Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives for the confidence vote on the federal budget.DAVE CHAN/AFP/Getty Images
The snap election has been called off for lack of enthusiasm.
The half-hearted threat that Mark Carney’s Liberal government could be defeated vanished into the reality that it was in none of the parties’ interests.
So the Prime Minister’s minority government sailed through a confidence vote on its budget that was nominally close, 170-168, but never much in doubt.
The deed, when it was done, was accomplished because four MPs – two Conservatives and two New Democrats – did not vote and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May decided on the day of the vote to side with Mr. Carney’s Liberals.
If you are keeping track, Ms. May is the same Green Party Leader who two weeks ago said she would vote against the budget because it didn’t say enough about climate-change commitments – and had theatrically thrown a budget book to the ground and stepped on it.
On Monday afternoon, she said she had been swayed when Mr. Carney told her he is committed to meeting Canada’s emissions-reduction targets under the Paris Accords. “That is what I needed to hear,” she said.
In truth, Mr. Carney didn’t have to spend too much time telling opposition politicians what they wanted to hear.
Like Ms. May, many had been hearing that voters didn’t want another general election so soon. No party is really in a position of strength. They would be gambling big if they triggered an election now.
You could tell from vibes alone no one really wanted that.
Last year, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre beat a drum for an election on the daily, demanding that then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau call one and needling the Bloc Québécois and NDP for propping up the Liberal government.
On Monday, Mr. Poilievre was still attacking the Liberals over deficits in Question Period, but there were no election taunts.
Mr. Poilievre was beaten in a general election just seven months ago, after all. There’s no sign in opinion polls that things would be better in a quick rematch.
Just two weeks ago he lost one of his MPs, Chris d’Entremont, to the Liberals, and another MP rumoured to be considering a switch, Matt Jeneroux, announced he’d resign. Mr. Poilievre couldn’t be 100-per-cent sure there wouldn’t be another defection. And Mr. Jeneroux didn’t vote on Monday.
Another Conservative, Shannon Stubbs, has been absent recently for medical reasons and also did not vote.
The real calculation was how each party could make it look like they were taking a stand against the Liberal budget without doing so in enough numbers to topple the government.
The Bloc had seemed the most unworried about an election, demanding billions of dollars worth of concessions for their support, then announcing they would all vote no.
It was the NDP, now just a faction of seven fractious MPs tucked away in a corner of the House of Commons, that had to give up on the bluster and play-acting first, conceding in recent days that some of its members might abstain.
When the vote came, two New Democrats, Lori Idlout and Gord Johns, didn’t cast votes – which the NDP declared to be a move to put country above party by avoiding an election.
That was a blindingly obvious course of action all along, given that the party is broke and won’t have a new leader till March 29.
And it had certainly seemed pretty likely after some NDP MPs spoke publicly about the budget’s benefits for their ridings. Ms. Idlout, the MP for Nunavut, was quoted by a local news site saying Mr. Carney’s aides had promised $50-million to fund a university in the territory.
What suspense was left on Monday afternoon was really about whether some miscalculation might lead to the government’s accidental defeat. Ms. May said she had announced her decision prior to the vote to try to avoid such an accident.
In all, the day provided a near-term prognosis for the Liberal government from the mouths of opposition MPs. Elections are accidents to be avoided. Not having an election means putting the country first.
Mr. Carney can’t count on that sentiment forever but he can count on it for months. Probably till the spring.
His first budget, an economic agenda with a $78-billion deficit, has passed. He cleared his first big confidence-vote hurdle while barely breaking his stride. He has time and space to run for a while.