Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh have two reasons to be over the moon about the marriage they forged with their “Supply and Confidence Agreement” of March 22.
First: the pact brings precedented benefits to each partner in the Ottawa’s new centre-left union. The minority Liberals regain the power and control of a majority government. They have a three-year path, free of election worries, to steer – or ram – their ambitious legislative agenda through Parliament before the next election in the second half of 2025.
Meanwhile, the NDP, the fourth party in terms seats, gives up its ability to help precipitate an early election (for which it has no desire, anyway) in return for guaranteed influence in the corridors of power. Procedures spelled out in the pact provide that NDP MPs will receive regular briefings from the same mandarins who brief the cabinet, and they will be consulted by ministers, including the prime minister. The lead items on the NDP wish list are being incorporated in the partnership’s legislative agenda.
The second reason for joy: The accord defangs the official opposition. The Conservatives are left twisting in the toxic wind they are largely responsible for causing. They can introduce non-confidence votes, but none will pass. The two centre-left parties, acting as one, own a working majority. They control the Commons schedule, able to set time limits to circumvent obstruction and delay. Together they control of the committee system. For the next three years, the Conservatives will not be able to use parliamentary committees, as they have since 2019, as weapons to stall government measures and to launch inquiries that have only one purpose: to embarrass the Liberals.
Seven years in opposition, and unrelieved leadership turmoil, have reduced the Conservatives to a hollow shell, a party without a core. They have no shared beliefs or policy objectives. They offer opposition, but not an alternative, to the Liberals. The one thing that held them under the same tent until now was the possibility of bringing down the government. The possibility has been extinguished for at least three years.
Conservatives must know they can’t spend three years cursing the darkness, complaining about everything Liberal, whining about Trudeau and promoting conspiracy theories about overthrowing the government.
They face some hard choices. Do they try to continue as one party? Or will they split into two factions of unequal size, a large Harper wing of Conservatives who find the comfort with their hard-right Prairie base, and a shrunken core of moderates, the remains of the party’s progressive wing, who don’t know whether to fight to survive as centre-right party, or to drift away, to the right in the wake of their Harperite colleagues or to the left toward the Liberal-NDP combo.
If the moderates choose survival, they will need to light a candle in the darkness, to show voters something more constructive than abolishing the carbon tax, scrapping $10 day care, rolling back gun control and defunding the CBC, which what they have on offer at the moment. And they will need a leader with survival skills: the political credibility that comes with battle experience; the ability to pull together members of divergent views; and the personal appeal to sell the party’s message to skeptical voters in the cities and suburbs of middle Canada.
It sounds more like a prescription for Jean Charest – passionate Canadian, former federal cabinet minister, leader of the now defunct Progressive Conservative party, and former Liberal premier of Quebec – than it does for Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the junkyard dogs in Parliament, an attack-trained MP from suburban Ottawa (known, incongruously, by his childhood nickname of “Skippy”). Poilievre has no peer when it comes to eviscerating Liberals and demonizing the prime minister.
Highly organized with strong support from the caucus and the party’s right wing, he will probably be the winner when the preferential ballots are counted on Sept. 10. With five months to go anything can happen and Poilievre’s early lead could evaporate, but the campaign to date is not encouraging. There is no sign that Skippy is about to light any candles.
He stumped Southern Ontario last week, traveling from well-attended event (1,200 at one stop) to another. He stuck to a pattern: fire a few broadsides at the Liberal government, hurl insults at the prime minister, toss a few barbs at his leadership opponents (notably excepting his second-ballot supporter Patrick Brown); refuse to take questions from the media; then hang around for an hour or two for handshakes and selfies with the crowd.
Allusions to party policy were brief and vague, until he reached London. There, he revealed his passion for cryptocurrency. A Poilievre government, he promised, would “unleash” the potential of Bitcoin and Ethereum and make Canada the “the Blockchain capital of the world.”
Bitcoin? Ethereum? Blockchain? This from a Conservative government?
Skippy, we barely knew thee.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. He is the co-author of Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com