There was likely no New Democrat more relieved to learn that federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh had ripped up his deal with Justin Trudeau than Saskatchewan’s NDP Leader Carla Beck.
Beck is in a tough election fight this fall, trying to break the hold on power that the conservative Saskatchewan Party has held on that province since 2007.
The Saskatchewan Party has loudly and frequently been trying to connect Beck with the country’s most unpopular politician, Justin Trudeau, through references to the Singh-Trudeau deal. Now, Beck — and New Democrats across the country — can put some distance between themselves and the federal Liberals.
“It’s about time,” she told reporters Wednesday afternoon in Regina, and then went on to slam the Trudeau government in Ottawa as “a government that has failed to deliver results for Saskatchewan, be that on the cost of living, health care or the growing economy crisis during such a pivotal moment.”
Alberta New Democrats had become so frustrated with the Trudeau millstone around the federal New Democrat neck that the idea of breaking their formal association with the federal NDP was raised in the last Alberta NDP leadership race by its winner Naheed Nenshi and others.
In B.C., opponents of NDP Premier David Eby had been trying to link Trudeau with the BC NDP via the Singh deal.
And in the last Manitoba election, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives had billboards featuring Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew, Singh, and Trudeau.
All those Western New Democrats are now free of that association with Trudeau — along with the federal party.
Certainly, breaking the supply-and-confidence agreement does increase the possibility of an election before the fixed election date of Oct. 20, 2025, but an early election is not the federal NDP’s top priority — especially since New Democrats nationwide will be focused this fall on re-electing Eby in B,C, and trying to help Beck become the first NDP premier in Saskatchewan in nearly 20 years.
New Democrats in those provinces will not want to lose the finances, resources, and volunteers they need to a federal fight, where the best Singh’s New Democrats could realistically hope for is moving from the fourth party in the House of Commons to the third party in the House.
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Indeed, Gord Johns, the NDP MP who has represented the B.C. riding of Courtenay—Alberni since 2008, said just that in a social media post he published late Wednesday.
“My constituents have given me plenty to work on including infrastructure investment, ship breaking regulations, First Nations reconciliation, youth mental health community funding,” Johns wrote. “My work isn’t done and forcing a third election in five years isn’t very high on my list.”
And so, this minority Parliament, like all minority parliaments, will have to operate on a case-by-case, clause-by-clause basis in which the government must negotiate for support from one of the three opposition parties.
“The one thing for sure is that Trudeau can’t just count on NDP support now anymore. He has to earn it every time,” said George Soule, a principal at the consultancy Syntax Strategic, who spent several years as a top NDP aide on Parliament Hill when the late Jack Layton was negotiating whether to provide NDP support to the minority governments of Paul Martin and Stephen Harper.
“So if the Liberals want to earn [Singh’s] support back, they can do that. And I’m sure that then he will respond in kind. But if the Liberals refuse and just assume that because the NDP shouldn’t go to an election now that he won’t, I think that’s a bet poorly made.”
And just as it gives New Democrats some freedom to position themselves more aggressively versus the Conservatives or the Liberals, it also gives the Liberals some freedom they might need to re-position themselves on the political spectrum.
“This is an opportunity for the Liberals to distinguish themselves from the NDP,” said Marci Surkes, who is now chief strategy officer at CompassRose Group. Before joining that consultancy, she worked in Trudeau’s PMO as the director of cabinet and policy. She was in the PMO when the Liberal-NDP deal was being negotiated.
“Liberals have traditionally hewed to the centre and found great electoral success, [but] there has been a perceived drift among Liberal supporters to the so-called left of the political spectrum,” Surkes said.
The collapse of the deal lets the Liberals do whatever they want to do to proceed between now and the election, she continued.
“They can either stay there if they believe there’s more currency for them on the left … or they can actually try to move back to the centre and try to appeal to the sort of centre-right voter, the sort of softer Tory voter, the more traditional blue-Liberal voter, and say, ‘We’ve actually come back home to the centre and here’s your home.’”
Surkes said she was not surprised to see the two-and-a-half-year deal come to an end. While it was in place, it worked well for both parties but, in her view, the political landscape has shifted and the NDP is reacting to those shifts.
“I think it’s a series of issues, not to mention the fact that the Liberals’ polling has consistently been weaker than the government would like it to be,” Surkes said.
“The NDP doesn’t necessarily want to be tied to a weaker government, either. That’s not in their best interest. And they see opportunity in the Liberals’ weakness. Clearly, they’re on the hunt for a win in the [Montreal] by-election. They’re on a hunt for a strong placement in the federal election. And so now is the time to start creating a contrast, be able to stand up and say, ‘We’re going to stick it to Trudeau every day in the House on behalf of Canadians.’”
David Akin is chief political correspondent for Global News.
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