CLIP: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: They gave a minority government because they said you need to work with other parties to get this done. That’s exactly what this agreement is about. It’s about saying in the areas where we have alignment with the NDP, We’re going to work together constructively to deliver for Canadians in these times of challenge and uncertainty.
Jordan: Well, it lasted almost two and a half years. And in federal politics, especially these days, that’s an awful long time.
CLIP: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh: Today, I notified the Prime Minister that I’ve ripped up the supply and confidence agreement. Canadians are fighting a battle. A battle for the future of the middle class. Justin Trudeau has proven again and again.
He will always cave to corporate greed.
Jordan: The end of the NDP and Liberal supply and confidence agreement has turned the fall sitting of the House of Commons on its head. Suddenly, anything is possible. Or perhaps for the Liberals. Everything is impossible. As to what exactly will come from this, the answers right now range from nothing much at all to an election!
Right now! Let’s go! So what does yesterday’s announcement tell us about what we should expect in the coming months? What does it mean for the horse race of federal politics, which currently the federal Conservatives lead by a wide margin? And what does it mean for, you know, the actual bills that may get passed or not?
The laws that may get made or not? The problems that may get solved or not? What happens now?
I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Cormac Mac Sweeney is the Parliament Hill Bureau Chief for CityNews, which includes us here at The Big Story. And Cormac, how’s it going?
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Good. A little bit busy right now. We didn’t think things were going to get busy until the middle of September, but, uh,
Jordan:I introduced it obviously off the top. But for those who haven’t been paying attention, just explain exactly what happened today.
Cormac Mac Sweeney: In the morning, there was word getting around that we would be getting an announcement from NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, and the party had set that announcement for 1 p. m. Eastern, and it would be made as a video posted on social media.
When the video came out, the public learned that That the NDP was ripping up the supply and confidence deal with the Trudeau government. This was a deal that they had signed back in 2022. After the 2021 election, when the liberals came back to power with a minority government, the NDP had teamed up with them saying, you know what?
We’ll prop you up. We’ll support you as a government and give you long term stability, even though it’s a minority. As long as you do X, Y, Z, they had a list of different policy agreements between the two parties that could be achieved in exchange for this support. And that included things like dental care and pharma care, those programs that we’ve already seen started to go through the parliamentary process.
Um, and as well in terms of dental care already being rolled out for people. And so Jagmeet Singh says in this. Video that he is deciding to take this step because he believes that the liberals are too weak and beholden to corporate interests and they can’t be trusted to take on corporate greed. He also takes aim at the conservatives, uh, saying that they want to make massive cuts to supports for Canadians, including things like pharma care and dental care.
And he is trying to sort of put a wedge between the conservatives and the progressive vote, saying that the only people that can be trusted to follow through on that is the NDP, saying that they’re going to bring hope and optimism whenever Canadians head to the polls next. And so he’s deciding to end this deal.
And just to clarify as well, it’s not like The liberals weren’t living up to their end of the bargain. They did follow through on the terms up until this point. There were some things that haven’t been done yet, but didn’t need to in terms of the timeline. And it’s the NDP exercising its right, as was one of the clauses in this deal, to pull out of the deal anytime they see fit.
And so now we’re back to what is known as a traditional minority government. How much
Jordan: does this shake up, uh, what we were expecting to see in the fall session of the House, which I believe is set to sit down, uh, in about a week and a half or
Cormac Mac Sweeney: so, right? Yeah, September 16th is when, uh, MPs return to the House of Commons, and it definitely adds a huge question mark over what’s going to happen.
I mean, there’s going to be a lot of uncertainty now because, essentially, the government could fall at any moment. It’s not like every vote in the House of Commons is a confidence vote. So, um, spending bills, every spending bill from the government is considered a matter of confidence in a minority government.
But as well, opposition parties could decide to, uh, put forward during their opposition days motions of non confidence against the government. And the government itself, if it has a bill that it feels is important, they could make it a confidence matter as well, which puts pressure on the opposition party sometimes to vote in favor of a bill that they decide to put forward.
So now there’s the potential that this fall we could be having confidence motions that will have to be voted on and could trigger an early election. Just to let listeners know, and in case they’re not aware, the next scheduled election is not until October of next year. The Supply and Confidence deal was supposed to last until June of 2025, but obviously it’s ended now.
So it does add an uncertainty as to how things are going to work over the next coming months, especially during the fall, because that threat of an election will be hanging over almost everybody. Everything the government does and policies that they’re going to be putting forward now that they don’t have that security of this NDP deal.
They’ll have that in the back of their mind as they proceed moving forward when it comes to legislation and politics. Even though the prime minister likes to say he doesn’t want to focus on politics, the reality of the job is that politics will be involved in everything that there is because it is a political job.
Jordan: For the NDP, um, as you mentioned, the liberals had been keeping up their end of the bargain. Why now? Uh, what’s the reasoning there?
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Well, I think there are a few different things at play with this. Um, for the NDP, they’ve been Claiming victory for a lot of the policy achievements and that they have and I mentioned earlier, um, the big items like dental care and pharmacare and they’ve been saying that this proves that, uh, they can get action that they hold a lever of power, uh, to make things better.
better for Canadians and yet through this deal, they’ve often said, you know, we still have the ability to criticize the government and they have criticized the government at times. However, the conservatives have always said, uh, that they’re in bed with the liberals that, uh, you know, they, they incorrectly call it an NDP liberal coalition.
It’s not technically a coalition, but nonetheless, that’s what they’ve been branding the NDP and liberals as. Despite what the NDP has said it’s been able to achieve through the supplying confidence deal, the public opinion polls have not been giving them the credit that I think they may have hoped to achieve out of this.
They have been slipping in the polls, just like the liberals have been slipping in the polls. And the conservatives have been rising and for more than a year now, I think the, the conservatives have had a double digit lead in the polls. Uh, there are around 20 points or so, depending on which poll you’re looking at ahead of the liberals and the NDP have slipped.
Some projections say that they could lose up to eight seats if an election were held today. So that’s concerning for the NDP. And so that could be a, a, one of the big factors here for the new Democrats. Of course, the party is saying that they’re done with the. liberals because of all the reasons that Jagmeet Singh had mentioned.
But, uh, you know, there’s definitely a political factor to all of this. There’s also the issue around, uh, the by elections coming up. The NDP is a contender in both of those. Now, the Winnipeg by election that’s going to be taking place is a seat that the NDP used to hold. And in the Montreal by election, it was a seat that the liberals had held and was last.
held by the former justice minister, David Lamedi, who left after being removed from cabinet. And there is a chance that the new Democrats could pose an upset. The Liberals lost the Toronto St. Paul seat in June, and that was a big issue for the Liberals and raised a lot of questions about the prime minister’s leadership.
So the NDP is now Trying to look strong and tough on the liberals ahead of these by elections. So the timing of when this announcement came could factor in to that race as well. You know, another question around all of this is whether or not there would be questions about Jagmeet Singh’s Leadership. We started the summer talking about the leadership of the prime minister.
There were rumblings in the liberal caucus about whether Justin Trudeau is the right person to lead the party into the next election, given how poor the polling numbers have been. And there were some questions being raised as well about what about the NDP? Should they be having a similar conversation?
Now, some of that was just speculation. We didn’t have the same sort of blowback or questions in caucus the way that the liberals were dealing with it. But Getting out of this deal and having some of the MPs like Matthew Green, a Hamilton MP, who had just the other day said that at their caucus retreat, which is coming up next week, that they were going to have some tough conversations about whether to remain in this Supplying Confidence deal or not.
This might put to bed some, uh, possible caucus issues over whether or not to remain because the leader says we’re out. Uh, and so if there were going to be some murmurs about the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, as some had been speculating about over the summer, uh, that this might put it to rest because there might be an election at any moment and you don’t change the leader right before the election.
In that regard. So and one other thing is the timing of the next election. So as I mentioned earlier about the polls and the NDP not doing as well in the polls and needing to have a change, this will give them some space from the liberals because their polling has not been great and they want to try and build that space so that they can be seen as an independent choice for voters and not as aligned with Yeah.
The Trudeau government as the conservatives have been making them, uh, and the time to do that is getting slimmer and slimmer. And so with the potential of being a year away from another election or even months away from another election, timing is key. And so this will give them more time to try and potentially build up a better strategy for the next election if they want to stand a chance.
Jordan: You mentioned that the Prime Minister is focused, as he says, on, uh, policy, not politics. Um, explain what that means in regards to his response to this announcement today. I found it really interesting that he was, uh, scheduled to speak anyway at an announcement at one o’clock and obviously, uh, got broadsided a little by Jagmeet Singh’s announcement.
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah, it’s funny how that happens in politics sometimes where people try to, uh, coincidentally steal each other’s thunder. But, uh, the prime minister forced on very short notice to respond to this. I will note that, uh, the prime minister’s office wasn’t really aware of this until moments before. Before the public announcement was made.
Uh, and so the prime minister had to face reporters and cameras not long after, because he had a pre scheduled announcement around a national school food program that was taking place in Newfoundland. Uh, so when he did talk about this, he was a little bit dismissive of. What it meant for governing for his rule, uh, as prime minister, uh, saying that he’s just focused as he always has been on delivering for Canadians talking about, uh, the school food program that he was there to discuss about trying to make life easier, trying to deal with the challenges of inflation and the fiscal problems that a lot of Canadian families are facing.
And then he said. He’s not focused on politics. He’ll leave the politics to others while he focuses on delivering, but then also kind of gave a little bit of a shot to the NDP saying he hopes moving forward that they don’t lose focus on also delivering for Canadians. But that might also be a comment, of course, on making sure that some of the other priorities that they’ve had still get passed through Parliament before Canadians head to the polls next.
So an interesting response from the Prime Minister, nod. An unexpected response when these sorts of things happened, and we’ll see whether his tone changes as we get closer and closer to an election.
Jordan: As you look at the responses from the Liberals and the Conservatives desire to go to the polls and just sort of where the balance of power sits in Parliament.
I’m not asking you to be an odds maker, but you know, tell me about how close we could be to a fall election here.
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah. The conservatives, as you noted, no secret, they want an election and they were dismissive of the NDP pulling out of the deal, uh, using the term sellout sing, uh, which is, you know, the phrase that they’ve coined to refer to the leader Jagmeet Singh, uh, because they believe he sold out when he signed this deal in the first place with the liberals.
They basically say that this isn’t good enough, uh, of a move from the NDP. They say, if you really want to change, then you need to go to an election right away. on the NDP to essentially put its money where its mouth is and vote down this government and bring Canadians to the polls. Now, if you look at the state of the NDP and the state of the Liberals right now, if we did head to the polls this fall, it It would not be good for either party.
Both of them stand to lose seats, according to some of the projections from people like 338 Canada. The NDP is polling, uh, below 20%. That’s not a great place for the party. Uh, the liberals are anywhere between 20 and 25%. Uh, that is a really bad place for an encumbering government if they were about to head to the polls.
So. The Conservatives would love it. The Conservatives would like to force that to happen, but all the Liberals need is either the support of the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois, and the Bloc Quebecois can sometimes be a wild card because they probably don’t mind heading to the polls at almost any time, but for the NDP, it just doesn’t seem At least, you know, from the polling that’s out there, the public polling that now is a ripe time to head to Canadians and have them fill out their ballots, but we’ll have to wait and see because if they sort of make a projection, as sometimes happens with So Opposition parties or even governments of the day, they may say this might be our best chance because things might change not to our favor further down the line, and they may be trying to, you know, save as many seats as they can.
That’s another factor that could play into all of this for the new Democrats. So we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. Um, you know, just judging by the polls, it doesn’t look like anything is around the corner. Um, however, anything is possible in politics.
Jordan: Well, based on his current mantra of policy over politics, the Prime Minister would hate that it’s taken this long for us to get to actual bills that could be on the floor this fall.
But, you know, how does the dissolution of this agreement change what policies we may or may not see advanced in the House when it comes back and sits down?
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Well I think we’re entering a point anyway where every policy put forward in the House of Commons is going to matter for the next election. So the last year before next election is always going to be an important period for an incoming government.
This might speed things up a little bit. If the government feels like it might not be able to make it to the spring budget to have that fancy big budget where they’re going to take to Canadians and say, this is why we need to be reelected as a party, then maybe they make some changes. Maybe they add a little bit more to the fall economic update, uh, to try and, uh, Butter Canadians up a little bit out of the odds that maybe they might fall earlier than the spring budget, or maybe there’s going to save all of their big policy promises for the campaign trail.
But I think it’s going to be at the back of the minds of the liberals as they move forward in the fall about what policies are going to be appetizing for the voter, um, what policies could they potentially, uh, Make sure pass with the support of the opposition parties. They’re going to be a little bit more cautious and careful with how they phrase these things.
Nonetheless, they had to do that anyway in the negotiations with the NDP, but they could now have a little bit more freedom to make deals with other parties. Maybe they lean on a policy more towards the Bloc Quebecois instead of the NDP. Uh, in order to get their support instead of the new Democrats, but we’ll see how that plays from the government point of view, I think for the NDP, it allows them to be a little bit more aggressive against the liberals, and we’ll see whether that helps them politically for the conservatives.
I think they’re going to be just a Following the same train that they always have. Uh, they’ve been enjoying a long lead. They have not seen their honeymoon really end yet. Uh, and they’re going to be continuing their attacks on both the NDP and the Liberals to try and hammer them down as much as possible.
So even if Uh, we had to a campaign and there’s a chance that they could start to rise in that campaign that they may be so far down that that hole is just they can’t dig themselves out of it. And so, um, I think we’re going to see that from the conservatives and they’ve been effective so far at stealing, uh, some of the union support or union votes, blue collar votes that, uh, could have otherwise gone to the NDP.
We’re starting to see a trend of some of those going to the conservatives. And it’s, it’s. Lead to a lot of questions about certain seats being safe or unsafe for the NDP. So they’ll have to also do battle, not just with the liberals, but with the conservatives. And I think we’re seeing that as well with the video that Jagmeet Singh released, uh, where He decided to split his focus, not just on what he feels is the weakness of the Liberals, but also on what’s at stake at the next election and what he says might be the cuts from the Conservatives when it comes to things like health care and other supports for Canadians.
Jordan: There have been calls and even as you mentioned, uh, just a moment ago for the prime minister to step down for a leadership race for, uh, fresh blood at the top of, uh, the liberal party. And, you know, probably I would say a lot of people who were already hoping for that may have seen what has happened to the Democratic Party in the States, uh, with Joe Biden stepping down in favor of Kamala Harris and the momentum that that’s given her.
So I’m not saying. Uh, that could be repeated here, but you know, uh, how have those calls grown over the course of the summer? And what does this announcement mean for Trudeau’s future as leader?
Cormac Mac Sweeney: I think there will still be talk about it and, and there will be a lot of talk in the lead up to the next election about whether or not they could pull off such a thing.
But the prime minister has been clear that he does not intend to resign. He does not intend to go anywhere. And, you know, I think some of what’s happened over the summer. where he’s gone out. He’s met with regional caucus members. He didn’t follow through with a cabinet shuffle as some had been calling for and is standing by his position has kind of tampered down some of the talk about whether he would go or not.
And there is a potential that this move by the NDP could further secure Justin Trudeau’s position as leader in the sense that the liberals may Decide that if if they could be heading to an election at any moment, maybe now is not the time to pull out. But then again, at the same time, we saw in the U. S.
That they’re in an election campaign months away from it, and it’s been successful for the Democrats in terms of turning things around with the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris switcheroo. Now Even after that, the Prime Minister has been clear he doesn’t intend to go anywhere. But we’ll see how this sort of plays out.
I think what will be key is what we hear next week out of the Liberal caucus meeting, uh, where, you know, a lot of the rumblings and a lot of the push at the start of the summer to potentially change things started. We’ll see whether they’re satisfied now moving forward and whether everybody ends up falling in line behind the prime minister, uh, with the potential threat of an election this fall, uh, hovering above their heads or whether that’s going to increase things.
So we’ll see how it plays out. It might just put to rest all those questions. Um, it could add fuel to the fire. We’ll see what we hear from
Jordan: MPs. Cormac, thank you as always for, uh, walking us through An exciting day on the hill, I guess. Um, it’s gonna be a whole different fall than we were preparing for.
Cormac Mac Sweeney: Yeah. Some days you never know what you’re gonna get.
Jordan: Cormac Mac Sweeney, parliament Hill Bureau Chief at CityNews. That was the big story. For more, you can head to the big story podcast.ca. You can find us to give us feedback by emailing hello at the big story podcast ca, or by calling 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5.
The big stories available in all. Podcast players everywhere and any smart speaker you like, as long as you tell it to play the big story podcast and as long as you’re in Canada while you do it. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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