Why Canada’s progressive party just dumped Trudeau

OTTAWA — Liberal control of Canada’s Parliament has been propped up by a working deal with the New Democratic Party. Now the party’s leader is killing the agreement — and abandoning Justin Trudeau — in a damaging blow to the embattled prime minister.

Political pressure, a lack of traction for the agreement and Trudeau’s abrupt intervention in a union dispute sealed an early end to an arrangement that’s kept the minority Liberal government securely in power for the past two and a half years.

The surprise move has primed Canadians for the possibility the next election will come sooner than planned, leaving the prime minister with little time to try to regain his political footing.

“We know that makes the election timing more uncertain and frankly more likely,” New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh said this week. “We are ready to fight an election whenever it happens.”

Everyone knew the governing agreement would die eventually, but the sudden rupture sent Canada's political class into a frenzy trying to figure out what exactly provoked Singh to spring into action so hastily.

A glance in the rearview and a peek at the political calendar reveal why.

Liberals picked a fight with unions

Last month, the Liberal government stepped in to quickly resolve a labor dispute that had ground national rail transport to a halt and stopped a chunk of international trade along with it.

The decision to intervene left a sour taste in the mouth of Trudeau’s socialist partner in Parliament.

Singh blasted the government for sending the union and two rail companies into binding arbitration and acknowledged this was one factor that contributed to his break with the Liberals.

“It added to the overall examples that we had seen of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals simply being too weak, too selfish and frankly, too beholden to corporate interests to stop big corporations from ripping off everyday Canadians,” Singh explained at a news conference in Toronto on Thursday.

NDP wanted a clean break

There’s also a heavy dose of electoral strategy at play.

“Why you're seeing Singh pull support from the agreement now is actually to set things up for an election in 2025,” former NDP adviser Jordan Leichnitz said. “He needs some time, some runway, to create distance between himself and Trudeau.”

Singh’s fourth-place party first inked the deal in spring 2022 that granted automatic support to the Liberals in Parliament, where Trudeau’s party is outflanked and could fall if he loses support of a majority of members of Parliament in the House.

The deal was to expire in June 2025 which gave Trudeau a timeline for how long he would govern before having to go to the polls. In return, Singh extracted progressive policy gains on social programming: prescription drug coverage for diabetes medication and contraceptives, labor protections and dental insurance for routine procedures for some groups, including seniors and children.

These programs have so far failed to help either leader politically, while the deal brewed frustrations within the ranks of their own parties.

Until this week, NDP fortunes were latched onto Trudeau’s sinking ship, which explains why Singh is eager to break free.

Leichnitz said there was a strong sense in the party brain trust that the NDP needed to distance themselves from the Liberals by “pivoting back to issues that are a little bit more favorable for us and, frankly, not being pulled down by Trudeau’s terrible national numbers.”

Polling aggregator 338Canada has shown Trudeau consistently 20 points behind his main rival , Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, for the past year, on the back of problems plaguing incumbent governments around the world: high housing costs, battered health care systems and unmanageable gas and grocery bills.

All the while, Singh has trailed Trudeau and is projected to lose seats.

The deal was done

Some of the rationale for leaving the deal is practical. Singh’s party had to make big compromises on some of the policies — it originally wanted expansive drug coverage, not a small, limited program to start — and felt the government was moving too slowly. And it had just about run out of things it could still extract from the arrangement.

But Singh faces some immediate political pressure as well. Two highly anticipated federal by-elections — off-cycle races to replace lawmakers who made early exits from Parliament — are coming up in Montreal and Winnipeg on Sept. 16. The NDP is angling to snatch one of those seats from the Liberals, while the other one is a party stronghold that could be in danger of being lost to the Conservatives.

Singh is poised to huddle with his caucus ahead of the fall sitting of the legislature. NDP lawmakers spent the summer getting an earful at the doors.

In the meantime, Poilievre has campaigned as the anti-Trudeau and rocketed in the polls, championing concerns about the cost of living crisis and blaming the prime minister and “sellout Singh” for life becoming unaffordable to Canadians.

Singh is now posturing to push Trudeau’s name out of the ballot-box question, arguing he’s too weak to take on Poilievre. He’s eager for a one-on-one fight that pits his message of hope and change against an aggressive right-wing personality.

Upending the power-sharing pact dumps a big heap of uncertainty onto the political calendar, in what could be Trudeau’s last year as prime minister.

The election is scheduled for fall 2025, but the dissolution of the deal means one could be triggered in spring — or even this fall, though the U.S. election and three provincial contests might get in the way.

An early election could deal a blow to Trudeau’s hopes of a comeback, as his team crosses their fingers that the economic conditions will improve enough during the next year to shore up their prospects.

The Conservatives want a fall election fight, but there’s little incentive for Singh’s cash-strapped party to stand against the government in a snap vote that would send the country to the polls.

Trudeau said this week he still hopes an election won’t come until fall 2025, and that Singh will continue to cooperate with him in Parliament, deal or no deal.