How much longer can the Liberal-NDP deal last?

On Thursday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a great show — he even wrote a letter — of calling on NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to walk away from the NDP’s supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberal government.

Poilievre alleged that Singh was sticking with the deal so that he could become eligible for a parliamentary pension (Poilievre qualified for an MP pension in 2010, when he was 31 years old).

For that reason, Poilievre said, “Canadians are now calling him ‘Sellout Singh'” — the nickname Poilievre himself has given the NDP leader. (Poilievre’s fondness for nicknames recalls a certain American presidential candidate.)

It’s perhaps not a coincidence that Poilievre’s call came in the midst of a byelection campaign in Elmwood–Transcona, a Manitoba riding where Conservatives have traditionally finished second to the NDP.

For that matter, Poilievre’s broader interest in Singh no doubt has something to do with the fact that some of the Conservative Party’s best hopes for gains in the next election are ridings in British Columbia and northern Ontario that are currently represented by NDP MPs.

Poilievre had barely finished speaking before the Conservative Party sent out a fundraising appeal, informing supporters that the Conservative leader had just “challenged” Singh “to PULL OUT of the carbon tax coalition.”

In response, the NDP more or less shrugged, though they did allow that they could always walk away from the deal.

Formal agreement first of its kind

The historic supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and NDP — the first such formal deal between two parties at the federal level, though there were provincial precedents — is now two and a half years old. And with that agreement underpinning the business of the House of Commons, the current Parliament is now the longest-lasting minority Parliament in modern Canadian history.

Of course, it’s inevitable that the deal (and this Parliament) will eventually come to an end. Officially, the agreement between the two parties expires whenever the House chooses to adjourn for the summer in June 2025, ahead of what would be an election in October 2025.

(Technically, the Parliament of Canada Act allows for five years to elapse between elections, but governments have lately deferred to a 2007 law that, while non-binding, says elections should be called at least every four years.)

But if the end game is approaching, it sets up an interesting test of political and practical imperatives.

The politics of the Liberal-NDP deal

Poilievre’s political imperative is fairly obvious: Ahead of the next federal election, he would like to yoke the Liberals and NDP together.

For the Conservative Party’s purposes, it would surely help for the NDP to be associated with an unpopular government, and for the Liberals to be associated with a party that some centrist voters might consider too radical. 

The Liberals and NDP had good reasons to make a deal in March 2022, and they’ve both derived real benefits from doing so.

But to some extent the arrangement has also made Poilievre’s life easier — the Conservatives have been able to oppose the government without consequence and Poilievre has been given reason to argue that the Liberals and New Democrats are one and the same.

For the same reasons that Poilievre is keen to tie the two parties together, the Liberals and NDP will surely be motivated to distinguish themselves from one another between now and the next election. If so, the only question is when the deal might officially end, or perhaps how.

Fifty years ago, a Liberal minority government that was relying on support from the NDP managed to engineer its own defeat by writing a budget that it knew the New Democrats couldn’t support. Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals subsequently won a majority in the 1974 federal election. 

The current situation is not perfectly analogous, but today’s Liberals or New Democrats could similarly find (or manufacture) a reason to walk away from their agreement now. Perhaps the NDP decides that it has a new non-negotiable demand, and the government discovers it’s not interested in meeting it.

The end of the confidence-and-supply agreement would not necessarily mean an immediate election. The Liberals could seek the support of the Bloc Québécois or try to continue negotiating with the NDP on a case-by-case basis. (Is there a world in which the Conservatives could even find reason to support a government bill? Probably not, but stranger things have happened.)

Whatever the political calculus, there are very real, practical matters at play. 

Liberals confident deal with NDP to keep them in power will hold until June

Government House Leader Karina Gould says she’s ‘fairly confident’ the supply-and-confidence deal with the NDP that’s kept the Liberal minority government in power since March 2022 will hold until its June 2025 expiry date. The Power Panel weighs in on the politics around maintaining the deal for both parties.

The deal isn’t done — and it still has its uses

Though it likely won’t stop anyone from speculating about an end of the deal this fall, at least a few elements of the original confidence-and-supply agreement remain to be completed.

Pharmacare legislation hasn’t passed the Senate, and a bill to implement Elections Act changes is in the House. A promised Safe Long-Term Care Act has yet to be tabled. 

While the Liberals and NDP have agreed on a plan to provide free contraception and diabetes treatment, the federal government has not yet completed any deals with provincial governments to actually deliver those benefits. The new federal dental care program also won’t be fully implemented until early next year.

And though New Democrats might not see it as their problem or responsibility, the dissolution of Parliament could also endanger other initiatives like online harms legislation, the First Nations Clean Water Act and several greenhouse gas emissions regulations that are still in the process of being finalized.

The most underrated aspect of the Liberal-NDP deal is how it has simply helped the House of Commons and its committees to function and move business along. While politics demands that the parties oppose each other — and while Canadian political culture isn’t accustomed to parties working together — a minority Parliament effectively requires some level of cooperation, either tacitly or explicitly. 

If elections are now more likely than not to produce minority parliaments, Canada’s political culture is going to have to get used to parties working together — or Canadians are going to have to get used to elections occurring every couple of years because parliaments can’t sustain themselves. 

One way or another, the Liberal-NDP deal is likely entering its final months. But it probably won’t be the last agreement of its kind.