Louis Massé, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa and Daniel Béland, McGill University
September 7, 2024
In December 2023, we asked whether the supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and the New Democrats would survive in 2024. It didn’t.
In the past several months, the agreement had come under increasing criticism from the Conservative Party of Canada and its leader, Pierre Poilievre. He recently called on the NDP to withdraw from the agreement and end its support for the Liberal government.
A week later, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced his party is terminating the deal. The decision ends an unusual period in federal politics, in which two parties worked together in a minority House of Commons to support a common policy agenda.
That agenda prioritized dental care, pharmacare, national daycare, paid sick leave and anti-strike-breaking legislation. These policies are still NDP priorities, as Singh’s announcement suggests with its focus on health care, housing and the cost-of-living crisis.
Common policy priorities remain
The end of the Liberal-NDP deal returns Canadians to traditional minority Parliament politics.
It doesn’t mean the Liberal government will fall. To pass key bills and survive confidence votes, single-party minority governments form ad-hoc coalitions with opposition parties depending on their legislative agenda.
The Liberals and New Democrats still share common policy priorities, especially in the area of social policy, and they may continue to co-operate and vote together to advance these priorities in the coming months. The Liberals also have the ability to legislate with the support of the Bloc Québécois on issues where they may have disagreements with the NDP.
Finally, the Liberals only need to secure the support of the Bloc or the NDP to win confidence votes and avoid early elections.
So what prompted the NDP to withdraw from the supply-and-confidence agreement?
Supporting parties always run the risk of falling along with the government they support when its popularity plummets. The Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been particularly unpopular since signing the agreement in March 2022, and the NDP has continued to try to distinguish itself from the Liberal government — something difficult to do with the deal in place.
In recent weeks, however, the Liberal government has come under heavy criticism for its intervention in the railway dispute with Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City.
NDP distances itself from Liberals
Support for workers and the labour movement has long been a key NDP principle. In the face of such a high-profile lockout and labour dispute, the NDP seemingly could not implicitly support the government’s actions, and decided to publicly make that clear.
By distancing itself from an unpopular government at this time, the NDP is actively preparing for the next federal election — but that doesn’t mean it wants an election any time soon.
Withdrawing from the deal is not the equivalent of a vote of no-confidence in the government, and it doesn’t mean the NDP wants to immediately pull the plug on the Liberal government. Instead, the NDP wants full freedom to forge and promote its own policy agenda and its message to Canadians while distancing itself from an unpopular government and prime minister.
New Democrats may negotiate and vote alongside the Liberals on various issues, but they want to be seen as an alternative to them rather than their strong ally. By contributing to the expansion of the federal welfare state since the COVID-19 pandemic, the NDP also sees an opportunity to depict itself as the progressive and pro-worker alternative to the Conservative Party.
This is why Singh called out both Trudeau’s Liberals and Poilievre’s Conservatives for their support of “big corporations and wealthy CEOs.”
Will gamble pay off?
Will the NDP succeed in convincing voters it’s the main opposition to the Conservatives and Poilievre? And will it be able to embody the hope it seeks to represent?
The coming months will show us whether the NDP benefits from the return to a traditional minority Parliament without a legislative deal with the unpopular Liberals.
In the meantime, where does it leave the other parties?
The NDP’s decision could strengthen the Conservative Party’s call for an early election.
By withdrawing from the supply-and-confidence agreement just after Poilievre demanded it do so, the NDP has not only opened itself up to criticism and mockery, it may also be lending credence to the Conservative leader’s claim that the country needs an election and a change of government.
By not calling for a no-confidence vote, the NDP also gives the Conservatives the opportunity to criticize both the NDP for pursuing the now-dead agreement in the first place, and the Liberals for lacking the support of Canadians.
The Liberals are in the weakest position in this new political environment. Their legislative agenda is now at risk, already complicated by conflicts with provincial governments on environmental policy, health care and immigration.
After nearly nine years in power, such a public rebuke by its legislative partner hurts the Liberals’ electoral prospects and will raise even more questions about Trudeau’s leadership. The “sunny days” of Trudeau’s 2015 Liberals seem long gone, and the party will find it difficult to return to the message of hope and optimism it communicated during its early years in power.
Louis Massé, PhD Student, Political Science, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa and Daniel Béland, Professor, Political Science, McGill University
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.