Open thread: 2022 Liberal-NDP consent and supply agreement

The Trudeau Liberals have made a supply and confidence agreement with Jagmeet Singh’s NDP.

According to the CBC, the climate-related elements are:

“A commitment to phasing out federal government support for the fossil fuel sector — including funding from Crown corporations — starting in 2022.

A commitment to finding new ‘ways to further accelerate the trajectory’ to a net zero economy by 2050.

A ‘Clean Jobs Training Centre’ to support retraining for energy workers as Canada moves away from fossil fuels.

Pretty weak sauce, I’d say, when we’re beginning to experience a potentially civilization-ending calamity, but that’s the state of Canadian politics today.

11 thoughts on “Open thread: 2022 Liberal-NDP consent and supply agreement”

  1. The two parties are pledging to advance measures to reduce emissions by 2030 and have recommitted the government to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050. Meanwhile, steps will be taken in 2022 to move forward on the creation of the Clean Jobs Training Centre, another Liberal campaign promise, to help industrial and trade workers develop new skills in a zero-carbon industry.

    Unsurprisingly, both sides have doubled down on their longstanding promises to phase out public financing of the fossil fuel sector, including Crown corporations, starting in 2022. Likewise, they are committing to move forward on home energy efficiency programs, noting that a key component will be creating Canadian supply chains and making sure jobs stay in the country.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/what-exactly-did-the-liberals-and-ndp-agree-to-1.5829634

  3. “On Wednesday, a little more than a week after the Liberals and New Democrats announced a historic confidence-and-supply agreement, NDP MP Laurel Collins rose in the House of Commons and attacked the government’s new climate plan, saying it lacks “ambition” and offers “massive subsidies to unproven carbon capture technology.”

    “The government continues to put the interests of big oil and gas above protecting the workers who are impacted by the climate crisis,” she said.

    Maybe Collins would have been even less generous if the Liberal-NDP accord didn’t exist. But her critical read of the Liberal plan might dash any thoughts that the new governing agreement means Liberals and New Democrats will spend the next three years holding hands and singing the old CCF campaign song.

    Less than two weeks into the life of the confidence-and-supply agreement, it’s still too early to say what it will mean in practice. But the novelty hasn’t worn off yet.”

  6. To a degree, the arrangement worked. The Liberals got to govern for two years without fear of being taken down, and the NDP saw action on several of their issues, including dental care, pharmacare and banning replacement workers during strikes at federally regulated workplaces.

    But the deal was a flop at the political box office for the NDP. Instead of getting credit for pushing the Trudeau government on key, progressive issues, the party saw its popularity decline.

    Some pollsters have projected that the NDP will win fewer seats at the next election than they did in 2021. The lesson seems to be this: Trudeau and the Liberals are so deeply unpopular with Canadians in almost every region in the country, that anyone seen as propping them up damages their own brand — no matter how noble their reason for doing so.

    Pollster and data-scientist Nik Nanos said that the NDP have not benefited from the deal, noting that the party ranks lower in the polls than the embattled Liberals.

    “Maybe it’s a moral victory from a policy perspective, but it sure isn’t a political victory in terms of gains in ballot support for the New Democrats,” he told CTV.

    https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/09/05/Jagmeet-Singh-Cancels-NDP-Liberal-Agreement/

  7. By at least one metric, according to Sean Speer, the editor-at-large of the online publication The Hub and a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the NDP has won its “greatest accomplishment” via the supply-and-confidence agreement. They hauled the Liberal party towards the political left. And they didn’t need to form government to do it.

    “Success should instead be measured by its influence over the centre of gravity of Canadian politics. On this front, it has been enormously successful,” Speer wrote.

    https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/liberal-ndp-marriage-ends-in-divorce

  8. I hope I’m wrong, but I think that Singh and the NDP are vastly misinterpreting the political auguries. I think they’re looking south, and seeing the Harris/Walz momentum, and thinking “let’s get a piece of that!”, without realizing that the reason that movement is doing so well, is because it’s a big-tent alliance between progressives, centrists, and even republicans-of-conscience.

    Tearing up the paper keeping Poilievre at bay, and then launching a campaign for PM from the Left of Trudeau, is very much not the way to replicate that success. In my opinion, the Libs and NDP should have deepened their agreement to include strategic candidate removal, like we saw in France. The two parties could have campaigned together on their shared accomplishments, but instead now they get to cut each other to ribbons, and let the fucking Tories goose-step right into power.

    https://www.metafilter.com/205359/The-NDP-is-ending-its-governance-agreement-with-the-Liberals

  10. “A Bloc strategist who was granted anonymity by The Canadian Press because he was not authorized to speak publicly stated bluntly that the NDP had officially handed the balance of power back to the Bloc. The Bloc is taking for granted that when a federal election is held in about a year or less, it will be a majority Conservative government led by Poilievre, whose party has surged in the polls for over a year and has been ahead in the rest of Canada for over a year.”

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