Don’t call it a coalition: experts lay out history of Liberal-NDP deal

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2022 (1012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The federal Liberals and New Democrats have brokered a pact that could see Trudeau stay in power until 2025 in exchange for pushing NDP-friendly policies.

But while interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen slammed the “Liberal-NDP coalition” as “backdoor socialism,” experts say the agreement doesn’t amount to a formal coalition — something Canada hasn’t seen since 1917.

A formal coalition government, highly unusual in Canadian politics, occurs when two (or more) parties form government. It means formalizing “the levers of power” given to the coalition’s junior partner, said Lydia Miljan, professor of political science at the University of Windsor: That party would join in on cabinet meetings, and its leader would typically act as a deputy prime minister.

“You’re giving another partner the ability to be part of cabinet confidence, to be members of the Privy Council, and all the trappings are associated with being in cabinet,” Miljan said.

It’s only happened once on the federal level, in 1917, when Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden invited some Liberals who favoured conscription to form a Union Government, in the hopes of broadening public support for the war effort.

Instead, this deal, known as a confidence-and-supply agreement, would see the NDP supporting the government on budgets and other confidence votes in exchange for momentum on New Democrat priorities. In this case, everything from dental care to housing affordability.

“There’s no extra power given or afforded to Jagmeet Singh as leader of the NDP,” Miljan said. “Essentially, all this does is formalize really what we’ve had in place since 2019 election.”

In contrast to a formal coalition which would see the Liberals and the NDP forming government together, this arrangement allows the New Democrats to keep some distance from the party in power, said Chris Alcantara, professor of political science at Western University.

In a coalition, “if people don’t like what the government’s doing, then both the Liberals and the NDP would suffer,” he said. Whereas in confidence-and-supply, the NDP can chalk up Liberal divergences to “the price we pay” for moving the dial on policies like dental care.

For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it’s a way of protecting himself so the Conservatives can’t get enough support to topple him once they vote for their new leader come September, Alcantara said.

Confidence-and-supply deals have been struck recently on the provincial and territorial levels.

In 2021, the Yukon NDP caucus agreed to support the Liberals in a confidence vote against the Yukon Party.

After the 2017 B.C. provincial election, the province’s Green Party agreed to a confidence-and-supply with the New Democrats to oust the governing Liberals. The parties joined together to vote down then-premier Christy Clark’s throne speech and NDP leader John Horgan assumed power, with the Greens not taking any roles in cabinet.