Trudeau’s grip on power is precarious
The Liberals brushed with defeat on two votes in the House of Commons this week
Canada’s Parliament did not fall this week, which means the country was spared a spring election.
Now normally, one wouldn’t dwell too long on what didn’t happen in politics, or even what almost happened. But on two occasions this past week, two opposition parties seemed determined to use votes in the Commons to show Justin Trudeau’s Liberals how precariously they remain in power.
It’s even more remarkable when you consider this was the only week this month that the Commons would be sitting. Of all the things MPs were determined to cram into it, we ended up with not one but two brushes with Liberal defeat.
First, there was the New Democrats’ motion on the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. This was a sweeping, nine-point list of demands placed before the Liberal government, including an immediate ceasefire call and unilateral recognition of Palestine as a state.
For reasons still unclear, this motion ignited a flurry of intense, down-to-the-wire negotiations between the Liberals and the NDP, which ultimately resulted in a much-watered-down motion and lingering confusion on what it all meant for foreign policy.
As Andrew Phillips, my fellow columnist here at the Star observed, the Liberals would have been better advised to just skip all the negotiating and let the NDP motion fail — as many opposition motions do. Phillips and others speculated that Liberals were worried about just how many of their own MPs would go along with the motion, putting schisms within the governing caucus on display.
That’s no doubt true, and good insight into how vulnerable things must be feeling right now within Liberal ranks, especially on the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
No sooner had the Liberals got past this vote than the Conservatives, for much the same motives, forced a vote on carbon pricing toward the end of the week. There was little chance of this non-confidence vote succeeding — all parties except the Conservatives are in favour of carbon pricing.
But Pierre Poilievre and his team were trying to whip up Liberal divisions that stretch beyond Trudeau’s caucus in Ottawa, and out to provinces like Ontario and Newfoundland, where Liberals have also soured on the federal carbon levy.
Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey formally asked last week for Trudeau to press pause on the carbon levy, while new Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said that she would not sign onto the federal carbon pricing deal if she becomes premier.
The non-confidence vote failed resoundingly on Thursday night, with numbers almost identical to the NDP motion on Monday night. The motion on the Middle East received 204 votes in favour, 117 votes against. The Conservatives’ bid to hold a carbon-price election failed with 204 votes against, 116 in favour.
Two different votes on two very different things — one domestically focused, one international. But both highlighted some serious, even existential, divisions within the Liberal universe — the Middle East motion revolving around schisms within Trudeau’s caucus, the carbon-levy election focused on trouble with Trudeau’s provincial Liberal allies.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that in times that are tense for Canadians, the mood in the Commons would be tense, too. Parliament, at its best and even its worst, should be a mirror of the nation. When I asked Trudeau about tough times in an interview earlier this year, he replied, “Define ‘tough times,’ because that sounds like Monday to me.”
This was a week of Mondays, the prime minister would probably agree. One of the many questions left over from this week, however, is whether this is going to be business as usual for the remaining life of this Parliament.
At another point in this eventjammed week, the government unveiled next steps for electoral reform, which it hopes will be in place before the next election. As with a number of government announcements lately, it wasn’t a full-fledged change — more of a plan to change, pending further negotiation and deliberation. Pharmacare was unveiled a few weeks ago in the same way.
During that news conference, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said a couple of times that the next election was most likely a year or more away, in the fall of 2025 if the Liberals can hold it together that long.
Those two votes in the Commons this week showed what the Liberals need to do to hold things together: negotiate with the NDP, keep a restive caucus from revolt, resist Conservative efforts to drive further wedges between Ottawa and the country outside Parliament Hill.
No wonder MPs seemed to be looking forward to another break next week, after only a few intense days this month on the Hill.