It appears Canada is headed for its sixth minority government in the last eight terms.
As of Tuesday afternoon – with some races still too close to call nationally – the Liberals were elected or leading in 169 seats in Parliament, three short of a majority government. The Conservatives finished at 144 seats and the party’s leader Pierre Poilievre lost his seat. The NDP’s support collapsed nationally with just seven seats in the House of Commons, losing their official party status and leader Jagmeet Singh’s seat. The Green Party’s sole elected member is co-leader Elizabeth May.
UBC political science professor Richard Johnston noted the remarkable turnaround for the Liberals, who were floundering in the polls until just a few months ago.
“At the moment, the biggest story is that the Liberals are alive. Not just that they won, but they’re alive. They were potentially going to be in third place, as of December, and we were looking at a Bloc Québécois official Opposition.”
Johnston said Canadians should be open to the possibility that the results may yet still swing.
“The election isn’t over. The first thing that I’d say is that it’s unlikely, but it’s still within the realm of possibility, that the Liberals will have a majority – a bare majority. The picture has been slowly changing over the last 12 hours,” he said. “The parliamentary situation, if it stands at the moment, at least, with the Liberals short of a majority, is still a pretty fraught one.”
Barring any shift in the balance of power, Johnston predicted the next government’s longevity would be more in line with the traditional minority government in Canada, “which is in the ballpark of a year-and-a-half to two years.”
The last minority government under Justin Trudeau lasted almost the full four years, thanks in large part to an agreement with the NDP and some common ground on policy positions between the parties. Such an agreement is far less likely to be struck again, with Carney having campaigned on growing defence spending, creating a more business-friendly tax regime and ramping up exports of fossil fuels.
“It’s not clear that they have a working majority to actually do that,” he said. “The Bloc is not terribly sympathetic. The Green is not sympathetic, and neither likely is the remnant of the NDP. The Conservatives, of course, are more than sympathetic to that. But would they actually enable the government to legislate in that way? I don’t know. They have a rather mixed strategic interest here.… Walking away from it, I’m kind of puzzled about what it’s actually going to mean in the substance of policy.”
If Carney can’t get his agenda passed, he may be forced to call another election, Johnston said. If the Conservatives see their polling improve enough to flip a few close ridings, they too will have the motivation bring a motion of non-confidence.
“With both the Liberals and Conservatives, one can detect possibilities on the horizon where one or the other would have a strategic advantage in trying to end the government,” he said.
But polls, however tempting, cannot be viewed as crystal balls, said Johnston. While polling firms were fairly accurate in gauging the Liberals’ share of the popular vote, all but a few underestimated the Conservatives’ likely tally by a small but statistically significant amount.
“The polls were a tiny bit more favourable to the Liberals than actual Canadians were, but not that far off. They were pretty systematically underpredicting the Conservatives.… That two-per-cent underprediction of the Conservatives was the difference between majority and minority,” he said.
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