By Lori Turnbull

September 22, 2024

Justin Trudeau is brimming with confidence. Nothing seems to get him down – not byelection losses, not dismal polling numbers, not the end of the supply and confidence agreement with the New Democrats, and not the departures of key ministers and staff.

The Prime Minister insists on leading the Liberal Party into the next election despite the growing sense that his personal brand is the Liberals’ most insurmountable ballot drag. Abacus Data reported earlier this month that 22% of people have positive views of Trudeau compared to a whopping 61% with negative views. As Liberal MP Alexandra Mendes has said when speaking of her constituents’ attitudes toward the Liberal leader: “It’s a very generalized … ‘we’re tired of his face’ kind of thing,” Mendes has also said she’s “not confident” the Liberals can win the next election.

As soon as the NDP put an end to the supply and confidence agreement, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre promised to put forward a motion of non-confidence in the government “at the earliest possible opportunity” in an effort to kick the Liberals while they’re down and to pressure the NDP and the newly-empowered Bloc Québécois to bring the government down with him.

Since then, bluffs have been called left, right, and centre. First, the Liberals granted Poilievre his wish by scheduling a Conservative opposition day for September 24th. Poilievre confirmed immediately that they would use this window to table a motion stating that, “The House has lost confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.”

Both the NDP and the Bloc have already indicated they won’t play ball. Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet is adamant that he won’t support a motion intended to replace Trudeau with Poilievre, while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says that a Poilievre government would cut the dental care program that he negotiated with the Liberals through the supply and confidence agreement.

All of this means that the motion is on track to fail and the Liberal government will live to fight another day. But where does “confidence” in Trudeau and the Liberals really sit?

In parliamentary systems such as ours, the concept of confidence has constitutional significance. It is an imperative rather than a “nice to have.” Responsible government means that a government needs the confidence of the majority of MPs to govern legitimately. Majority governments can rest easy because they hold enough seats to meet the confidence threshold without help from any other party. Minority governments, however, must negotiate with opposition parties to ensure that they don’t fall.

The primary effect of the supply and confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP was to allow the Liberals to act as though they had a majority government even though they didn’t. Though this situation had the political effect of putting the NDP in a corner, there is no denying that it signified that the NDP had confidence in the Liberal government to implement the commonly agreed-to goals set out it the text of the agreement.

When Singh broke up with the Liberals, his parting words were as follows: “Justin Trudeau has proven again and again he will always cave to corporate greed. The Liberals have let people down. They don’t deserve another chance from Canadians.” This sounds like a man who has lost confidence in the government. Blanchet has said point blank that he doesn’t have confidence in the Trudeau government.  We all know where the Conservatives stand on this issue and even Liberal MPs – at least, some of them – are reportedly less than confident.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we seem to have a minority government that has a crisis of confidence – and therefore a crisis of legitimacy – but the two smaller opposition parties aren’t willing to join the larger opposition party in pulling it down because they aren’t ready for an election, or they fear that what comes next will be worse.

Politically, this is a completely legitimate option for the NDP and the Bloc. They are under no obligation to follow Poilievre’s instructions. But when political parties continue to support a government that they have no real confidence in, it cheapens democracy and makes parliamentary accountability a sham. That said, maybe they do have confidence in the Liberals (at least, more confidence than they have in the Conservatives) and their rhetoric to the contrary is just posturing. Either scenario undermines the integrity of our democracy and the value of the confidence convention as a mechanism to hold government to account.

For as long as this Parliament lives, we will speculate about when and under what circumstances the next election will be called. There is a palpable sense that Trudeau and the Liberals have overstayed their welcome, but the opposition will not use the tools at its disposal to remove them.

Policy Columnist Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.