Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 21, 2020.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
This wasn’t the end of snap-election dramas. It was the beginning.
We have just entered the period of minority-Parliament power games that can end in an election campaign. That means the odds are that there will be a federal vote in months, rather than years.
We now know that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is willing to risk an election. More than that: If Mr. Trudeau thinks the window is open for him to win an election, he will worry it won’t be open for long. The opposition parties know that, too.
Tick tock. The countdown to the next federal election has begun.
It isn’t simply a case of Mr. Trudeau being willing to take his chances on an election – which his government clearly signalled when it declared a Conservative motion seeking to create a special “anti-corruption" committee to be a matter of confidence.
It’s also that this week’s drive by Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives to set up an “anti-corruption” committee wasn’t just about probing the WE Charity controversy – that was an aggressive gambit to shift power in Parliament to give the opposition new political tools and levers for triggering an election. That’s the sort of thing minority governments view as an existential threat.
With all that, one thing will become crystal clear to the party that has so far propped up Mr. Trudeau’s minority Liberals, the NDP: They have to get ready to let the government fall.
On Wednesday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh found himself saying the Prime Minister wanted an election but the NDP wanted him to continue governing. That works in the second wave of a pandemic, but not indefinitely.
More importantly, Mr. Trudeau is up for an election now. In a few months, he might just call it himself. If he thinks there is an opportunity, he will worry it will slip away,
The latest Nanos Research tracking poll puts the Liberals on the edge of majority-government territory, with 38.5 per cent saying they would vote for Mr. Trudeau’s party – six points ahead of the Conservatives, but with a commanding lead in Ontario.
Governments in power for more than five years don’t usually get more popular. Right now, Mr. Trudeau’s chief opponent, Mr. O’Toole, is still new. And the Liberals know that if their popularity dips, the opposition won’t hesitate to defeat them and trigger an election. For Mr. Trudeau, it is dangerous to wait too long.
That last thing – the feeling of vulnerability, that the opposition could eventually get an opportunity to defeat the government when it is down – tends to figure in the motivations of minority PMs, and their strategists. It’s one of the reasons the Liberals were willing to play chicken with the Conservatives' motion.
Obviously, the Liberals don’t want a new committee going over the WE Charity controversy, with powers to demand unredacted government documents and records covering 12 years of the speaking engagements by Mr. Trudeau’s mother and brother. They have been trying to shut those things down for months.
The Conservatives also made the motion a bitter pill by calling for an “anti-corruption” committee, and wording it like an indictment of the Liberals.
More importantly, it would have given the opposition new powers, and new avenues for defeating the government.
It would have allowed the opposition to summon ministers and the Prime Minister for a grilling whenever they choose, and not just about We Charity. It included an order from the Commons for the Prime Minister’s Office to turn over all e-mails about prorogation, including about polls and politics; if the government refused, it could be cited for contempt of Parliament. That’s the kind of motion that defeated Stephen Harper’s government in 2011. The committee’s two reports would provide opportunities to trigger non-confidence motions.
Maybe the opposition should have some of those powers, but minority governments don’t give them away. Not unless they are forced. They try to stop the opposition from pulling the rug out from under them. Mr. Harper even prorogued Parliament in 2008. In 2005, when the opposition tried to change the rules to give themselves more opportunities to move motions, including non-confidence motions, Paul Martin quashed it. This week, Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals threatened an election.
That kind of power struggle often starts the countdown. Mr. Trudeau has signalled that he’s willing to gamble on an election. His opponents have to assume he won’t wait much longer.
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