NDP sending mixed signals on whether it will vote non-confidence in the Trudeau government
The NDP’s vague messaging doesn't appear to be hurting the party in the polls
After Chrystia Freeland's sudden and unexpected resignation from the Trudeau cabinet earlier this week, it seemed clear that the NDP would vote non-confidence in the government, triggering an early election. It hasn't been clear since.
The party seems to be backing away from comments NDP House leader Peter Julian made on CBC's Power and Politics hours after Freeland quit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet. Host David Cochrane asked Julian if the NDP would vote non-confidence in a Trudeau-led government.
"When it's a straight-up confidence motion, the end of February (or) early March. If we have the continued debacle and the prime minister has not stepped down … so yes, the NDP as the adults in the room would step up on that," Julian said.
In his comments on Monday, Julian went further than NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who told reporters at one point that all options were on the table.
But then on Wednesday, Singh said he did not want to commit himself to any one course of action and would not promise to help take down Trudeau's government.
"Why would I box myself in and say I am going to do something definitive when we don't know what is going to happen?" Singh told CTV News on Wednesday.
"I am not going to speculate. I don't know what the votes are going to be. I don't know what they are going to be presenting to us. So I am not going to box myself in."
Singh said that he would decide once there's a non-confidence motion in front of him. The NDP leader said he does not know what Canada will face in the first few months of 2025, given U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's promise to slap high tariffs on imports of Canadian goods.
The House of Commons returns on Jan. 27, a week after Trump's inauguration day. Singh questioned whether fighting those punitive tariffs might be more important for Canadian workers than triggering an early election.
Singh called on Trudeau to resign for the first time on Monday, shortly after Freeland's departure. She resigned after Trudeau informed her that he would be replacing her as finance minister and she would be assigned to another cabinet post.
Karl Bélanger, former principal secretary to previous NDP leader Tom Mulcair and now head of Traxxion Strategies, said it's difficult to follow the party's thinking since it cut ties with the Liberals in September by ending its governance agreement with them.
"The logic and the positioning doesn't seem to be followed by concrete actions. And so it begs the question of what will they actually do the next time a confidence motion comes up," Bélanger said.
Despite the lack of clarity, Bélanger said the party's current messaging doesn't seem to be harming the New Democrats.
"Well, they don't seem to be paying a political price for supporting an unpopular government," he said. "They have not been going down in the polls.
"That said, they have not been going up."
According to CBC's Poll Tracker, support for the NDP has remained consistently above 15 per cent since the last federal election in 2021. The latest averages show Liberals are polling just above the New Democrats, with less than three points separating the two parties.
New Democrats have been under pressure to join other opposition parties in overthrowing the government. On Tuesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to follow through on his tough talk.
"He has got to end his hypocrisy and stop selling out the people and put his votes where his words are to trigger an election, to join with me in signalling non-confidence, to bring down this government as soon as legally possible using any means legally possible," Poilievre said.
If Singh sends a clear signal that he would bring down the government at the first opportunity, he could accelerate efforts within Liberal circles to oust Trudeau.
In an open letter, Liberal MP Wayne Long — one of more than a dozen Liberal MPs publicly calling on Trudeau to step down — inaccurately claimed that "Jagmeet Singh has already stated the NDP will vote non confidence in the government if Justin Trudeau remains as Liberal leader."
"MPs must consider whether you want to go into a February election with a leader whose favourability is -42 or hope to hold on for an October election with a more popular leader offering a version of change," Long wrote in his letter.
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