Can Trudeau count on stable Liberal minority? Not necessarily, warns Bob Rae

OTTAWA -- Accidents happen. That’s something Bob Rae advises all federal political parties to keep in mind as they enter a new era of minority government. The former interim Liberal leader knows a thing or two about minority governments. As a New Democrat MP, he moved the motion that brought down Joe Clark’s fleeting Conservative government in 1979. As NDP leader in Ontario, he struck the 1985 deal that ended the Progressive Conservatives’ 42-year reign in that province and installed David Peterson’s Liberal minority government. And, back in the federal arena as a Liberal MP during Stephen Harper’s second Conservative minority government from 2008 to 2011, he was involved in the Liberals’ unsuccessful attempt to form a coalition government with the NDP. So, Rae speaks from experience when he expresses skepticism about the conventional wisdom that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a strong, stable minority in the Oct. 21 election -- 13 seats shy of a majority -- and should have little difficulty surviving, with the help of one or more opposition parties, for at least a couple of years. “The one thing that can and has gone wrong (in past minority governments) is what I would call the unintended consequences of rhetoric or people assuming what other people know or assuming ... `Well, if we do this, they will inevitably do that,’” he says in an interview. “And you sort of say none of that is inevitable and you’ve got to be aware that things can go wrong.” With the Conservatives about to embark on a leadership race after Andrew Scheer’s abrupt resignation, Rae is reasonably confident that the Liberal minority is in no danger of being brought down in the short term, at least not until the official Opposition chooses a new leader. But even a leaderless Opposition is no guarantee of survival -- as Clark discovered when the Liberals joined the NDP to defeat his government’s maiden budget despite the fact that Pierre Trudeau, the current prime minister’s late father, had stepped down as Grit leader. The Conservatives miscalculated the number of opposition MPs who’d show up, lost the confidence vote and plunged the country into an election they thought they could win because the Liberals were in disarray.