I was hanging out with some longtime NDP friends the other day. One argued that the deal was problematic from the beginning as being negotiated behind closed doors and then publicly declared as a fait accompli, as opposed to Singh consulting and negotiating with the NDP rank-and-file in the process.
However politically problematic the deal was, in my own opinion it's quite politically unhelpful the way in which Singh described *why* it needed to end. Rather than leading on policy and picking a point of policy distinction between the NDP and the Liberals, he's looking like he changed his mind just because the polls are bad. Singh can now be seen as having given credit to Poilievre (obliged the latter's demand), yet he will still be in the embarrassing spotlight of propping up the government in the next confidence vote.
Mr. Gurney describes Jagmeet Singh as "half pregnant". I checked with the local neonatal unit regarding how Mr. Singh became "half pregnant". The most succinct description was, " Mr. Singh most likely screwed himself".
Singh has been a dreadful leader. The deal he made with the Liberals, along with his snipping at them, made him look ridiculous. I really don't understand what the 'strategy' was behind this deal except maybe to get their election debt behind them.
On top of being half pregnant and miserable, this looks like Singh completely caved to Poilievre’s bullying, which is not a good look. Perhaps not true, but perception being everything, he’s got to dig out of that as well.
Leslie, it is a standard move for any opposition party to criticize the government and demand that they resign. In this instance, any call for the government to make such a move had the impediment of the dippers supporting the government. On that basis alone, it was a reasonable call by PP for the dippers to cut ties with the government and, therefore, was not at bullying.
Ken, the bullying is not that Poilievre called for the NDP to cancel the agreement. That is expected. It is the bombastic, mean, petty, name-calling way that he approaches any criticism that makes it bullying, and makes Polievre a bully.
Leslie, thank you for your clarification which I accept up until application of the term to PP unless you similarly apply it to JT and his acolytes who are uniformly, shall we say, scornful of PP or anyone who disagrees with them. In fact, JT and his sunshine crew habitually try to link PP and the Conservatives to a certain orange haired individual who lives in Florida/New York/Washington, etc. If that is not bullying then I am at a loss. In other words, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, "Bullying is as bullying does."
It's a little funny to reflect that the past several years of Canadian politics have been shaped by a couple of leaders and parties who've been operating under a Cargo Cult perception of past glories.
Trudeau and the Liberals have been guided by (and benefited from) a lot of nostalgia for the Pierre Trudeau era: a big government, big spending party that had big ambitions. They've adopted a lot of the forms of the Pierre Trudeau era - they've expanded the size of government, spent a lot of money, and certainly talked big - but have been bumbling incompetents at actual execution.
Singh and the NDP have been guided by their own version of a golden era from the '70s: the period when Liberal minorities were propped up by the NDP, yielding a lot of those same big, ambitious government initiatives. The perceived success of that period is something Jack Layton tried to replicate during the Martin minority government, and I suspect it's what drove Singh to agree to the CASA. Again, though, Singh followed the forms but botched the execution.
It all reminds me of the Cargo Cult mentality described in Richard Feynman's famous essay: the Liberals and the NDP both looked to the '70s and aspired to replicate what they saw as their golden age. However, they didn't have the skills or knowledge to actually achieve it. They also lacked the insight and perspective to look at that era critically so that they'd understand why it ended and where those approaches ultimately failed.
If an early election drops, two really really bad things will happen:
1) The On-line Harms Bill will die on the order paper, likely never to be resuscitated even if the Libs eventually regain power this decade, as they eventually will, being the Natural Governing Party and all.
2) The NDP will be wiped out as an electoral force. This will mean all those leftist voters will have to vote Liberal, dragging it further to the left but also making Liberal majorities much more likely, perhaps forever. (If the Tories get 40% of those who vote and the Libs get 50% with NDP + Green + Bloc getting 10%, that looks like a recipe for permanent majority. When did Tories last poll as high as 40%? The route to a Tory majority is splitting the left vote or convincing most of them to stay home out of futility.)
I hope it's obvious that my citing 1) as a "bad" thing is purely tongue-in-cheek. I would be thrilled in fact. But 2) does scare me.
First thing that came to mind when thinking about an early election was killing that Online Harms legislation. What a dangerous piece that is if you dig into it (The Line has in the past!). If an early election does come I think we should at least toast a drink to Jagmeet for helping us dodge that massive (I can not understate that) bullet JT wants to unload on us.
It is not a bullet. It is a vicious dictatorial malignant shitload. In true bolshevik-stalinist-maoist, and now canadian "Liberal Trudeauist" tradition.
My Lord, Susan, the On Line Harms bill is so incredibly awful that there is no way that a sentient individual (obviously, that does not describe Government members) could vote for it. Oh, have I insulted you? If so, I apologize, but, truly, I humbly request that you work towards sentient and away from senescence.
I’m sorry for not making myself clear that I was being sarcastic. “Tongue-in-cheek” was not sufficient, I guess. I should have just said I will be rejoicing naked in the streets if the Bill dies with Parliamentary dissolution, because there is little hope that it can be defeated otherwise if a determined government gets behind it.
What do you mean by "wiped out as an electoral force"? The NDP are in a bad position right now, but not quite as bad as they were in some elections of the 1990s.
There's a case to be made that they're actually in a worse position than they were in the '90s. The NDP has long struggled with an awkward coalition between organized labour and progressive urban voters. However, it's increasingly looking like they're losing that labour vote to the Conservatives because of a better cultural alignment, and the Liberals have been peeling off the progressive urban voters. A bit like Singh's attempt to both support the Liberals and criticize them, the NDP's attempt to be all things to the starkly disparate groups in their coalition may have left them with nothing in the end.
I mean reduced to a number of seats such that they can't make a difference as to who forms the government in Parliament. That number depends on the relative strengths of the Libs and Conservatives. See, the danger is that the next election produces a result where the Conservatives have more seats than anyone else but less than a majority. The Liberals could claim to the Governor-General (who owes her job to the PM, remember) that Libs plus NDP > Conservatives and so they would be able to gain the confidence of the House and pass a budget, while the Conservatives would not be able to reliably ally with any other party -- the Bloc? you kidding me? -- and so could not govern. This could keep the Libs in power until the NDP abandoned them, again. This happened once before, the King-Byng affair, with King being the PM and Lord Byng the G-G.
The only way to avoid this is for the NDP to have so few seats that theirs plus what's left of the Liberals can't outvote the Conservatives. Practically this requires a broad-based majority Tory government, and practically *that* requires a big Tory breakthrough in the Toronto area, the only part of the country that really matters electorally. (Everywhere else is either solid Lib or solid Tory, or too small to matter, like Atlantic Canada.) Personally I doubt that will happen and I predict another Liberal plus NDP pseudo-coalition.
Edit: The Tory strategy also depends on the collapse of the Bloc. Quebec typically votes for the winner so as to get more pork and support for separatism from Ottawa.
They don't otherwise care who governs. If the Tories look like they might win nationally, Quebeckers will vote in the most obscure Tory MPs imaginable just to have them on the government benches. When the Libs look likely to win anyway they can have fun voting Bloc just to annoy the rest of Canada.
You will be surprised how many so called NDP type "working men and women", will be voting Conservative in the next election. This happened in the 1993 federal election with a healthy chunk of so called NDP type, "working men and women", actually voted Reform.
The private sector unions actually want to work vs. the public sector unions and environmental lobby which increasing want to reduce work for others. The NDP needs to decide where its loyalties lie.
And the issue that the NDP is having with the private sector unions is that their policies are hostile to their jobs. Why vote NDP when they want to eliminate their usually good paying blue collar jobs? Most private sector unionized people I know are not in the NDP camp. Then there is a huge chunk of 'ordinary working Canadians' that are not unionized. The NDP will retain the public sector unions, the enviro-loonies, and the urban dwellers - the latte sipping crowd. Ordinary 'working people' - unionized or not - have had their lives made harder by Singh propping up Jr. and the ones I hear from are not happy with it.
I forgot to add that as a westerner, I agreed with the slogan ‘The West Wants In’. I was not the only NDP member who voted reform for that reason. Far from it.
When this was first announced I really hoped it would be a Lib / NDP partnership, really disappointed in how it turned out. Singh isn't a bad guy, but it's very clear that he just doesn't have the political chops required. I don't think the NDP is over Jack Layton's death yet (know I'm not).
For my money, the NDP should be just strong enough to keep the Liberals from getting a majority, but not strong enough ever to have a chance at governing. They also need to have enough policy differences with the Liberals (much harder these days) so that they can't form stable alliances that result in Liberal minorities governing as if they had a majority.
In his defense, it's entirely possible that Trudeau never offered the NDP a seat at the table in a coalition government.
The Liberals may well have concluded they could stick handle through Parliament knowing they would only need one party's support for each bill, so why give up cabinet positions to the NDP? Especially knowing the NDP literally couldn't afford another snap election.
So Singh took an action they made it look like they were driving some policy. It may have played well enough for his base, as he easily won a leadership review vote.
He could have pushed harder. At some point, Trudeau would have to chose between working with the BQ and the NDP. The optics of the former aren’t great. Singh will go down as one of the worst NDP leaders.
I doubt that Singh or any real member of his party would have been enough of a JT adulator to be eligible for a Liberal Cabinet. So I agree with you 100%
Letting a member of the opposition into Cabinet is done only in wartime coalitions or other national emergency. Political as well as national secrets are discussed at Cabinet meetings. No way would a PM give a Cabinet post to an NDP MP.
Even candidate Kamala Harris has offered a Cabinet post to Republicans. And the inference that members of other parties are potential traitors because they can’t be trusted in wartime is a bit strong to say the least.
My bad I forgot that the US is a constitutional republic with separation of legislative executive and judiciary as opposed to Canadas constitutional monarchy with concentration of legislative and executive powers in one body (ignoring the formality of the governor general’s role). And sorry for misreading your post although it seems to me that these days accusations of treason seem to be a lot more common among committed political party members than they used to be.
1) The U.S. system is different. Cabinet Secretaries can *not* be members of Congress. The Executive is separate (separation of powers). Westminster Cabinet members must be MPs or Senators. Let's see if she actually does appoint any Republican cabinet secretaries. And merely "being" a Republican (say, registered as one) is not the same as being elected as a Republican. She can say anything she likes as a candidate. The only thing you can trust would be if she said all her cabinet secretaries will be black women.
2) I said Opposition MPs are put into Cabinet during wartime coalitions., the opposite to what you said I said. This is mostly done to avoid the need for elections during a crisis, not out of some ecumenical spirit of bonhomie. Presumably you can trust them in wartime but you can't trust them politically at any other time.
When was he MP for Vancouver-Quaadra? Or did he just stand for election there unsuccessfully in order to be legitimately PM? He was Justice Minister in Pierre Trudeau’s Cabinet. He must have been an MP somewhere along the way.
The principle of responsible government is that the Cabinet is drawn from Parliament. If an outsider with exceptional talents is named to Cabinet, the Government has to get him elected somehow, usually by telling an MP in a safe seat to step aside (probably rewarded with a Senate or ambassador job) and getting the guy elected in a by-election if a general election is not imminent.
Edit: Justin Trudeau just did this number on Mark Carney, if gossip is true. Carney apparently wanted to come into government as Finance Minister, which, had Trudeau accepted, would have obligated him to find Carney a safe seat somewhere. Instead, Trudeau apparently told him, “Sure. If you want a career in politics you can get yourself nominated to run as Liberal in a riding of your choice. Then if you get elected I will consider offering you a Cabinet post, not necessarily the one you want. Remember you’re a man, though, and my Cabinet has to be gender-balanced.” Carney apparently said No thanks.
Turner was an MP and Minister in Trudeau's administration in the 1960s and 70s. He resigned in 1975 and went into private life.
When Trudeau resigned in 1984, Turner ran for, and won the Liberal leadership. He was still a private citizen. He was elected as an MP again in the 1984 election that massively brought Mulroney to power.
Letting other parties into Cabinet is common practice in other Westminster democracies. But with respect to the internal culture of the Liberal Party, I totally agree. The Liberals are keenly aware that what makes the NDP seem unelectable and more fringe is the fact that they have never been able to put even a single Minister in government. I think that the NDP will win an election outright before the Liberals ever accept that precedent.
I’m genuinely curious about this, as it doesn’t sound very “Westminstarian” to have MPs from other parties in Cabinet. Can you name an example? (I couldn’t find any on Google but I might not have asked intelligently.) In coalitions, yes, but then the minor party partner is actually part of the government, not the Loyal Opposition. European “Parliaments”, which aren’t the Westminster model, never have majorities because of proportional representation so are always brokering coalitions. You’ll have executive councils, or whatever they call their cabinets, with several parties in them.
I think any government with Cabinet Ministers from more than one party would qualify as a 'coalition'. As for Westminster examples of that: most recently, after the UK 2010 election, a coalition was formed by the Conservatives (who won the most seats but fell short of a majority) and the Liberal Democrats. The latter had several seats in Cabinet and the Liberal Democrat leader was Deputy PM. There are several other instances of coalition governments in British history that I'm aware of including the National Government (Conservative/Labour) in the early 1930s and the Liberal-Conservative coalition that was formed during WW1 but continued for several years after the war ended. That's the kind of deal the NDP was aiming for when they tried to strike the deal with Dion after the 2008 election in Canada.
Yes, I understand that coalition governments will have MPs in cabinet from all the parties who are partners in the coalition. Of course. What I thought -- perhaps incorrectly -- the OP was saying was that a PM has appointed opposition MPs to Cabinet in less formal arrangements like a confidence and supply or merely the usual ad hoc support of a minority government by a shifting alignment of various small parties depending on the issue. Perhaps the very definition of a coalition is when the Prime Minister agrees to name MPs from any of the other parties to Cabinet...or *becomes* Prime Minister by succeeding in brokering such a coalition with a kingmaker party, as the NDP attempted in 2008. The important thing is that the MPs in Cabinet would be legally bound by Cabinet secrecy and could not divulge what was discussed there to their backbench MPs to plan strategy for an upcoming election against the government.
Long time subscriber and evangelist of The Line, first-time commenter…
The NDP is culturally a utopian party, so it has a policy agenda that is infinite. The NDP was impelled to enter into CASA because it offered an opportunity to advance its agenda. The nature of CASA, unavoidably, is that it is a limited commitment, temporally and otherwise. The NDP made a limited commitment with an unlimited rationale.
For the NDP, there could be no natural or logical limit to its adherence to CASA. That is because the commitment allows for progress on the NDP agenda, which is utopian and thus infinite. There could be no point where it made sense for the NDP to abandon CASA, once it had entered into it. The only plausible natural death for CASA was for the Liberals, a pragmatic party in its marrow, to abandon it for pragmatic reasons. So the NDP has inflicted an unnatural death on CASA and is defending itself behind improvised barricades made of non sequiturs.
(For an alternative take, consider this. CASA was a concrete route to an abstract goal, a gravity-plagued project to attain weightlessness. The Tower of Babel, in other words, masons striving to transcend masonry by means of … masonry. The inescapable result: a confusion of tongues, the product of an underlying and inescapable incoherence. See: every word Singh has uttered since 2022. Now back to our previous take, still in progress.)
For the Liberals, CASA was a dilemma, and they have been impaled on its horns. But for the NDP it was not a dilemma, it was a paradox. A paradox has only one horn.
Imagine the position Singh would be in today if he had come out of the election swinging on behalf of ordinary working people and their needs, instead of the liberals and the sillier progressive talking points. He could have prevented The Conservative poaching of their territory while keeping the Liberals feet to the fire.
Oh without question. A lot of people that will vote Conservative this time around are not actually Conservative. The NDP could have picked up a lot of those and perhaps became the Opposition again to a Cons minority government but they became a clown show under this agreement and will be lucky to get a dozen seats.
Davey, it may well be that many of those voters are not Conservative but it seems to me that many of them may qualify as conservative. Please note the capitalization/non-capitalization of the letter "c." My point is that many folks are looking for someone to represent them and are actually interested in preserving the "ethic" of working hard and achieving something in life without tearing down things (e.g. the NDP "cultural" approach) and it seems to me that that is what PP is trying to offer.
Of course, the next question for any sentient voter is whether he is sincere in that offering and the polls seem to indicate that a growing number of people do find the offer sufficiently sincere. It will be interesting to watch the next few months.
I think the NDP is toast. I agree that they'll do what they should have done from day 1 which is support the government quietly hoping an election never happens.
I'm starting to wonder if the NDP as a concept is dead...or is it the Liberal party? I think we're a lot closer to a 2 party system( with the idiot separatists who should never, ever have been allowed to be a federal party. The rule should require federal parties to run candidates in at least 6 provinces and 2 territories)
I would like to see Quebec vote to separate through a legitimate referendum and fail to follow through so the bluff can finally be called and the country can move on.
David, I think that the LPC will ultimately recover (damn!!!!), just as they have previously recovered. The reason is that the true goal of the LPC is power; they simply use ideology as a means to power and are historically quite willing to bargain that ideology.
As for the NDP, the concept right from Day One was the unification of light (usually) socialism and organized labor. That partnership is terrifically strained currently so you might be correct; the Liberal party in the UK comes to mind. Not dead, but may as well be. As always, time will tell.
I think 4 years of "No plan PP" will make people miss Trudeau; useless as he is. 50-60 seats max for the LPC next year is my guess. And I say that as I'm going to take a barf bag and vote Liberal because I think PP will easily exceed Trudeau as the worst PM in history. I used to be an optimist. All I see in our future is increasing pain from ineffective, denialist leaders ( see Rustad in BC comments on climate change) who are more concerned about staying in power than giving the voters the true picture of what is going on. Responsible government as a concept is dead...in the name of shareholder value. The next generations will deservedly all spit on our graves. We've betrayed them.
Singh's latest offering demonstrates the unserious and incestuous state of Canafisn politicians. It means nothing, has no impact on anything, yet is the hottest mews in Canada. Canadian media, desperate to find something, anything, to report, seize on it like it's earth shattering news. In the way they report Trudeau's pronouncements about Ukraine, Venezuela or Israel. No one outside of Canada cares. We're self-important stooges, pretending that Canadian politics actually matter, outside of Party groupies.
I get the media, it's their job to report on what should be meaningfully news, but Canadian politics demean the profession.
Matt Gurney, it is awfully decent of you to talk about these two miserable shysters - we know who they are - in the manner you do in this article. I wish a three-hundred years long purgatory on both of them.
To paraphrase, Rick the Third, "A vision, A vision, my vote for a vision"
I fear we once again find ourselves, without a party or it's leader that can articulate a vision for what they want to accomplish for Canadians. What type of Canada do they wish enlist our support to manifest. Contrary to Canada being broken, it is our political chattering class and our party system that is ... well ... phücked.
The party system creates and feeds the vote against movement. Leaders are voted in by rabid club members who then in turn must figure out how to mute their club's fraternal code to attract the non-believers. Sometimes they get lucky with their opposition creating the shift towards them. As for Poilievre, he is the poster boy for opportunism. The master of sloganeering, is the beneficiary of Trudeau's inability to execute. As the line editors once said, it remains to be seen whether Poilievre can get out of the way of his own worst impulses. "Sell Out Singh" would tend to indicate he is still prone to grade school name calling.
Does it excuse Singh's actions, no. He dealt it; he plays it. As Matt so eloquently argues, the stark criticisms coupled with the SACO just did not wash.
So after rambling through the 100 acre wood, where does this bring me. Back to my vote for a vision. There is not one of these leaders that can convince me they have a vision. The Singh thing is the symptom of a system that promotes dogmatic dexterity over the creation of inspired pragmatism. Let's figure out what type of nation we want to build and then get about the coordinated hard work of doing what we can afford.
Lastly, how do you plan to vote, for or against? If it is simply to oust Trudeau you are voting against. As for me I have no idea what I will do. Except continue my abiding faith in the existence of fairies as explained in great detail to me by my granddaughter.
"the symptom of a system that promotes dogmatic dexterity over the creation of inspired pragmatism" this will be inscribed on the tombstone of Canadian Politics....someday??
The first half of the Hot Dog Sketch .... such an appropriate parallel to what Singh has put himself through for 2 1/2 years and for what ... Nothing. Singh was never elected and must be held equally accountable for all the bad government policies as Trudeau during the Trudeau/Singh coalition agreement. 2 poor leaders does not equal 1 good leader. Time for democracy to work bring on an election Canadian voters can decide.
I was hanging out with some longtime NDP friends the other day. One argued that the deal was problematic from the beginning as being negotiated behind closed doors and then publicly declared as a fait accompli, as opposed to Singh consulting and negotiating with the NDP rank-and-file in the process.
However politically problematic the deal was, in my own opinion it's quite politically unhelpful the way in which Singh described *why* it needed to end. Rather than leading on policy and picking a point of policy distinction between the NDP and the Liberals, he's looking like he changed his mind just because the polls are bad. Singh can now be seen as having given credit to Poilievre (obliged the latter's demand), yet he will still be in the embarrassing spotlight of propping up the government in the next confidence vote.
Mr. Gurney describes Jagmeet Singh as "half pregnant". I checked with the local neonatal unit regarding how Mr. Singh became "half pregnant". The most succinct description was, " Mr. Singh most likely screwed himself".
Singh has been a dreadful leader. The deal he made with the Liberals, along with his snipping at them, made him look ridiculous. I really don't understand what the 'strategy' was behind this deal except maybe to get their election debt behind them.
And to qualify for his pension, perchance?
On top of being half pregnant and miserable, this looks like Singh completely caved to Poilievre’s bullying, which is not a good look. Perhaps not true, but perception being everything, he’s got to dig out of that as well.
Leslie, it is a standard move for any opposition party to criticize the government and demand that they resign. In this instance, any call for the government to make such a move had the impediment of the dippers supporting the government. On that basis alone, it was a reasonable call by PP for the dippers to cut ties with the government and, therefore, was not at bullying.
Ken, the bullying is not that Poilievre called for the NDP to cancel the agreement. That is expected. It is the bombastic, mean, petty, name-calling way that he approaches any criticism that makes it bullying, and makes Polievre a bully.
At least Polievre didn't publically call out a group as "women-haters, racists and science-deniers". A bully lurks beneath the Sunny Ways.
Leslie, thank you for your clarification which I accept up until application of the term to PP unless you similarly apply it to JT and his acolytes who are uniformly, shall we say, scornful of PP or anyone who disagrees with them. In fact, JT and his sunshine crew habitually try to link PP and the Conservatives to a certain orange haired individual who lives in Florida/New York/Washington, etc. If that is not bullying then I am at a loss. In other words, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, "Bullying is as bullying does."
It was a check mate move by Poilievre
Leslie .... WOW. Where have you been the last 10 or so years ? Or is the shithole into which Trudeau AND Singh pushed Canada ..... just a perception ?
It's a little funny to reflect that the past several years of Canadian politics have been shaped by a couple of leaders and parties who've been operating under a Cargo Cult perception of past glories.
Trudeau and the Liberals have been guided by (and benefited from) a lot of nostalgia for the Pierre Trudeau era: a big government, big spending party that had big ambitions. They've adopted a lot of the forms of the Pierre Trudeau era - they've expanded the size of government, spent a lot of money, and certainly talked big - but have been bumbling incompetents at actual execution.
Singh and the NDP have been guided by their own version of a golden era from the '70s: the period when Liberal minorities were propped up by the NDP, yielding a lot of those same big, ambitious government initiatives. The perceived success of that period is something Jack Layton tried to replicate during the Martin minority government, and I suspect it's what drove Singh to agree to the CASA. Again, though, Singh followed the forms but botched the execution.
It all reminds me of the Cargo Cult mentality described in Richard Feynman's famous essay: the Liberals and the NDP both looked to the '70s and aspired to replicate what they saw as their golden age. However, they didn't have the skills or knowledge to actually achieve it. They also lacked the insight and perspective to look at that era critically so that they'd understand why it ended and where those approaches ultimately failed.
If an early election drops, two really really bad things will happen:
1) The On-line Harms Bill will die on the order paper, likely never to be resuscitated even if the Libs eventually regain power this decade, as they eventually will, being the Natural Governing Party and all.
2) The NDP will be wiped out as an electoral force. This will mean all those leftist voters will have to vote Liberal, dragging it further to the left but also making Liberal majorities much more likely, perhaps forever. (If the Tories get 40% of those who vote and the Libs get 50% with NDP + Green + Bloc getting 10%, that looks like a recipe for permanent majority. When did Tories last poll as high as 40%? The route to a Tory majority is splitting the left vote or convincing most of them to stay home out of futility.)
I hope it's obvious that my citing 1) as a "bad" thing is purely tongue-in-cheek. I would be thrilled in fact. But 2) does scare me.
I would be more than happy to see the Online Harms Bill die a quick, painful, and permanent death.
First thing that came to mind when thinking about an early election was killing that Online Harms legislation. What a dangerous piece that is if you dig into it (The Line has in the past!). If an early election does come I think we should at least toast a drink to Jagmeet for helping us dodge that massive (I can not understate that) bullet JT wants to unload on us.
It is not a bullet. It is a vicious dictatorial malignant shitload. In true bolshevik-stalinist-maoist, and now canadian "Liberal Trudeauist" tradition.
My Lord, Susan, the On Line Harms bill is so incredibly awful that there is no way that a sentient individual (obviously, that does not describe Government members) could vote for it. Oh, have I insulted you? If so, I apologize, but, truly, I humbly request that you work towards sentient and away from senescence.
I’m sorry for not making myself clear that I was being sarcastic. “Tongue-in-cheek” was not sufficient, I guess. I should have just said I will be rejoicing naked in the streets if the Bill dies with Parliamentary dissolution, because there is little hope that it can be defeated otherwise if a determined government gets behind it.
I like a rather strong NDP, but this isn’t it 😂
What do you mean by "wiped out as an electoral force"? The NDP are in a bad position right now, but not quite as bad as they were in some elections of the 1990s.
There's a case to be made that they're actually in a worse position than they were in the '90s. The NDP has long struggled with an awkward coalition between organized labour and progressive urban voters. However, it's increasingly looking like they're losing that labour vote to the Conservatives because of a better cultural alignment, and the Liberals have been peeling off the progressive urban voters. A bit like Singh's attempt to both support the Liberals and criticize them, the NDP's attempt to be all things to the starkly disparate groups in their coalition may have left them with nothing in the end.
I mean reduced to a number of seats such that they can't make a difference as to who forms the government in Parliament. That number depends on the relative strengths of the Libs and Conservatives. See, the danger is that the next election produces a result where the Conservatives have more seats than anyone else but less than a majority. The Liberals could claim to the Governor-General (who owes her job to the PM, remember) that Libs plus NDP > Conservatives and so they would be able to gain the confidence of the House and pass a budget, while the Conservatives would not be able to reliably ally with any other party -- the Bloc? you kidding me? -- and so could not govern. This could keep the Libs in power until the NDP abandoned them, again. This happened once before, the King-Byng affair, with King being the PM and Lord Byng the G-G.
The only way to avoid this is for the NDP to have so few seats that theirs plus what's left of the Liberals can't outvote the Conservatives. Practically this requires a broad-based majority Tory government, and practically *that* requires a big Tory breakthrough in the Toronto area, the only part of the country that really matters electorally. (Everywhere else is either solid Lib or solid Tory, or too small to matter, like Atlantic Canada.) Personally I doubt that will happen and I predict another Liberal plus NDP pseudo-coalition.
Edit: The Tory strategy also depends on the collapse of the Bloc. Quebec typically votes for the winner so as to get more pork and support for separatism from Ottawa.
They don't otherwise care who governs. If the Tories look like they might win nationally, Quebeckers will vote in the most obscure Tory MPs imaginable just to have them on the government benches. When the Libs look likely to win anyway they can have fun voting Bloc just to annoy the rest of Canada.
You will be surprised how many so called NDP type "working men and women", will be voting Conservative in the next election. This happened in the 1993 federal election with a healthy chunk of so called NDP type, "working men and women", actually voted Reform.
The private sector unions actually want to work vs. the public sector unions and environmental lobby which increasing want to reduce work for others. The NDP needs to decide where its loyalties lie.
And the issue that the NDP is having with the private sector unions is that their policies are hostile to their jobs. Why vote NDP when they want to eliminate their usually good paying blue collar jobs? Most private sector unionized people I know are not in the NDP camp. Then there is a huge chunk of 'ordinary working Canadians' that are not unionized. The NDP will retain the public sector unions, the enviro-loonies, and the urban dwellers - the latte sipping crowd. Ordinary 'working people' - unionized or not - have had their lives made harder by Singh propping up Jr. and the ones I hear from are not happy with it.
The NDP loyalties the last 10-15 years lie with the NDP functionaries, nowhere else.
I was a member of the NDP and I voted reform , too.
I forgot to add that as a westerner, I agreed with the slogan ‘The West Wants In’. I was not the only NDP member who voted reform for that reason. Far from it.
I can’t disagree with that.
When this was first announced I really hoped it would be a Lib / NDP partnership, really disappointed in how it turned out. Singh isn't a bad guy, but it's very clear that he just doesn't have the political chops required. I don't think the NDP is over Jack Layton's death yet (know I'm not).
They should have kept Mulcair.
For my money, the NDP should be just strong enough to keep the Liberals from getting a majority, but not strong enough ever to have a chance at governing. They also need to have enough policy differences with the Liberals (much harder these days) so that they can't form stable alliances that result in Liberal minorities governing as if they had a majority.
Someone as unprincipled as Singh cannot possibly "isn't a bad guy".
In his defense, it's entirely possible that Trudeau never offered the NDP a seat at the table in a coalition government.
The Liberals may well have concluded they could stick handle through Parliament knowing they would only need one party's support for each bill, so why give up cabinet positions to the NDP? Especially knowing the NDP literally couldn't afford another snap election.
So Singh took an action they made it look like they were driving some policy. It may have played well enough for his base, as he easily won a leadership review vote.
He could have pushed harder. At some point, Trudeau would have to chose between working with the BQ and the NDP. The optics of the former aren’t great. Singh will go down as one of the worst NDP leaders.
I doubt that Singh or any real member of his party would have been enough of a JT adulator to be eligible for a Liberal Cabinet. So I agree with you 100%
Singh’s negotiations with Trudeau reminds me of The Simpsons:
Bart (JT): “Dad, I'll trade you this delicious doorstop for your crummy old Danish.”
Homer (JS): “Done and done!”
Letting a member of the opposition into Cabinet is done only in wartime coalitions or other national emergency. Political as well as national secrets are discussed at Cabinet meetings. No way would a PM give a Cabinet post to an NDP MP.
Even candidate Kamala Harris has offered a Cabinet post to Republicans. And the inference that members of other parties are potential traitors because they can’t be trusted in wartime is a bit strong to say the least.
My bad I forgot that the US is a constitutional republic with separation of legislative executive and judiciary as opposed to Canadas constitutional monarchy with concentration of legislative and executive powers in one body (ignoring the formality of the governor general’s role). And sorry for misreading your post although it seems to me that these days accusations of treason seem to be a lot more common among committed political party members than they used to be.
1) The U.S. system is different. Cabinet Secretaries can *not* be members of Congress. The Executive is separate (separation of powers). Westminster Cabinet members must be MPs or Senators. Let's see if she actually does appoint any Republican cabinet secretaries. And merely "being" a Republican (say, registered as one) is not the same as being elected as a Republican. She can say anything she likes as a candidate. The only thing you can trust would be if she said all her cabinet secretaries will be black women.
2) I said Opposition MPs are put into Cabinet during wartime coalitions., the opposite to what you said I said. This is mostly done to avoid the need for elections during a crisis, not out of some ecumenical spirit of bonhomie. Presumably you can trust them in wartime but you can't trust them politically at any other time.
Canadian Cabinet Ministers DO NOT have to be MPs or Senators.
John Turner was a private, unelected citizen for his entire (short) term as Prime Minister.
When was he MP for Vancouver-Quaadra? Or did he just stand for election there unsuccessfully in order to be legitimately PM? He was Justice Minister in Pierre Trudeau’s Cabinet. He must have been an MP somewhere along the way.
The principle of responsible government is that the Cabinet is drawn from Parliament. If an outsider with exceptional talents is named to Cabinet, the Government has to get him elected somehow, usually by telling an MP in a safe seat to step aside (probably rewarded with a Senate or ambassador job) and getting the guy elected in a by-election if a general election is not imminent.
Edit: Justin Trudeau just did this number on Mark Carney, if gossip is true. Carney apparently wanted to come into government as Finance Minister, which, had Trudeau accepted, would have obligated him to find Carney a safe seat somewhere. Instead, Trudeau apparently told him, “Sure. If you want a career in politics you can get yourself nominated to run as Liberal in a riding of your choice. Then if you get elected I will consider offering you a Cabinet post, not necessarily the one you want. Remember you’re a man, though, and my Cabinet has to be gender-balanced.” Carney apparently said No thanks.
Turner was an MP and Minister in Trudeau's administration in the 1960s and 70s. He resigned in 1975 and went into private life.
When Trudeau resigned in 1984, Turner ran for, and won the Liberal leadership. He was still a private citizen. He was elected as an MP again in the 1984 election that massively brought Mulroney to power.
Letting other parties into Cabinet is common practice in other Westminster democracies. But with respect to the internal culture of the Liberal Party, I totally agree. The Liberals are keenly aware that what makes the NDP seem unelectable and more fringe is the fact that they have never been able to put even a single Minister in government. I think that the NDP will win an election outright before the Liberals ever accept that precedent.
I’m genuinely curious about this, as it doesn’t sound very “Westminstarian” to have MPs from other parties in Cabinet. Can you name an example? (I couldn’t find any on Google but I might not have asked intelligently.) In coalitions, yes, but then the minor party partner is actually part of the government, not the Loyal Opposition. European “Parliaments”, which aren’t the Westminster model, never have majorities because of proportional representation so are always brokering coalitions. You’ll have executive councils, or whatever they call their cabinets, with several parties in them.
Thanks!
I think any government with Cabinet Ministers from more than one party would qualify as a 'coalition'. As for Westminster examples of that: most recently, after the UK 2010 election, a coalition was formed by the Conservatives (who won the most seats but fell short of a majority) and the Liberal Democrats. The latter had several seats in Cabinet and the Liberal Democrat leader was Deputy PM. There are several other instances of coalition governments in British history that I'm aware of including the National Government (Conservative/Labour) in the early 1930s and the Liberal-Conservative coalition that was formed during WW1 but continued for several years after the war ended. That's the kind of deal the NDP was aiming for when they tried to strike the deal with Dion after the 2008 election in Canada.
Yes, I understand that coalition governments will have MPs in cabinet from all the parties who are partners in the coalition. Of course. What I thought -- perhaps incorrectly -- the OP was saying was that a PM has appointed opposition MPs to Cabinet in less formal arrangements like a confidence and supply or merely the usual ad hoc support of a minority government by a shifting alignment of various small parties depending on the issue. Perhaps the very definition of a coalition is when the Prime Minister agrees to name MPs from any of the other parties to Cabinet...or *becomes* Prime Minister by succeeding in brokering such a coalition with a kingmaker party, as the NDP attempted in 2008. The important thing is that the MPs in Cabinet would be legally bound by Cabinet secrecy and could not divulge what was discussed there to their backbench MPs to plan strategy for an upcoming election against the government.
Long time subscriber and evangelist of The Line, first-time commenter…
The NDP is culturally a utopian party, so it has a policy agenda that is infinite. The NDP was impelled to enter into CASA because it offered an opportunity to advance its agenda. The nature of CASA, unavoidably, is that it is a limited commitment, temporally and otherwise. The NDP made a limited commitment with an unlimited rationale.
For the NDP, there could be no natural or logical limit to its adherence to CASA. That is because the commitment allows for progress on the NDP agenda, which is utopian and thus infinite. There could be no point where it made sense for the NDP to abandon CASA, once it had entered into it. The only plausible natural death for CASA was for the Liberals, a pragmatic party in its marrow, to abandon it for pragmatic reasons. So the NDP has inflicted an unnatural death on CASA and is defending itself behind improvised barricades made of non sequiturs.
(For an alternative take, consider this. CASA was a concrete route to an abstract goal, a gravity-plagued project to attain weightlessness. The Tower of Babel, in other words, masons striving to transcend masonry by means of … masonry. The inescapable result: a confusion of tongues, the product of an underlying and inescapable incoherence. See: every word Singh has uttered since 2022. Now back to our previous take, still in progress.)
For the Liberals, CASA was a dilemma, and they have been impaled on its horns. But for the NDP it was not a dilemma, it was a paradox. A paradox has only one horn.
The NDP are impaled on the horn of a unicorn.
That's my take. You're welcome.
Imagine the position Singh would be in today if he had come out of the election swinging on behalf of ordinary working people and their needs, instead of the liberals and the sillier progressive talking points. He could have prevented The Conservative poaching of their territory while keeping the Liberals feet to the fire.
Oh without question. A lot of people that will vote Conservative this time around are not actually Conservative. The NDP could have picked up a lot of those and perhaps became the Opposition again to a Cons minority government but they became a clown show under this agreement and will be lucky to get a dozen seats.
Davey, it may well be that many of those voters are not Conservative but it seems to me that many of them may qualify as conservative. Please note the capitalization/non-capitalization of the letter "c." My point is that many folks are looking for someone to represent them and are actually interested in preserving the "ethic" of working hard and achieving something in life without tearing down things (e.g. the NDP "cultural" approach) and it seems to me that that is what PP is trying to offer.
Of course, the next question for any sentient voter is whether he is sincere in that offering and the polls seem to indicate that a growing number of people do find the offer sufficiently sincere. It will be interesting to watch the next few months.
Ding a ling Singh is free at last!
I think the NDP is toast. I agree that they'll do what they should have done from day 1 which is support the government quietly hoping an election never happens.
I'm starting to wonder if the NDP as a concept is dead...or is it the Liberal party? I think we're a lot closer to a 2 party system( with the idiot separatists who should never, ever have been allowed to be a federal party. The rule should require federal parties to run candidates in at least 6 provinces and 2 territories)
Would love for the Bloc to run here in BC. I would vote for them to have Quebec separate :-D
I would like to see Quebec vote to separate through a legitimate referendum and fail to follow through so the bluff can finally be called and the country can move on.
The problem is the hardcore separatists have an insufficient relationship to reality for that to slow them down.
David, I think that the LPC will ultimately recover (damn!!!!), just as they have previously recovered. The reason is that the true goal of the LPC is power; they simply use ideology as a means to power and are historically quite willing to bargain that ideology.
As for the NDP, the concept right from Day One was the unification of light (usually) socialism and organized labor. That partnership is terrifically strained currently so you might be correct; the Liberal party in the UK comes to mind. Not dead, but may as well be. As always, time will tell.
I think 4 years of "No plan PP" will make people miss Trudeau; useless as he is. 50-60 seats max for the LPC next year is my guess. And I say that as I'm going to take a barf bag and vote Liberal because I think PP will easily exceed Trudeau as the worst PM in history. I used to be an optimist. All I see in our future is increasing pain from ineffective, denialist leaders ( see Rustad in BC comments on climate change) who are more concerned about staying in power than giving the voters the true picture of what is going on. Responsible government as a concept is dead...in the name of shareholder value. The next generations will deservedly all spit on our graves. We've betrayed them.
Singh's latest offering demonstrates the unserious and incestuous state of Canafisn politicians. It means nothing, has no impact on anything, yet is the hottest mews in Canada. Canadian media, desperate to find something, anything, to report, seize on it like it's earth shattering news. In the way they report Trudeau's pronouncements about Ukraine, Venezuela or Israel. No one outside of Canada cares. We're self-important stooges, pretending that Canadian politics actually matter, outside of Party groupies.
I get the media, it's their job to report on what should be meaningfully news, but Canadian politics demean the profession.
Matt Gurney, it is awfully decent of you to talk about these two miserable shysters - we know who they are - in the manner you do in this article. I wish a three-hundred years long purgatory on both of them.
To paraphrase, Rick the Third, "A vision, A vision, my vote for a vision"
I fear we once again find ourselves, without a party or it's leader that can articulate a vision for what they want to accomplish for Canadians. What type of Canada do they wish enlist our support to manifest. Contrary to Canada being broken, it is our political chattering class and our party system that is ... well ... phücked.
The party system creates and feeds the vote against movement. Leaders are voted in by rabid club members who then in turn must figure out how to mute their club's fraternal code to attract the non-believers. Sometimes they get lucky with their opposition creating the shift towards them. As for Poilievre, he is the poster boy for opportunism. The master of sloganeering, is the beneficiary of Trudeau's inability to execute. As the line editors once said, it remains to be seen whether Poilievre can get out of the way of his own worst impulses. "Sell Out Singh" would tend to indicate he is still prone to grade school name calling.
Does it excuse Singh's actions, no. He dealt it; he plays it. As Matt so eloquently argues, the stark criticisms coupled with the SACO just did not wash.
So after rambling through the 100 acre wood, where does this bring me. Back to my vote for a vision. There is not one of these leaders that can convince me they have a vision. The Singh thing is the symptom of a system that promotes dogmatic dexterity over the creation of inspired pragmatism. Let's figure out what type of nation we want to build and then get about the coordinated hard work of doing what we can afford.
Lastly, how do you plan to vote, for or against? If it is simply to oust Trudeau you are voting against. As for me I have no idea what I will do. Except continue my abiding faith in the existence of fairies as explained in great detail to me by my granddaughter.
"the symptom of a system that promotes dogmatic dexterity over the creation of inspired pragmatism" this will be inscribed on the tombstone of Canadian Politics....someday??
Oh Matt and Jen, sorry for the length of the comment. I am not auditioning, just a few years of comments stored up ...
The first half of the Hot Dog Sketch .... such an appropriate parallel to what Singh has put himself through for 2 1/2 years and for what ... Nothing. Singh was never elected and must be held equally accountable for all the bad government policies as Trudeau during the Trudeau/Singh coalition agreement. 2 poor leaders does not equal 1 good leader. Time for democracy to work bring on an election Canadian voters can decide.