NDP-Liberals Make Governance Deal
In order to make the federal government work a little more efficiently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh made a deal earlier this week that assures the Liberal Party will be able to securely govern the country until the next election in 2025. The deal is a ‘confidence-and-supply agreement’, meaning that the NDP will support the government in avoiding a non-confidence vote before the 2025 election in exchange for priority policies and legislation, and not a ‘coalition government’, which would see members of the NDP fill various cabinet positions. The agreement has supposedly been in the works since the 2021 election that saw the Liberals form their current minority government.
This means that the NDP and Liberals are working together to pass legislation on the condition that the important goals of each party are met. Those goals include climate change, health care, Indigenous reconciliation, economic growth, and making life more affordable among others. Thanks to some great reporting by the CBC and CTV News, we have a pretty good idea of what these specific goals look like:
Health Care
The NDP and Liberals have agreed to focus on a dental care program for low-income kids under 12. Next year the plan will include kids under 18, seniors, and people with a disability. The program would be reserved for families that earn less than $90,000.
The two parties have also agreed to pursue a universal national pharmacare program through legislation by the end of next year. After that, they would task the National Drug Agency with recommending essential medicines and a bulk purchasing plan by the end of the confidence-and-supply agreement. They’ve also committed to ongoing investments in provincial health care systems such as hiring doctors, nurses, and mental health supports and passing a Safe Long-Term Care Act that would focus on funding and policy shortcomings within long-term care facilities that have ben revealed by the pandemic.
Life Affordability
The two parties plan to pass an Early Learning and Child Care Act this year that would ensure childcare agreements between the provinces and the federal government receive long-term funding and focus on non-profit childcare spaces.
They also plan to make housing more affordable by building more affordable housing by extending the Rapid Housing Initiative for one more year, redefining what “affordable housing” means, increasing efforts toward launching the Housing Accelerator Fund, adding a $500 increase to the Canada Housing Benefit within the year, and creating a homebuyer’s bill of rights.
Climate Change
The parties are committed to phasing out federal support for fossil fuels beginning this year, exploring new ways to ensure we reach a net zero economy by 2050, and establishing a Clean Jobs Training Centre to retrain energy workers from the fossil fuel sector. The parties also plan to continue to work towards reducing emissions by 2030 and working towards home energy efficiency programs by creating Canadian supply chains and making sure jobs stay in Canada.
Labour
Both parties agree to implement the legislation already passed that ensures federally regulated workers have access to 10 paid sick days every year as soon as possible while also introducing legislation by the end of 2023 that would make it illegal for an employer to call in replacement workers when locking out unionized workers or when in the middle of a strike.
Indigenous Reconciliation
The Liberals and the NDP are committed to continuing to fund First Nations, Inuit, and Metis communities as they continue burial searches at residential school sites. They are also committed to working with Indigenous people to figure out how housing investments are delivered to their communities and how they are designed while also advancing policies related to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls such as the Federal Pathway to Address Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLBGTQQIA+ People.
Taxation
The two parties are hoping to introduce taxation changes for financial institutions that made hefty profits during the pandemic as well as implementing a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry by the end of 2023.
Voting
Both parties will commit to working with Elections Canada in order to expand voter participation, which could include expanding election day to involve three days of voting. They also hope to change elections rules in order to allow people to vote at any polling place within their electoral district. They also plan to improve mail-in ballots so that voters are not disenfranchised and commit to ensuring that Quebec does not lose any seats in the House of Commons.
With all that being said, the deal will allow the government to attempt to make good on these commitments and ideas in a parliament that is less uselessly combative. Various members of the CPC have come out against the deal, even going so far as to say it is “anti-democratic”, a “subversion of democracy”, and an “attack on our freedom”. These assertions are categorically false. It should not have to be said that everything the NDP and the Liberals have done in negotiating this deal is perfectly in line with Canada’s democratic values and ideals and is merely another chapter in a book that features authors such as Jack Layton, provincial governments, and even Stephen Harper. In the last election, 50.4% of voters voted for either the Liberals or the NDP so by making a deal to make the government work more efficiently, these parties have acted in line with the mandate given to them by Canadian voters. This deal is ambitious and needs a lot more details, planning, and time before it can be seen as effective or a waste of time, but regardless, it could never be considered undemocratic.
It should also be noted that the deal is not blind compliance on the part of the NDP. Jagmeet Singh has made it clear that if any time the NDP feel like this Liberals are not holding up their end, the NDP will be out. He has stated that the upcoming federal budget, which should be released sometime in April, will be the first test of this new deal. The deal includes a ‘no surprises’ stipulations which will ensure that each party has plenty of advance notice before any moves are made. This will help preserve the NDP’s ability to criticize the government’s policies freely and fairly as they see fit. While the deal does raise some spending alarms, coupled with the federal government’s pledge to increase defence spending, the federal budget will tell us whether we should really be worried or not. The deal seems to be a win for everyone involved, even if some would rather not admit it: the NDP now have more power and control over which policies are enacted; the Liberals are free to govern without fear of a non-confidence vote before the next election; and the CPC now have time to figure out what kind of party they want to be before the next election as their leadership race continues to heat up.