At Issue - Will axing the Liberal deal help the NDP?

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

At Issue this week: Jagmeet Singh defends his decision to end the supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals, but will it help the NDP in the polls? Plus, a look ahead to the Liberal caucus retreat and byelections in Winnipeg and Montreal. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton, this week on At Issue,

the podcast edition for Thursday, September 5th. Jagmeet Singh defends his decision to end his deal with the Liberals, but won't commit to bringing down the government. In terms of any motion moving forward, we're going to look at that motion before we decide. We're not going to presuppose an outcome of that. But we have torn up, I have ripped up the agreement with Justin Trudeau. And I know that means that an election has now become more likely. We are ready to fight an election whenever that happens.

So this week, we're asking what's to be made of Singh's decision to end the deal. Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus what can we expect out of Liberal caucus next week? Althea, let's start with you tonight. What did you make of some of the explanation or attempt at explaining that Singh gave today behind his decision to end this deal? Well, he made it clear that he ripped up the agreement. He may have said that like 25 times. It was 100 times, actually. We counted. Look, he has to navigate a really tricky road. He probably wants to ensure that there is no repeat of 2005 where a lot of new Democrats

are still upset that the NDP voted against stuff that Paul Martin had like the Kelowna Accord and ushered in a decade of Stephen Harper's rule. And so he doesn't want to go on some money bills that might include things that actually the NDP fought for in the spring. And there is still a drive, if you listen to some New Democrats, that they actually think they can push the Liberals further on things like pharmacare by being out of the agreement than being in the agreement. But the tricky part is when there is a pure non-confidence vote, how will the NDP vote? I don't see the NDP bringing forward a motion in the next few weeks or even a few months. But the bloc is on the record voting against the government. The Conservatives will probably use that as their

opposition day. Where does that leave the NDP? And that is where the election timing, I think, lies. But as far as, you know, this weird rock hard place thing, he's going to be dancing that dance for the next few weeks and months. Well, and that's why I don't know if my expectations were too high, Andrew, but I thought that the framing or the explaining would be, I don't know, better, more complex than it was, to say the least. Well, let's just be clear about what he's just announced. When he says, I've ripped up the agreement, what he's basically saying is, I've reneged on the agreement. I have gone back on my word, which was to support the government until June 2025. My signature is not worth anything. In politics, apparently, you can brag about that. In most walks of life, that would be viewed,

I think, somewhat askance. But look, the agreement was essentially designed to buy them some time, to keep the wolves away from them, asking them, why are you supporting this government, or will you bring them down? It always came at the cost that they would be seen as being too close to the government that the government would take credit for whatever they allegedly induced them to do both of those things that happened like mostly the liberals have done things they would have done anyway to the extent that they've done anything further they're going to get more of the credit than the ngp has so it was always a mixed bag for them and it will be a mixed bag now that he has ripped up the agreement, which is to say nothing has really changed for them.

People are going to come back to them now because they're the only ones, as Althea just said, they're the only ones who really are nervous about wanting to go into an election. And let's be clear, not just nervous. They don't have the money. They've only got 58 candidates nominated. They're not ready to have an election anytime soon. So they're going to be going back into the pre-deal arrangement, which is every time there's a vote, every time there's a confidence vote, and there will be confidence votes coming

up, they're going to have to ham and haw and stare at their feet and say, well, actually, we're going to support the government despite everything we've said about them. Chantal. There was a time in Stephen Harper's minority parliament when the liberals kept MPs out of the House to make sure that the government didn't get

defeated on a confidence issue. These things have happened. Humiliation comes in many forms for political leaders in minority parliament. And I've watched an opposition leader way back in Bill Davis' time vote against his own motion to ensure the survival of the government. So anything can happen. I think what we saw today is a narrative that lacks a rationale, a hook, you would call

it, if you were writing a news story, i.e., I ripped the agreement, okay, but why today? Why not in June? What's the hook that justifies this? And it was opaque even to someone like Thomas Mulcair, who used to lead the party, and said, well, you know, corporate greed was never, or stopping it, was never part of the agreement. So that can't be a rationale for saying we're walking away from it. Luckily, possibly for Mr. Singh, there is another party that also holds the balance of power in Parliament, and that is the Bloc Québécois. And when he was asked on Radio-Canada a straight question, how would you vote if there's a non-confidence motion that basically

says we have lost confidence in the government, would you vote for it if the Conservatives go that route? And Yves-François Blanchet said, well, I'm not paid to dance to Mr. Poilier's tune, so just out of thin air, suddenly I'll vote non-confidence? Not going to happen. And that will save probably the NDP a few times. Yeah, there will have to be something that will motivate the bloc as well. It can't just be, as you say, because Pierre Poiliev says jump. But let's talk about whether, you know, there's

anything good for the NDP here. We've talked about sort of the challenging parts of explaining this and what they, but is there any real benefit to this in the immediate, Althea? Actually, I do think so. I mean, it's a difficult dance to explain to people because really the calculation is just crass partisan politics. And nobody wants to hear that. But that's the truth. But they need to uncouple themselves from the liberals. The conservatives have been really good at branding the NDP as being in bed with the liberals. We hear over and over again the NDP liberal coalition, the NDP as being in bed with the Liberals. We hear over and over again the NDP-Liberal coalition,

the NDP-Liberal government. And in order to distinguish themselves, they had to make this move. They were being written off as an option for change, and this is gearing up to be a change election. 86% of the country, according to Abacus data, says that they want change. And a lot of people are parking their vote at the moment, or at least with pollsters, with the conservatives because they

just want change, not because of some dear love-in with Pierre Poliev. So Jagmeet Singh needs to capture those voters, and this is the way to do that. The other thing is it doesn't hurt that they're doing this in the lead-up to two by-elections, especially the one in Manitoba, where distinguishing themselves from the Liberals is a good thing. Andrew? There's two things that are potentially positive for him. One is he's got trouble within his own party on this. He's come under increasing pressure from people who are really uncomfortable with this.

I'm not entirely sure why he's not under more pressure anyway, since, you know, everyone in the Liberal liberal party or lots of people in the liberal party want justin trudeau to go because they're in such terrible shape the ndp is not in great shape either uh so he you know he's in a tentative position and needs to to shore that up the other thing is potentially there's some leverage because the liberal government is in a lot of trouble and may be willing to do some deals in the future the trouble for them is the liberals only need the support of either the Bloc or the NDP, or even conceivably, of course, the Conservatives,

and they can play them off against each other. It's a relatively strong minority government in that they only need the support of one of the parties. Or put another way, all three parties have to turn the key at the same time to bring the government down. So the leverage that any one of them has is attenuated by that, that the Liberals, if they don't get a deal from one of them has is attenuated by that, that the Liberals, if they don't get a deal from one of them, can go to the others. Chantal. Yes. We mentioned the last time the NDP brought down a friendly Liberal government,

the government of Paul Martin, despite the fact that it was actually the NDP back then with Jack Layton got to literally co-write a new federal budget. And still they voted down the Martin government and assured them 10 years of conservative rule. But what was different in the dynamics back then was the Bloc Québécois absolutely had to vote non-confidence because the big issue was the sponsorship issue, the sponsorship scandal. There's no such thing now that is binding Yves-François Blanchet to doing away with the Liberals, for one. Two, anti-Trudeau feelings

don't run as high in Quebec as they do in the rest of the country, and the notion that Pierre Poilievre is a solution to fatigue is not really working out. So the Bloc has a lot more leeway to decide if it wants an election this fall or if it wants to do it alongside the budget than the NDP or even the Conservatives. Plus, I mean, the NDP has boots on the ground in provincial elections in B.C. and Saskatchewan. Those workers are busy getting governments reelected or defeated. Boats on the ground in provincial elections in BC and Saskatchewan, those workers are busy getting governments re-elected or defeated. They're not available until the end of October at best for the drug meeting. At issue, Liberal MPs are set to meet in British Columbia next week with bad polling, the end of their stable minority government

and the departure of their campaign chair will MPs call for a different direction? The Prime Minister says his focus is on Canadians. Look, we're focused on delivering for Canadians. A big announcement on school foods. We've got more work to do in creating $10 a day child care spaces across the country, moving forward on insulin, pharmacare. These are things that matter for Canadians. So what can we expect from that caucus retreat?

Will Trudeau be able to rally the troops here again to break that down? Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Althea, I know you broke the story about Jeremy Broadhurst, but I'm not going to let you go first because he went first last time. Andrew, what kind of atmosphere do you think Justin Trudeau is walking into at the beginning of next week with these really big changes in terms of the landscape of politics? Fevered, fearful, but also uncertain.

They've had a summer, the beginning of the summer after that by-election loss in Toronto St. Paul's, you saw the beginnings of something resembling a caucus revolt as small as it turned out to be. But people mostly said behind their hands and under cover of anonymity that the Prime Minister should go. I think one sitting MP actually said he should go. But it all fizzled out, partly because the Prime Minister refused to meet them and kept them sort of isolated and alone rather than meeting all in one bunch. And since then, there's been essentially no movement,

whatever, in the Prime Minister's office. There's been no announcement of any significant changes in policy other than going back on a couple of their worst policy debacles, at least political debacles. But no changes in personnel, no cabinet shuffle, nobody moving in the Prime Minister's office. So the message from the Prime Minister's office has been everything's fine, we don't need to make much in the way of changes. Whether that will mollify the caucus,

I don't know. But the problem they've got, which has not changed, is what's the alternative? You're close to an election. You don't really have anybody waiting in the wings who's an obvious alternative who can do better than the Prime Minister. You know, this is the consequence when you essentially turn the party into a culture personality in 2015, ran everything through the prime minister's office since then, marginalized or even kicked out, you know, prominent ministers. What have you got left? You don't really have anybody, any heir apparent or even a strong bench of potential candidates. And so many of them may feel as bad as the situation is, we might as well stick with him. I mean, it does feel, Chantal, like the strategy to just stay the course is actually the strategy. Like it's not that they haven't thought of other things.

It's that this is what they've decided on. Possibly, but their plan for caucus or to prepare for a quieter caucus meeting held until 1 p.m. yesterday when Mr. Singh issued this. I ripped up the agreement. Why? Because the message they'd been sending to caucus, one that they believed in apparently in the cabinet and in the PMO, was time is still on our side. We still have time to turn things around.

The agreement with the NDP is safe until it comes to its expiry date in June, and we are putting everything in motion to be election ready. None of these propositions are still valid. And the danger to the government is that, yes, sure, you can stay the course. It is possible that many Liberals, and some of them have talked to me saying, does this mean we are quote-unquote stuck with Trudeau in the next campaign for real? They may come to that conclusion, but they may also take the road to the exit that Mr. Broadhurst is taking, the campaign director, or even Pablo Rodriguez, the Quebec lieutenant, who is said to be days from announcing that he's going to be running to be the Quebec Liberal leader.

So people at some point, absent a plan that looks like it will save some of the furniture, will just walk with their feet. Plus, you're less than a year from an election, possibly now, you're losing your campaign director, you're losing your Quebec lieutenant. That sounds really ominous. Yeah, and there are other names and nothing that I've confirmed, so I won't repeat them, but I'm sure we've all heard other names of people that have interests in other jobs. And I certainly, Althea, after your story published, I heard from liberals who were like mildly freaked out because now you don't know when an election is going to be and you don't have the guy who is going to be and you don't

have the guy who's supposed to put everything in place um apparently those talks have been happening for a couple weeks so maybe there's someone waiting in the wings but but what do you make of what has to happen next week given all these things uh i hope that the prime minister's office um is going to give caucus an idea of who's going to replace Jeremy Broadhurst. This is the national campaign director who announced several weeks ago now that he was quitting. And the PMO has kind of been in a scramble trying to find who is going to replace him because he's the person in charge of what the platform is going to look like, the candidates, the writings they're targeting, the advertising. so you no longer have anybody doing that.

And from what I can tell from my calls and my research, they are not campaign ready at all. The difference this caucus meeting than last year's caucus meeting was last year's caucus meeting there was a lot of anger about a cabinet shuffle that many felt squeezed out of and they really wanted the government to change course and they felt like speaking out and telling either the Prime Minister he needed to go or that there were things that needed to change like the communications plan that I was going to lead to action this time we talked to MPs it's like they're resigned to like nothing happening. Very few people seem to plan to go to

the microphone and tell the Prime Minister he should go. This is not the same mood as last time. The Prime Minister has done, I think, phone calls with nearly every MP in caucus since the by-election loss in Toronto-St. Paul's. He has gone or phoned in to regional caucuses to hear that anger directly. But I'm told, like at Atlantic Caucus yesterday, the only person who did stand up was Wayne Long, who Andrew referenced, is the only MP who has publicly called on the prime minister to leave. And he is not running again. There is not that palpitation that he needs to be shown

the door because they're unsure now, the election timing, but also who would be best. And a lot of question marks around the war between Israel and Hamas, how that would play out in a potential leadership race and if it's going to fracture the party more. So there's a lot of nervous Nellies, but they are keeping their mouth shut. Yeah. Andrew? Just two points. One is the resignation of the national campaign director. I would be surprised if it did not have further reverberations. I can't think of a greater vote of no confidence in their prospects. This is a guy, you know, we're a year away. He's only a year into the job and suddenly discovers he wants to spend more time with his family. I don't think anybody's going to credit that kind of explanation.

So you're basically saying, I don't think we can win. So we'll see what the reverberations on that are. And maybe just to reinforce that point, when taking over the job or running for the job of Quebec liberal leader is viewed as a step up in your prospects, you know things are not very good. It's an entrepreneurial move, it's a courageous move for him, but it's not necessarily any

kind of sure thing, needless to say. Think about, consider this, for three weeks now, the Prime Minister's Quebec lieutenant has been giving scrums and making statements where he clearly says that he can't say that he's staying and he is still in his job. It is strange and it says something about the weak position of the Prime Minister that he doesn't even dare say, well, if you're out, just, you know, be out. They want him to stick around as Quebec lieutenant until after that by-election on the 16th. Apparently, though, he's not even that present in that by-election, too, from what I've heard on the ground. At issue two, key by-elections with two races in Montreal and Winnipeg being decided on September 16th.

The pressure is on both the Liberals and the NDP to hold their ridings. How risky are these by-elections? So what kind of pressure do the Liberals and the NDP face? How might these races affect the future of the parties? Let's bring everybody back. Chantal, Andrew and Althea. This will be a quick round. I'm sure we'll talk about it next week too. But how potentially disastrous is it, Chantal, for the Liberals to lose in Montreal and for the NDP to lose in Winnipeg?

Well, the Liberals it's easy. If you can't lose a seat in downtown Toronto and then lose a seat in downtown Montreal and not be sending the message that you will be lucky if you come out of the election in third or fourth place. These are core seats in areas that are ground zero of Liberal support. If you're the NDP, though, you cannot be telling Canadians, as Mr. Singh has this week, that you are the strongest option to block Pierre Poiliev and not hold your Winnipeg seat and be able to win at least a second Quebec seat. The test of his proposal happens on the 16th. If he can't hold his own seats and he can't make gains in Quebec, then he is not the strongest option to block Pierre Poilier.

Yeesh. Andrew. I'm not sure anybody thinks he is the strongest alternative to taking down the Liberals. But that is what he says. Yeah, I agree. sure anybody thinks he is the strongest to breaking taking down what he says yeah yeah i agree i i think it's more problematic for the liberals to lose the la salle verdon you know it's been i'm sorry to lose that seat after you know it's such a safe liberal seat not as safe as toronto st paul's but pretty safe um and certainly I haven't seen any polling, but the exterior signs are not good. The fact that Trudeau's picture is not on the lawn signs, the fact that they've had this foof-raw within the party over the parachuting in of a candidate,

the fact that these campaign staffers are refusing to work in protest over the Gauze situation, it doesn't give us a picture of a party that is serenely confident, shall we say, of its chances there. We'll see. So, yeah, if they lose there on top of Toronto St. Paul's, it will compound the picture of disarray and, you know, directionlessness of the party. Althea? Yeah, I would say I don't think the Liberals, well, I know the Liberals don't think that

they are going to be winning La Salle et Morts Verdun. I've spoken to different polling firms that have done work in that riding and both of them have another party. One has the NDP, the other has the bloc winning that riding. I don't know where the truth will lie on election night, but it's not the Liberals. So it's interesting that the wording that we heard coming out of the cabinet retreat was that,

oh, they felt very confident. They should have been saying they don't feel confident at all and they need to go work really hard to earn everybody's vote. With regards to Jagmeet Singh, I completely agree with Shantaz's analysis on that. I do think, however, that if the NDP pivots faster than the Liberals in times of defining Pierre Poiliev and being seen as taking the fight to Pierre Poiliev, a lot of progressives who have been itching for that from the Liberals for the past two years might look at Mr. Singh differently. And if we'll recall, like, Jack Layton did not become Jack Layton overnight. He spent many years being ridiculed by lots of

other party leaders. And maybe Jagmeet Singh can pull a rabbit out of his hat. I mean, anything can happen. That sounds like such a stupid thing to say in politics, but it's true, right? Like, we don't know what the circumstances will be in a few weeks and months, but they really do need to be able to show movement. It's not a stupid thing. It's actually true. But Jack Layton, for the record, Jack Layton did not block Stephen Harper. He actually won all those seats on the very election year when Mr. Harper secured the majority. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so lots at stake at two by-elections that we will talk about more next week. Thanks, everybody. Glad you're back. That is at issue for this week. Happy to be back. Tell us, what do you think of Singh's decision to end the deal with the Liberals? Let us know.

You can send us an email. We're at ask at cbc.ca. Remember, you can also catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. Talk to you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.