona riding, where the NDP and Conservatives have historically vied for the seat. Recent history has shown that the NDP holds its vote in the closing days of a campaign by targeting the Liberals to ensure switching is a disagreeable prospect for its supporters.
Instead, Singh is positioning himself as the people’s champion who will “stop Conservative cuts.”
He seems to have learned little from the general hilarity in the House when he rose and proclaimed, po-faced: “When I am prime minister….”
Hansard, the official record, noted the response: “Honourable members: ‘Ho,ho,ho’.”
In his video statement, Singh recognized that the odds are stacked heavily against him going from fourth party (with fewer seats than the Bloc) to first in his third kick at the can. “It’s always impossible until it isn’t. It can’t be done until someone does it … If we’re together, nothing is impossible,” he said. But what has become impossible for many Canadians is to differentiate Trudeau’s iteration of the Liberal party from the NDP.
It may well be that Singh can unshackle himself from his former partner and ride an orange wave to power. More likely, though, voters have tired of sunny ways, unfulfilled promises and vacuous slogans such as the NDP’s new motto: “It’s the people’s time.”
Like the pigs and humans in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals have become so similar it is futile to guess which is which.
National Post
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