Who Won The Budget Vote?

The Liberals enjoy the advantage for now. But for how long?

I think somebody broke my checkers board. Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

When I let myself dream, and I mean really dream, I imagine a world in which we could discuss public policy in a vacuum, a space free from – nay, beyond – politics. But we can’t. The how, why, and “who whom” of politics is part and parcel of policy discussions because these questions inform and reflect the power dynamics that yield some policies and not others; they’re the same considerations that decide who gets to make policy in the first place. Trying to imagine a modern polity with the privilege of forgoing strategic political concerns is like trying to imagine a square that isn’t a quadrilateral with four equal sides. You can’t do it. The possibilities and impossibilities are baked in by definition.

The federal budget vote earlier this week suggests a political landscape set to be dominated by Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal Party, at least for the time being. That’s the lay of the land. The budget vote passed 170-168, with the Conservative Party and the New Democrats voting against the government, save for two abstentions each. The Bloc Québécois voted against, too, and Elizabeth May (and therefore the Greens) voted in favour.

It looked to be a close vote, but it wasn’t. If the Liberals had two fewer caucus members, a handful more members of Parliament from the opposition Conservatives or New Democrats would have abstained from the vote – whether due to a nasty cold, a technical problem with the voting app, or because someone got lost on the way to West Block. Neither the NDP nor the Conservatives wants or is able to fight an election right now, and the Liberals know it. The fact that each of them ensured two of their MPs abstained proves as much.

The orchestration of a close vote was a show, a pantomime, so that the opposition parties, save for perhaps the Bloc, could at once be opposed to the budget but not trigger an election. Don Davies, interim leader of the NDP, said as much, when he told As It Happens host Nil Köksal, “We made the fundamental decision that we cannot support this budget because it just doesn’t meet the moment, and in our view, respond to the urgent needs facing Canadians,” adding that because of “instability and overlapping crises” his party has decided it’s not time to head to the polls. That the NDP is broke, understaffed, and leaderless might count as one of those crises.

Ahead of the vote, the NDP tried to extract concessions from Carney. As the Toronto Star reports (in a great scoop), Davies and his party sought $10 billion in new revenue. That money was to come from a reduction in a planned boost to military spending and it was to be redirected to affordable housing, pharmacare, and other NDP priorities. No luck, alas. Davies was, as the Star puts it, “rebuffed ahead of Monday’s crucial budget vote.”

For their part, the Conservatives didn’t get the top items on their wish list, including a smaller deficit and an end to the industrial carbon price. But the government is spending big on the military and national projects, and it looks like an end to the oil and gas emissions cap is coming along with a possible Alberta-B.C. oil pipeline. All things considered, the last few weeks in federal politics and the next few months could be, let’s say, plausibly purple – just the way Carney intends it.

As things stand, the Liberals are the “who” in “who whom,” the agents acting upon the political world while the opposition parties meander along. The leaderless NDP and the Conservatives with their embattled boss can talk a big game, but the former risk becoming a doorstop in this parliament while the latter verge on redundant.

The opposition parties may still do their duty holding the government to account, raising questions, pushing for investigations as necessary, and studying legislation closely at committee if they’re so inclined. They could be obstructionist for the sake of it. They could mix the two. My guess is a mix.

For now, however, the Liberals know that neither the NDP nor the Conservatives have the appetite for an election, as the budget vote confirms. The political dynamic could change in the coming months, but it may be as likely as not that it will shift in favour of the governing side. If we end up in an election this spring or next fall, it may be an election triggered by the government itself.

Carney, however, a man prone to peremptory behaviour, is playing a risky game. Refusing to bargain or cooperate with opposition parties, proceeding as if he and he alone, the oracle, knows and sees best, may work when you have leverage, in the short run, but it also induces the opposition to be extra obstinate — and vicious. As Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet said of the Liberals, they were not “good partners” in the budget process, behaving in a way that will return to “bite their ass.” Indeed it may. But for now the House of Commons is thoroughly the government’s home.