NDP Archives - Page 7 of 7 - Loonie Politics

As we reach voting day, we are going to hear a lot of talk about whether the Liberals will “deserve” a majority parliament, or the oft-told hope that they can be kept in a hung parliament so that the NDP can exert influence and hold their feet to the fire. We’ve also heard some NDP proxies assert that it shouldn’t be too big of a deal if the Conservatives happen to form government in a hung parliament, because then the NDP can hold them to account. This is untrue, and history has shown us time and again that this dynamic never actually plays out.

Something that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been wildly proclaiming since the beginning of the pandemic was that many of the benefits that kept Canadians going throughout the various states of lockdown/mockdown were thanks to them and them alone. Singh frequently cites things like the level of wage subsidy as an NDP “victory,” when he had absolutely no influence on the decision at all – Bill Morneau’s office was consulting with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the Canadian Labour Congress, and they both quickly convinced him that the ten-percent subsidy would be insufficient, and he changed course to 75 percent by the time that weekend was over. The NDP like to take credit for this when they were not inside the tent being listened to. Nevertheless, Singh repeatedly taking credit for it is frequently cited by NDP partisans and it has become part of their mythology.

Likewise, with the extension of certain benefits, Singh likes to say that it was thanks to his negotiation that they were prolonged in exchange for a confidence vote, when there was no way the Liberals would have let those benefits expire while people still needed them. He pushed on an open door, and then declared victory – something that happened time and time again over the course of the last parliament. Meanwhile, the budget implementation bill for the fall fiscal update, which contained a number of new COVID-related supports, took six months to get passed thanks to the five months of procedural warfare that the NDP were gleeful participants in alongside the Conservatives and Bloc, but they don’t like to say that part out loud.

Regardless of recent history, the notion that any incoming government with in a hung parliament will be kept in check is hokum. We saw this during the Stephen Harper years, and in several provinces where there have been minority legislature situations over the past few years. In spite of the tough talk that so-called kingmakers, like the NDP aspire to be in the federal situation, they will almost never flex their muscles because of one simple fact – nobody wants to go to an election right after they’ve had one – and if they did, and there was another viable government that could be formed in the current legislative context, the Governor General or Lieutenant Governor would say no, and let the other viable group test the confidence of the chamber. It’s not only the constitutional architecture that that would prevent them from bringing down a new government right away – it’s also because all parties are generally exhausted and financially depleted after an election, and the NDP are most especially so, usually in many millions of dollars of debt that they need to pay off before they can even contemplate another election.

This is what tends to give new governments, even those in a hung parliament, a freer hand to make moves. This is something that Harper tested very successfully during his two hung parliaments – most especially in 2008, right after the election, when his announced plan to end the per-vote subsidy, which would severely hobble his rival parties, and led to the prorogation crisis. Even though the other parties threatened to bring his government down, and had cobbled together what they claimed to be a viable governing coalition – with a supply and confidence agreement from the Bloc to prop them up – Harper was able to stare them down over the prorogation break, and that would-be coalition crumbled before they could threaten to bring Harper down a second time. In no way was he kept in check by the NDP during those years, nor would they under a hypothetical O’Toole government.

Sure, the NDP in such a hypothetical situation would huff and puff and threaten to blow the government down, but they wouldn’t. It’s also just as likely that in such a scenario, the Bloc would be the party exercising the balance of power and would be willing to prop up a Conservative government because the Conservatives have spent the past two years trying to out-Bloc the Bloc and have promised to fully implement the entire Bloc agenda (minus separatism) as a means of debasing themselves in order to win Quebec premier François Legault’s favour, and lo, they got it – sort of. Legault did say that he would prefer a Conservative government in a minority parliament (as though people can somehow mark that on their ballots), as the Conservatives have promised to roll over to him at every opportunity, and the Bloc would see it in their interests to prop up that kind of government – especially as they can claim that they are setting the agenda and getting results in Ottawa.

It will all come down to the arithmetic of seats once the votes are all cast and the counted, but the NDP’s quest to play kingmaker could come with dire consequences for the very things that they say they are in favour of – universal childcare, national pharmacare, continued action on climate change that will actually meet targets, and completing the work of lifting the boil-water advisories on the remaining First Nations reserves around the country. If they think they could convince a potential prime minster Erin O’Toole to carry on with these programs under the threat that they’ll bring his government down if he doesn’t, they’re sadly mistaken. It’ll be 2006 all over again, with national childcare and the Kelowna Accords, because of the romance with minority parliaments that never pans out in reality.

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Here we are halfway through the first week of this campaign and I’ve got a funny feeling.

I think NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is going to come out with a win. I don’t mean he’ll be the next prime minister, that seems like too much of a long shot, but I think he’s going to make some considerable inroads this election.

There has been something flat about Liberal Leader/Prime Minister Justin Trudeau these first few days. He doesn’t seem to have figured out why he is running other than it looked like the right time to increase his seat count. He hasn’t fared any better than I did trying to talk himself into making this election about getting a mandate to do big things over the next years coming out of a catastrophe like COVID.

Of course it’s early. It’s not like Trudeau hasn’t won elections before, it’s actually something he’s pretty good at. But he’s going to need something a bit bigger than announcing the government will train 1,000 firefighters.

For an election Trudeau has called the most important since 1945, it sure seems to be lacking that tangy zip of meaningful campaigning. And I think the big beneficiary of that is going to be Singh.

People largely seem in the mood to keep government in their lives. The ghosts of Stephen Harpers past are still lurking, and people don’t really care for that kind of grim parsimony.

Besides, Singh has Trudeau pegged.

Watching his opening election ad and you can really see where Singh’s advantage lies. “For six years we’ve heard Justin Trudeau say the right thing with no intention of doing it,” summing up the Liberals’ latest turn in government in a one neat and tidy package.

It’s the kind of thing that works well because it’s just so on point. Conservative attacks that Trudeau is some kind of horribly corrupt bungler just don’t land with the same force.

This is by no means a government that has performed perfectly, but it hasn’t performed horribly, either. It’s walked the line of good-enough governance in a country that doesn’t expect anything much better. So the Tory attacks tend feel hyperbolic and overblown.

But to call this a government that’s all talk and no action? That’s something that lands.

There is nothing they love more than talking about how great they are, and in making a show using the right words. But, again and again, they fail to deliver to the same level as their rhetoric. It makes the Liberal road to a majority victory harder, because this government is a known quantity. The public will be less willing to buy what they’re selling, having been burned so often in the past.

An easy example here is Trudeau’s promise that 2015 would be the last election using the first-past-the-post system. We are now into our second FPTP election since he made and broke that promise.

I could go through a list of things that the Liberals promised and failed to deliver on, but by then I’d have written a whole policy book.

This is why I think the NDP has a good a shot as any this time around.

For all the good the pandemic supports were able to do for regular people, they were still weighted heavily toward corporations, who took in tens of millions of dollars, still turned huge profits, then paid out dividends and executive bonuses like it was any other year. People understand the fundamental unfairness of that.

This is where the NDP promise to claw back benefits to corporations who took public money only to line their own pockets is a good one. It’s also more straightforward that a bunch of new ethics laws, like the Tories are promising.

It’s part of the party’s broader message that government can and should be the vehicle to make people’s lives better. It’s one of the great failings of the current government that they often opt to make people’s lives slightly better, but not too much better.

Plus, Singh is just so personable. His solid debate performances last time around bode well for his second kick at the can. If he’s able to repeat that performance and prove it wasn’t just a one-time fluke, he’ll make a solid case to the public he’s got what it takes to move up in the world.

Campaigns are long, and weird, and what seems obvious at the start can be totally off base by the end. But Singh is starting off with a solid message at a time when Liberal support seems soft and tentative.

It’s a real opportunity for the NDP to make some serious gains. The true test of Singh as a leader is whether he’s able to capitalize on the opportunity. He has everything at his disposal to get this one right, he just needs to make it though the next month without any stumbles.

But deep down, I’ve got the feeling he has it in him. That this is his time, and his party’s time.