The NDP-Liberal Deal Is Over - Now What?

so any political news happened this week anything nothing okay yeah not so much as you may already know the NDP and liberal Supply and confidence agreement is officially over jmit sing ripped it up very theatrically with gestures and everything cuz he announced it in a video where he definitely totally wasn't reading off of a teleprompter it's a little awkward and there's lots of like spooky music when he talks about PV and Trudeau and he hilariously actually uses a clip of Russian stock footage even after PV got made fun of for that check your stock footage sources media people we look that up now it's a thing and a bunch of footage of him gripping people's upper arms and shoulders that's how you show connection you see please note if you ever do that to me I will run away as quickly as possible answer yourself then it pivots to this weird vague message of hope it's got very anything is possible sort of Vibes and the reason why he's saying anything is possible is cuz he knows that nobody thinks he has any real shot but he wants to convince you that he does and hilariously enough he got ratio on the announcement if you're not familiar a ratio is when there are more comments and replies and quote tweets than there are likes and that's what happened here because people were dunking on them for a bunch of reasons and we're going to talk about them here because this whole thing's a mess the NDP didn't even tell the Liberals they were leaving the agreement until 8 minutes before the Public Announcement and they sent it to the public pmo's email address magnificent stuff so first up I want to talk about the deal what got done and what got left behind and then I want to talk about the political calculus behind all this CU it's kind of nonsensical sing really booted this one for a bunch of reasons so first off the supply and confidence agreement so it had a bunch of different categories first off Healthcare it talked about Dental Care pharmacare Healthcare funding and a long-term care act and all of those except for the safe Long-Term Care Act are in motion there was a bunch of housing measures Each of which was implemented at least to some extent bunch of emissions reductions targets and goals that were at least implemented again to some extent 10 days of guaranteed paid sick leave for all federally regulated workers which is indeed in place and legislation against replacement workers better known as scabs again both done there're also bunch of reconciliation measures in the agreement which were largely followed a tax reform promise that definitely didn't happen and a beneficial ownership registry which did there was also stuff about expansions to voting access which are agreed upon but also haven't been implemented yet just because there hasn't been an election yet but they're in motion so basically everything in the deal was more or less done or in motion with the exceptions of the safe Long-Term Care Act and the tax reforms as well as some other smaller elements of the agreement so if all of that stuff was already in motion or across the line for the most part You Must Be Wondering to yourself why did the n stay in the deal in the first place and the answer is because of the influence that it gave them so there's a monitoring element built into this where they're like committee oversights and the NDP get briefings on government actions and all of these different sort of things there's a lot of cooperation and collaboration built into a supply and confidence agreement not at the same level as a coalition it's different but it's there and so this whole time sing and the NDP have been making this decision around the benefits of the political influence that they get and the costs of being attached to the liberal brand which is clearly not doing well right now and that brings us to the political strategy of ending the deal cuz it's confusing because jmit sing is threatened to end this deal a few times now including at the end of the rail strike when the workers were ordered to binding arbitration and that was a perfect opportunity he could have ended the deal right then and there and made it very clear he was standing with workers but he didn't he hesitated then on August 29th Pierre PV put out this letter calling jmit sellout sing and demanding that he end the supplying confidence deal and call a fall election and then 6 days later sing ended the supply confidence deal just out of nowhere so he showed the he is his own Man by directly following instructions bold and this really looks like a terrible strategic decision because he didn't get anything it's not attached to anything and what I mean by that is that there's power in the agreement there's power in maintaining that agreement but there's also power in ending it the threat of ending it is a lever that you can use to try to extract some sort of commitment from the liberals so here's my question what power did he exercise in ending this agreement what concessions did he even try to secure from the Liberals he didn't he just ended it he had power available and he just wasted it and so you're left wondering why would he do this and the only real answer available is cical political calculus there's a couple of things playing into this and they're all elections really that's what it comes down to there's a Montreal byelection coming up in about 2 weeks that the NDP seem to think that they can steal a seat in and they're trying to distance themselves from the liberals who have held that seat for a long time but at the same time there were also NDP running in provincial elections in BC and Saskatchewan and both of those parties were being dragged down to at least some extent by the relation ship with the federal ntp more specifically their connections to the federal liberals through it but the play here makes no sense but think about it in poker terms jmit sing has just laid down his hand and played his cards without making a bet he isn't trying to extract anything from his opponents here he's not trying to get anything from the other person he's just playing his cards it makes no sense and this is where we get to the second part of the cynical explanation he's trying to save his own political career he knows that his time as party leader is running out and he needs to do something in order to try to save his political fure future he needs to do something to try to break them out of that 15 to 20% polling level that they've been trapped in for the better part of a decade but in this last ditch attempt to make waves and save his political careers he's given up all of his leverage and it's for nothing because the Liberals know that he's not going to call an election the NDP don't have the money for an election and the NDP aren't prepared for an election and why would they call an election to come in third maybe fourth place and so the Liberals are going to call this Bluff and likely just wait it out until next October Pier PV is going to bring forward a confidence vote every 20 minutes and they're all going to fail because the NDP had made it very clear that their primary priority is stopping Pierre pev so why would they call an election that he's going to win so the Liberals are the big winners here they don't have to call an election they can now set their own policy agenda and they know that the NDP aren't going to call their Bluffs and the conservatives win here too because it looks like Pierre PV gets to tell jmit Singh what to do I have no issues with ending the supply and confidence agreement there were reasons to do that but there were also strategic ways to end it this is probably the worst way I can think of like just abruptly ending it out of nowhere in the first week of September with no explanation other than liberals bad is nothing what does that accomplish where did that get the NDP how did that Advance their cost that's the real question we need to ask here they had a political lever and they wasted it and they've left a lot of liberal voters feeling betrayed a lot of NDP voters feeling frustrated and a lot of conservative voters feeling emboldened really nailed it screwed it up on all fronts ah to know the NDP is to no disappointment take care of yourselves folks [Music]