GOLDSTEIN: Singh, Trudeau still joined at the hip because neither wants an election

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Published Sep 04, 2024  •  2 minute read

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh listens as Rachel Notley speaks in Calgary on Friday, June 21, 2024. Photo by Jim Wells /Jim Wells/Postmedia

Don’t be fooled into thinking that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s announcement Wednesday that he’s “ripping up” his supply and confidence agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau means Singh wants a snap election.

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In the real world, he wants to avoid one given his party’s dismal standing in the polls.

Ditto Trudeau and the Liberals, given that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have had a double-digit lead over them in the polls for more than a year.

Singh wanted out of the deal he signed with Trudeau in March 2022, ostensibly guaranteeing no federal election until the fall of  2025 — although in reality it did no such thing — because for two-and-a-half years it had put the NDP leader in the absurd position of condemning Trudeau and the Liberals in the morning and then voting to keep them in power in the afternoon.

Clearly, most Canadians weren’t impressed with Singh’s hypocrisy.

Even Singh’s announcement on Wednesday ending his accord with the Liberals was absurd, the NDP leader apparently having suddenly discovered after making his deal with Trudeau in March 2022 that, “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people.”

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No doubt the NDP leader was also tired of Poilievre referring to him as “sellout Singh”, as he did last week while urging the NDP leader to “break (his) costly coalition with Trudeau to trigger a carbon tax election.”

Except an election is the last thing Singh wants with his party underwater, according to the polls.

Singh violated the spirit of his deal with Trudeau, written into the accord itself, in which the NDP pledged it would “commit to a guiding principle of ‘no surprises’” in administering the supply and confidence agreement which was scheduled to remain in place until June 2025.

It was certainly a surprise to blindsided Liberal house leader Karina Gould, who proclaimed last week she was “fairly confident” the NDP would honour the deal, an indication the Liberals are as out of touch with the NDP as they are with Canadian voters.

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To be sure, Singh was entitled to end the agreement because it was a political deal, not a legally binding one.

But he has no interest in an election now which is why his announcement on Wednesday was mainly political theatre.

All it means in the real world is that Trudeau’s minority government going forward will operate as traditional minority governments always have.

That is, it will seek support from enough members of the opposition parties to pass legislation on an issue-by-issue basis, while attempting to avoid defeat on confidence motions, such as approving the federal budget, where a defeat would bring down the government.

The only practical effect of the Singh-Trudeau break up is that it might trigger an election earlier than what up to now had been the widely expected date — in the fall of 2025 after the now-defunct Liberal-NDP deal expired in June 2025.

The other political impact of the announcement is that if Trudeau, as he says, is committed to running in the next election, then Wednesday’s announcement by Singh strengthens his hand because time is running out for the Liberals to elect a leader other than Trudeau, given the uncertainly created by Singh bailing out on his deal with the PM  that would have held off an election until next fall.

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