NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced on Sept. 4 that he put an end to the supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals. The hated Liberal minority government of Justin Trudeau has now lost the only support that was keeping it alive.
With inflation running wild for years now and a housing crisis making life unbearable for millions of working class people, on top of bailing out corporations, violating the right to strike, backing Israel and increasing military spending—people want Trudeau to go.
In the last months, the Liberals have collapsed in the polls, a decline made more apparent after the party lost a by-election in Toronto-St.Paul’s—an area previously considered a safe seat for the Liberals.
The growing class anger has been searching for an outlet. But the NDP, having tied itself to the same Liberals that many hold responsible for their misfortune, has been unable to channel that anger.
It has rather been channeled by the Conservatives of Pierre Poilievre, who have been playing the populist card, à la Trump. They have deftly been hammering Trudeau on the housing crisis and inflation, even presenting themselves as pro “working class”—a barefaced lie that is nonetheless pushing them to the top of the polls.
The situation was becoming untenable for the NDP, and they had to drop their support for the Liberals sooner or later.
But the end of the supply-and-confidence agreement now poses the question of an early election. Poilievre has already called on Singh to vote for a no-confidence motion in the coming weeks. He is calling for a “carbon tax election” at the soonest possible date.
The prospect of a Conservative victory is now rearing its ugly head. It would signal the opening of a period of austerity and attacks on the working class.
Why now?
The NDP put itself in a tough situation. The Conservatives will likely try to force a no-confidence vote at the earliest moment, when Parliament reconvenes in the coming weeks.
Voting against the motion would amount to continuing to prop-up the Liberals, and would play directly into the hand of Poilievre. On the other hand, the NDP is doing terribly in the polls and would likely lose a large number of seats if elections were called today—a predicament entirely of their own making.
The NDP is therefore left with few good options.
Singh has so far refused to support a no-confidence motion and said that they may continue to vote with the government on a case-by-case basis. He would thus try to extract piecemeal concessions from Trudeau in exchange for ad hoc support. This could delay elections by a few months, but it would also maintain the NDP’s image as a stooge of the Liberals.
So why did the NDP put an end to the supply-and-confidence agreement now? The exact cause of this surprise breakup was not immediately apparent.
In a video posted to social media, Singh explained how the Liberals were unprepared to stand up to corporate greed. One might wonder how Singh only discovered this now, and what might have changed in the preceding weeks or months that altered his opinion.
Senior NDP figures told The Globe & Mail that the agreement was terminated as the party had extracted all that it wanted from the Liberals—including legislation on dental care and pharmacare.
If true, the NDP doesn’t have much to show for its 30-month pact with the Liberals. Dental care is still hardly universal or free in all cases, while legislation for pharmacare was negotiated down to include only contraceptives and diabetes medication—legislation which is still being debated in the Senate.
The NDP’s break with the Liberals is not based on principle, but on crass electoral calculation. The pact with the Liberals has become a burden, and seeing the Liberals trailing, they figured this time was as good as any. In fact, Singh has admitted the video had been shot several weeks before.
There were a great many issues that the NDP could have toppled the Liberals over: support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the worsening housing crisis, forcing binding arbitration on Vancouver port workers, WestJet mechanics or, more recently, the rail workers—all burning issues which provided more than enough reason to bring down the government.
All these were issues where the NDP could have exposed the Liberals as defenders of the rich and powerful against the workers. But the NDP leadership doesn’t think in such class terms. Now, they look like they caved to the Conservatives (Poilievre sent Singh a letter last week asking him to drop the agreement) without gaining much in return. Not only are the NDP tops unprincipled opportunists, they are bad at it.
The end of stability
In his video, Singh described the Liberals as “weak,” while also positioning the NDP as the only party capable of defeating the Poilievre Conservatives. In doing so, Singh is hoping to revive the NDP’s fortunes by capturing the strategic vote against the Conservatives—a strategy often employed by the Liberals against the NDP.
However, the rocketing support of Poilievre is based on his posturing, falsely, as an anti-establishment candidate—a stance which has connected with the anger in Canadian society towards the powers that be.
The NDP, given its long relationship with the Liberals, as well as its continued Liberal-esque policies, will find it hard to compete, as many voters write them off as just another establishment party.
Moreover, stealing the Liberal vote is not at all guaranteed.
The Liberals still sit higher than the NDP in the polls, and have mastered the art of rallying the “anyone but Conservative” vote —no matter how much they themselves are hated.
The NDP on its current trajectory has set itself up for disappointment and defeat. Their entire strategy has played right into Poilievre’s hands.
We can’t predict when elections will happen, nor what will be the results, even though a Conservative victory seems likely. However, one thing is certain: the stability of Canadian politics is no longer.
The nine-year rule of the Liberal Party, a fact which was supposed to prove Canada’s immunity from the chaos of the rest of the world, is nearing its probable end. The NDP may have helped to delay the forces of history, but only for a time.
The end of the NDP-Liberal alliance opens up a period of instability, political polarization and crisis, such as we have seen in the U.S. and many European countries.
Whichever party is elected, the epoch of stability and class peace is at an end. The most likely outcome—the victory of right populism in the form of Poilievre’s Conservatives—is an event which will invite even further disarray into every facet of Canadian society.
Even if the Liberals or the NDP manage to get elected, this will not be on the basis of a stable government, but a weak government captaining a ship with many holes in it, battered by the storm of the capitalist crisis.
