People have been speculating as of late that a fall election could be right around the corner. These assumptions have only come about thanks to the thinking that the NDP would be the ones to trigger a fall election, at least according to some pundits in the Canadian political sphere that is. I’m here to point out why that’s simply not going to happen.
First and foremost, the New Democrats in parliament right now, despite their boisterous language against the Liberal minority, have power in this parliament. It’s simple to point out that the NDP would rather sit at twenty-four seats in a minority situation than win sixty seats in a majority situation and he’s not wrong. Why would the NDP risk losing the most leverage they’ve had in a number of years by assuming they could pick up a few stray seats here and there? The NDP knows the Liberals are still polling strongly and that they need the Liberals to slip hard for them to have a good chance at winning a large amount of seats in parliament.
Without the NDP being a major player in a minority setting, Canadians wouldn’t currently have some of the benefits they’ve enjoyed out of this pandemic parliament (Expansion of CERB, Wage Subsidy, etc). Given the NDP puts ideology first and electoral politics second, they’ll take every moment they can to use this minority situation to their advantage and push legislation and proposals that support what they deem to be best for Canadians.
Secondly, the NDP continue to be broke. They’re getting themselves out of the financial hole that they were left in prior to and after the 2019 federal election, posting larger non-election year fundraising totals then they did in 2018 this year. Yet, with a pandemic currently ongoing, much of a pandemic election will be centered around online and TV advertising and significantly less on door-to-door canvassing. That’s a clear disadvantage for the NDP who traditionally rely on that door-to-door activity to generate recognition for local candidates given the party has historically been outspent on the advertising front by the Liberals and Conservatives. New Democrats know they’d be going into a pandemic election with a severe hindrance inflicted upon them if they didn’t have the cash on hand needed to push advertising into people’s homes and workplaces.
I think my last point goes without saying; the NDP does not want to be the party that pulls the plug on a government that sends Canadians to the polls. Rarely does pulling the plug on a minority government go well for the party that triggers the election and the NDP certainly don’t want to be blamed by the other four parties for doing so. I’ve got a hunch that Singh specifically wants to stray away from that given he was present during the time that Andrea Horwath pulled the Ontario NDP’s support from the Liberals and triggered the 2014 provincial election that backfired and gave the Liberals a majority government, leaving the NDP out to dry for four years.
If the NDP is smart they’ll let this minority government drag out for as long as they can. The longer this parliament lasts, the more chances the Liberals have at messing up with yet another scandal and the longer we drag away from Covid the smaller that Covid-bump becomes for the Liberals. The longer it lasts, the more chances the NDP have at pushing legislation they want to get passed and the more money they can get back into their party coffers for the impending election.