Trudeau says it 'bugged' him when Singh ended governance agreement without calling first

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it "bugged him" when NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh ended his party's supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals without calling first.

"The relationship obviously wasn't what I thought it was," Trudeau said in a recent conversation with Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith on the Uncommons podcast.

"I know that if I had chosen to end it, it would have started with a call to him. I would have said, 'You know what, Jagmeet? It's not going to work.' You make those tough calls."

For more than an hour, Trudeau and Erskine-Smith — a maverick Liberal MP with record of voting against his own government — touched on a number of topics, including his party's recent byelection losses, his initial approach to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the message he'll take into the next election and his biggest regret as prime minister.

The supply-and-confidence agreement struck between the Liberals and the NDP in March 2022 committed the NDP to supporting the Liberal government on confidence votes in exchange for legislative commitments on NDP priorities.

The deal, which ensured the survival of the minority Liberal government, was the first such formal agreement between two parties at the federal level. Singh announced the agreement was over last month.

"I don't know why he didn't reach out to call me because … I know he is genuine in wanting to see this country move forward in more progressive ways," Trudeau said. "For him to do that, that way, it bugged me. It bugged me because I know these things matter to him."

Trudeau said he thinks Singh made the decision because he was under pressure from his base to end the working relationship with the Liberals and create distance between the parties before the recent byelections in Winnipeg and Montréal.

"I wouldn't do that," Trudeau said, adding he believes "there's no hard feelings" over what happened between the two leaders.

Singh said he was ending the pact because the Liberals did not stand up to corporate interests.

In those recent byelections, the NDP managed to hang on to its seat in Winnipeg but the Liberals lost the safe seat of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun in Montréal to the Bloc Québécois.

That defeat came weeks after Conservative candidate Don Stewart bested his Liberal opponent in Toronto-St. Paul's, a seat held by the Liberals for more than 30 years.

"One of the things that I know that I would have liked to have been able to do earlier, is get the candidate in place and working the ground for longer," Trudeau said.

"In both of these byelections, we didn't give [Leslie Church] enough time on the ground, we didn't give [Laura Palestini] enough time on the ground."

Erskine-Smith — who is not running in the next election — asked Trudeau why, when Poilievre was named Conservative leader in September 2022, the Liberals didn't take "the fight to him" early on and instead gave Poilievre "a little more of a free pass" since he became leader.

Trudeau said that former prime minister Stephen Harper tried that immediate attack approach when Trudeau became leader and "none of that really worked."

"Did it define me? Not particularly, because Canadians sort of had an idea of who I was," he said. "Canadians don't have much of an idea of who Poilievre [is]. He's been in the House for 20 years, nobody knows who he is."

Under Poilievre's leadership, the Conservatives now lead the Liberals by almost 43 per cent to 23 per cent, according to CBC's Poll Tracker.

Trudeau said that he could have attacked Poilievre as soon as he became leader but thought his attention at the time should be focused on the pandemic recovery and fighting inflation.

"It could have worked, it might have worked … but at the same time there was something that didn't feel true to me in terms of, 'Now I'm going to pick a fight with him when I should be fighting for Canadians, when I should be trying to tackle inflation,'" he said.

The prime minister said he also calculated that it might be more advantageous to save those attacks for later.

"If I am going to drive someone down in the polls a year or two before an election, or even three or four years before an election, is that the best time to knock them down and lift myself?" he said. "Or do I want that to happen a little more organically, closer to the actual day when people choose?"

The message leading into the next election

The prime minister said that part of his message for the next federal election will be a warning to voters that the Conservatives will cut popular programs implemented by his government. 

"We have to highlight some of the things that we have done [that are] quite frankly are at risk," he said.

Trudeau said those accomplishments include the Canada Child Benefit, which has helped to reduce poverty in Canada, a national climate change policy, dental care, child care and progress toward a school meals program and limited pharmacare.

"But if Canadians don't understand the things that we've done, and that we've delivered, then there's a real challenge," he said.  

"We also have to have that positive ambition of, 'This is what we are going to do together in the next mandate, this is the next step of where we're going.' And that's something we're busy putting together with caucus and everyone right now."

Regrets over electoral reform 

Erskine-Smith asked Trudeau if he had any regrets lingering from his nine years in office. Without hesitation, the prime minister cited his handling of the electoral reform file. 

During the 2015 election, Trudeau promised to scrap the first-past-the-post system and replace it with an "electoral system that does a better job of reflecting the concerns, the voices of Canadians from coast to coast to coast."

Trudeau later abandoned the promise when he saw rising support for proportional representation (the option favoured by Erskine-Smith) rather than Trudeau's preferred option of a ranked ballot.

Reflecting on that decision this week, Trudeau said he made two key mistakes in managing that file. The first, he said, was allowing proportional representation to become part of the conversation at all.

"The second one was me not using my majority to bring in, to bring in the model that I wanted," he said. 

"I believe in ranked ballots. You give people choices to rank one, two, three [and] parties will try to pitch to be people's second or even third choice. And that brings in more cooperation and overlap between political parties in a way that counters anyone that is aggressively trying to polarize.

"But the consequences of changing our electoral system are so significant. When you change the way people are elected, it becomes really hard to change it … That idea of needing consensus across, and not having it, is why I chose to say, 'Ok, I'm not going to risk an irreversible change just to fulifl a promise I made to change this."

Trudeau described having to abandon electoral reform as "gut-wrenching."