The federal New Democrats have agreed to a deal to support the governing Liberals on key votes in Parliament and thus avoid an election until June 2025.
New Democratic leader Jagmeet Singh says the price the Trudeau government will pay means big wins for all Canadians.
In their agreement with the NDP, the Liberals have pledged to move forward on:
- a comprehensive, universal pharmacare plan,
- a phased-in dental-care plan for low-income Canadians,
- a federal, safe long-term care act,
- a homebuyers’ bill of rights,
- the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies,
- federal anti-scab legislation,
- and provisions to make it easier and more convenient for all Canadians to vote.
This is not a coalition government
Notwithstanding Conservative party rhetoric, the agreement does not create a new, coalition government.
A coalition would mean full power-sharing between the two parties, including seats at the cabinet table for New Democratic MPs, and that is not what is happening in this case. This deal is what is called a confidence and supply agreement.
And what does that mean?
Well, when legislative initiatives are considered matters of confidence it means the government falls if the majority in Parliament votes them down. Lose a vote of confidence and a government is kaput, finished. There has to be either an election or a new government.
The annual federal budget is one such confidence measure, as are any other pieces of legislation that entail spending money. In parliamentary jargon those are money bills.
Some non-money bills could also be considered matters of confidence. In large part, that choice is at the governing party’s discretion.
Supply measures are not exactly the same as legislation, or new laws, but they are also all about money. Such measures are procedures whereby Parliament appropriates money for programs that the MPs have already approved.
The current agreement means New Democrats will vote with the government on all confidence bills, including all budgets between now and 2025, and all the ensuing supply measures.
We have had such agreements in Canada in the past.
Most recently, B.C. Premier John Horgan’s New Democrats signed such a deal with the B.C. Greens, which allowed the NDP to govern as a minority from 2017 to 2020. In the 2020 provincial election Horgan’s NDP won a majority.
Decades earlier, in Ontario, David Peterson’s Liberals entered into a confidence and supply agreement with the provincial NDP, then led by Bob Rae, which provided for a stable Liberal minority government from 1985 to 1987.
Peterson won a majority in 1987, but in the next vote, three years later, his erstwhile partners, the New Democrats, won an unexpected victory.
Pharma and dental are longtime NDP goals
The current federal NDP has been pushing the two big-ticket items in this new deal – pharmacare and public dental insurance – for years.
In February of last year, New Democratic MP Peter Julian introduced a private member’s bill proposing the government start a process to establish a universal medical drug coverage program.
Most MPs, from all other parties in Parliament, voted against Julian’s bill. Only the three Green MPs, two rebel Liberals, one Conservative, and two independents voted yea.
In debate on the bill, Bloc MPs fretted about provincial prerogatives, one of their favourite themes, while Conservatives argued that we do not need universal drug coverage because many Canadians have private plans.
A few months later, in May 2021, New Democrat Jack Harris introduced a bill that, while not creating a full-fledged universal dental-care system, would, as an interim measure, provide dental insurance coverage to uninsured households which earn less than $90,000 per year.
Again, the Liberals sided with the other parties and refused to support the NDP. At the time, then health minister Patty Hajdu disputed the data New Democrats marshalled in favour of their proposal.
Those data showed how many families were losing their dental coverage as a result of COVID-related layoffs, while many more had zero or highly inadequate and partial coverage.
Thousands of Canadian dental patients – in May 2021 and still today – have resorted to medical doctors when their dental afflictions became too severe. Untreated dental issues can lead to serious illnesses, such as endocarditis, a life-threatening inflammation of the inner lining of the heart’s chambers and valves.
None of this evidence impressed the Liberals less than a year ago.
Now, an unnecessary election campaign later and finding themselves once again in a minority situation, the Trudeau folks have changed their tune.
Both the pharmcare and dental-care commitments in the new Liberal-NDP agreement closely mirror what the NDP had so recently put before Parliament, without success.
The New Democrats seem to have taken their late leader Jack Layton’s words to heart. Layton famously said he favoured “proposition, not opposition.”
It is worth reading the March 22, 2022 confidence and supply agreement in full. Both Liberals and New Democrats have made it public.
Not a word on electoral reform
The Liberal commitments on housing, climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, workers’ rights, and taxation represent incremental progress. They are far less sweeping and ambitious than the commitments on universal medical drug coverage and dental care.
Nonetheless, many of those less ambitious commitments are of significant consequence.
Last week, we wrote about the need for what is known as a “beneficial ownership registry.” Such an instrument could help unmask the folks in the shadows who own and control many Canadian shell corporations. Those companies are part of a complex web of international tax-avoidance and money laundering operations.
The Trudeau government promised such a registry in its last budget a bit less than a year ago, but put that promise on a slow track. Now they have fast-tracked it – for next year, 2023.
One big piece many had hoped would be part of any Liberal-New-Democrat deal is missing: electoral reform. There is not a word in this deal about a plan to advance toward a more representative electoral system.
All we have in this agreement are some minor but salutary improvements to the voting process under our current first-past-the-post system.
The agreement stipulates that from now on, election day will mean three days of voting, not one.
As well, Canadians will be able to vote in any polling place within their riding, not merely the single one designated for them, and the process of mail-in voting will be “improved” (in ways the agreement does not specify).
We do not know if the New Democrats tried putting more fundamental electoral reform – which has been their policy for a long time – on the table. We do know that many Liberal political professionals and MPs are dead set against any change to the current system, which they believe tends to benefit their party.
Despite this absence, the NDP has done its best to exert maximum leverage for a fourth-place party with a mere 25 seats. Given the cards they held, Jagmeet Singh’s team played them well.
No more partisan gladiators
Not surprisingly, Bloc Québécois and Conservative MPs had lots of negative comments about the NDP-Liberal arrangement. They talked about backroom deals, secret arrangements, and the New Democrats betraying their voters.
But the New Democrats and Liberals are in fact showing how a democratically elected Parliament should work.
The purpose of Parliament is to be a deliberative, legislative body, not a gladiatorial arena where über-partisan political warriors battle to the death.
As to which party or parties might benefit politically from this arrangement, it would be foolhardy to make a prediction now.
The New Democrats were probably quite wise in maintaining a considerable measure of independence for their party, and not pursuing a full-blown coalition, in which they would be the Liberals’ junior partners.
As it stands now, New Democrats can take a full measure of credit for the new programs they helped create, but will not have to share blame for any Liberal scandals that might crop up in the coming years.
A bit of history might be instructive here.
In Britain, in 2010, centrist Liberal Democratic Party leader Nick Clegg agreed to form a coalition, in which he would be deputy prime minister, with David Cameron’s Conservatives.
In the subsequent election in 2015, Clegg’s party was demolished. It dropped from 57 to 8 seats. The Liberal Democrats got squeezed by their Conservative partners on the right, Labour on the left, and a surging Nationalist party to the north, in Scotland.
By contrast, New Democrat Bob Rae’s agreement-but-not-coalition with the Ontario Liberals following the 1985 election worked out well for him. In the next election, Rae’s New Democrats leapfrogged over the Conservatives to second place, and in the subsequent vote they were victorious.
Is there a lesson from history here for the partners in the current, federal confidence and supply agreement? Who knows?
What we do know – as bar owner Rick told police captain Louis in the closing lines of the film Casablanca – is that this deal could be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
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