NDP MPs have to find a way to avoid an early election

Parliament will vote on the Carney government’s first budget later today.

If it votes Nay that will mean the House has lost confidence in the current government. And that will bring on an election about eight months after the last one.

The government is two-seats away from a majority, reduced from three after Conservative Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor. The official opposition Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois have said they will vote Nay.

That leaves the seven New Democrats and one Green MP, party leader Elizabeth May. 

May says she is also, for now, a Nay voter, but is talking to senior Liberals to see if they can offer her something to get her to switch her vote.

The Liberal government will not be amending the budget, changing its content in any way. It’s too late for that.

To appease May and her Green supporters, Carney’s people will have to offer them something that does not require legislation, not today at any rate. 

The government could, for instance, make some sort of commitments as to the way in which it will implement its environmental agenda and its measures to combat climate change.

A Hobson’s Choice for the NDP

As for the New Democrats, they have little motivation to want an election now.

Their party will not choose a new leader until March of next year and it is deeply in debt. 

The New Democrats’ interim leader, Don Davies, has been doing an excellent job, despite the odds stacked against him. 

But if Davies were to lead the party in a snap election he would labour under an enormous handicap. 

The NDP’s interim leader, a Vancouver MP, has very little French. He would be the only national leader unable to take part in all of the obligatory campaign events conducted in one of Canada’s two official languages.

Those events include answering questions from francophone reporters and participating in French-language leaders’ debates.

There are lots of reasons for NDPers to oppose the 2025 budget.

Environmental, labour and Indigenous groups have come out against it. 

The budget includes notable commitments on housing, but even Liberal-friendly housing advocates such as economist Mike Moffatt say they fall far short of what is needed.

Make the poor pay

The budget’s main thrust is to redirect federal spending to a massive military buildup and incentives to industry to invest in what PM Mark Carney calls nation-building projects.

Even before his government tabled the budget, Carney decided to limit his fiscal options by cutting taxes and foregoing multiple billions in revenue.

Carney characterizes the one per cent cut in the lowest marginal tax rate he announced in the spring as a gift to low- and middle-income Canadians. Wealthy Canadians will also benefit from that cut. And for those too poor to pay tax there is nothing.

The Liberals’ other big gift to those who need it least came when they cancelled a planned modest increase in the capital gains inclusion rate for corporations and individuals whose annual gains exceed a quarter million dollars.

The Carney approach to the current Trump-induced crisis thus resembles that of Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien’s finance minister in the 1990s: Make the poor pay.

Or, at least, do not ask the rich to bear their fair share of sacrifice in the face of a major economic crisis.

Martin faced a debt and deficit crisis. Carney has to deal with the destructive impact of tariffs and Donald Trump’s very real threats to Canada’s sovereignty. 

Both are genuine crises. In both cases, the government could have called on the patriotism of Canada’s wealthy and corporate elite to help meet the existential challenges facing the country.

Canadians do not want an early election

In other circumstances, the current government’s kowtowing to the upper end of the economic ladder would be reason enough for progressives to vote down this budget. 

If our parliamentary system provided for a vote first on the budget and then another vote as to whether or not the government should fall, opposition MPs could vote against the 2025 budget without forcing a premature election.

Parliament might consider passing legislation to that effect in the future.

For now, we have to live with our Westminster system’s confidence convention.

That convention dictates that when a governing party loses a vote on a money or other confidence bill there are two, and only two, options.

The Governor General can either ask another party to test the will of the House and see if it can gain its confidence. Or, there must be an election.

The first option has been extremely rare. In the current Parliament there is virtually no chance Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives could attract the support of enough other MPs to win a vote.

That means if the Liberal government loses today’s budget vote we will have an election before the end of the year.

That would be bad for the country. Canadians, on the whole, would not welcome it.

Some New Democrats might try to fool themselves into believing their party could win back official party status (12 seats) in a snap election.

The reality is that they could just as easily lose some or even all of the seven seats they managed to win last time.

In short, the NDP has no choice but to find a way – through abstentions, absences or whatever – to let this budget pass.

That will not mean they should stop opposing the measures they oppose. They will just have to survive to fight another day.

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