COMMENTARY: Opposition parties will huff and puff about Budget 2025 but will let it pass
When Canadian voters swept Mark Carney into office on the back of his promises to stand firm against tariffs and Donald Trump’s annexation talk, they probably didn’t expect that the prime minister would end up pointing his elbows toward the opposition MPs in the House of Commons.
And yet, that’s basically where we are. Carney’s first budget, announced on Tuesday in Ottawa, seems designed to poke the opposition parties in the eye. There’s something for everyone to dislike.
A deficit of more than $70-billion in the coming fiscal year? The Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre will insist that this is just more Liberal largesse, the overspending of the Trudeau years, but with a tighter haircut and fewer silly outfits.
A plan to trim the federal public service by 40,000 jobs over five years? The NDP will argue that this is essentially DOGE North.
The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, won’t support it because that’s what the Bloc does.
All of that leaves the Liberals without the votes to pass the budget, given their minority in the House.
And, it sets up what is likely to be a complicated dance in Ottawa, as opposition MPs loudly denounce the budget as a terrible document that does not deserve their support, while at the same time quietly trying to figure out a way to let it pass.
Why the dichotomy? When votes that could cause the government to fall come around, thoughts naturally turn to which party’s interest is best served by an election.
And in this case, the answer is: None of them.
The Liberals are slightly ahead in national polls and have a yawning lead in terms of preferred prime minister, but they were also the beneficiaries during the last campaign of the political equivalent of a rare celestial event.
Trump barged in and changed the ballot question last winter, and Carney capitalized on it. But can the prime minister run on a Captain Canada platform again, especially when he’s been more likely to blow kisses than throw elbows toward the U.S. president?
The Conservatives may see an opportunity in the fact that issues like affordability and crime are top of mind again, but there remains the problem of Poilievre’s likability. That is, he doesn’t have it. He has taken the lesson of his election defeat and returned to Parliament Hill seemingly unchanged, speaking with his usual combination of belligerence and smarm.
The Bloc Québécois probably has the best chance of any party to gain seats, as Carney would likely struggle to repeat his success in that province. Still, the Bloc also holds the balance of power in a minority Parliament. They could increase their numbers and still end up much more marginalized.
The NDP have few MPs, no money, and hasn’t even begun the process of selecting a permanent leader. Other than that, they are raring to go.
Any one of the parties might think that they will be in a better position to fight a campaign in a year or 18 months from now, especially if the Carney plan to revive the Canadian economy is as flawed as opposition MPs said on Tuesday evening.
The Liberals know this, which may explain why they seem to have expended so little effort in the buildup to Budget Day trying to win the support of the opposition parties. Why ask for help that you don’t ultimately need?
Elizabeth May, in her usual role as the only member of the Green caucus, expressed bafflement after the budget was released at the lack of outreach from Team Carney.
But the Liberals don’t actually need opposition MPs to support the budget; they need a handful of them not to vote against it. Interim NDP leader Don Davies and a couple of his colleagues simply have to discover that there is somewhere else they are urgently needed when the crucial vote comes up in the House.
It’s not the bravest of solutions, but it beats trying to run an election campaign without a leader, candidates, or cash.
If that is indeed the Liberal calculus at work here, then it is quite the gambit.
A government can dare opposition MPs to vote it down, after all, only to discover that many of them welcomed the invitation.
globalnews
