This past week must have been a bit of a nightmare for the leader of the Official Opposition, as one Conservative MP defected to the Liberals and another announced his intention to resign his seat come this spring.
The defection and resignation announcements came perfectly timed to distract the media from the opposition’s assault on the new federal budget. It is easy to imagine that the last thing you need as a political leader facing such a consequential moment in time as budget deliberations, during a minority government no less, is distraction from your message.
There is plenty of grist in the new federal budget for the opposition to grind in the parliamentary mill—after years of decrying what the Conservatives characterized as over the top Liberal largesse and proliferate spending, this budget makes that dip into the taxpayers’ pocketbooks look almost miserly.
There are some significant differences, however. This budget is aimed primarily at two different streams, both connected to dealing with the challenge presented by the current US president.
The first is defence. After years of living in denial about the rising threats presented by the increasing belligerence of Russia and China, as well as largely ignoring security in our nation’s far North, the federal government has earmarked huge increases to our military budget. Albeit some of that increase is actually semantic (ie, putting guns on Coast Guard vessels to have that spending included in “defence” calculations) the jump is substantial. This newspaper has long advocated at least meeting our NATO commitment to spend two percent of GDP on our military. This budget will meet that bar, and by all accounts plans are to leapfrog on to meet the new 3.5 percent bar being advocated by NATO.
High time.
The second is infrastructure spending (while reining in increases in operational spending).
With a host of new US tariffs making waves in our too-long placid economy, the new budget aims squarely at offsetting that turbulence by boosting infrastructure spending. That is, in our opinion, also a very good thing.
One of the key elements in deciding whether something has hit the right balance in our nation’s politics is whether both the right and the left are unhappy. This budget nails it. The right say we are spending too much; the left (and some regional interests) say it doesn’t go far enough.
That being said, it is hard to believe that the governing Liberals cannot find wiggle room in their budget to win over at least two sitting MPs to ensure we do not have to trudge through sleet and snow to cast a winter election ballot.
Pity poor Pierre Poilievre, even though his Conservative Party is well within shot of winning an election according to recent polls, the numbers are nowhere near comfortable enough to point to a majority. Worse yet, those same polls indicate that a significant plurality of the Canadian electorate prefer Prime Minister Mark Carney at the helm during these rocky times. Not the kind of environment in which you want to toss the dice.
Add to that those same polls have indicated that individual line items and program spending in the budget find significant public support on their own and you have a very challenging milieu in which to convince the country to change horses.
It would be in everyone’s best interest, for all parties, as well as the poor benighted Canadian electorate, for the competing parties to come together to find at least some common ground.
For Mr. Poilievre, that would provide time to shore up his own fortunes in a coming leadership vote, not that he is in any real danger in the Conservative camp despite grumblings and the odd defection, as well as following the old adage of “give them enough rope.” There will be plenty of opportunities for Liberal missteps over the coming year. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to be a path the bellicose leader will take, given his past performance.
As tempting as it might be for the Liberals to stand their ground and hold fast to every line item and to use brinkmanship to force the issue—our way or the hustings, as it were—politics is neither fair nor secure. Just ask former NDP leader Tom Mulcair who was ascendant in the polls and seemed headed comfortably toward the first NDP federal government, dare we say even majority, before the Liberals crowned Justin Trudeau and sent the whole NDP applecart careening into the ditch.
As for everyone else, the other opposition party coffers are in no shape to take on another election this soon in the cycle.
There are times to roll the dice and times to stay your hand.
These are times that call for a national unity approach to governance, not partisan posturing from any side of the aisle. Patience and compromise need to be bywords for every flavour of political actor.
