While minority government cooperation between Canada’s two left-of-centre parties has produced some of the country’s defining social policies, that parliamentary collaboration has always been a delicate dance toward the necessity of distance delineation come election time. As longtime Pierre Trudeau adviser Tom Axworthy writes, which party ultimately benefits at the polls depends on a number of elements, some more volatile than others. 

Thomas S. Axworthy

There are few surprises in Ottawa, but it is fair to say that the ambitious, three-year accord unveiled on March 22 by Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh was not anticipated by either the parliamentary caucuses of the two parties (which only heard of it the evening before the announcement, as did many in the Liberal cabinet, which met in a hastily scheduled meeting) or by pundits and the media generally.

Trudeau and Singh agreed to a confidence and supply pact that would allow the Liberals to govern with NDP support until 2025 if the government implemented specific NDP priorities, such as passing a Canada Pharmacare Act by 2023 and launching a new dental care program for low-income Canadians. Just two weeks after the accord, the April 7 budget announced funding for dental care for Canadian families with incomes less than $90,000, beginning immediately with care for children under 12, with full implementation for the whole family by 2025. The Trudeau-Singh accord is already making a difference.

Though a signed agreement with a set time frame is new to minority government management in Ottawa, there are precedents: the minority Liberal government in Yukon signed a confidence and supply agreement with the NDP to run from April 2021 to January 2023, and the NDP negotiators involved in the deal-making would have known well the 2017 NDP-Green Party pact on supply and budget issues that led to John Horgan replacing Christy Clark as Premier of British Columbia. 

There is also a long history of Liberal-NDP interaction in minority parliaments (composed in equal measure of cooperation and discord) that should inform the joint oversight committee the parties set up to manage the pact over the next three years. Policy substance and attempts to gain political advantage defined past Liberal-NDP accords and they will inevitably be in play in the new agreement.

Pearson-Douglas

In April 1963, Lester Pearson became prime minister, winning a near-majority of seats but dependent on the NDP, led by Tommy Douglas, the former premier of Saskatchewan (whose party had won 17 seats in the then-265 seat House), to keep him in power as Pearson daily fended off attacks from John Diefenbaker. Happily, the Liberal party was in a reformist phase, led by ministers like Walter Gordon and Allan MacEachen and the 1963 Liberal platform had endorsed Medicare and a Canada Pension Plan. 

Tommy Douglas was the “father” of Hospital Insurance and Medicare, having introduced both in Saskatchewan so both parties easily found common ground. Walter Gordon recounts in his memoirs a “friendly” meeting in his apartment with Douglas, David Lewis and Doug Fisher and, indicative of the times, Pauline Jewett was a prominent Liberal MP promoting progressive causes in the Pearson era. After becoming President of Simon Fraser University she later became an NDP member from British Columbia.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Pearson minority governments of 1963-68, supported by the NDP, transformed Canada in the area of social policy. Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress lauded these achievements in a recent article in the Hill Times and maintained that “The 2022 confidence and supply agreement has the potential to produce similar historic results”.

Trudeau-Lewis

In the 1972 election, Pierre Trudeau was returned to government with only two seats more than the Conservatives led by Robert Stanfield (109 seats to 107) with the NDP holding 31 seats, due in large measure to the brilliant election campaign waged by NDP Leader David Lewis. In his 1968-72 government, Trudeau had introduced significant legislation on national unity, such as the Official Languages Act, and began his long odyssey of attempting to patriate the constitution. 

But he also had to consolidate revenues to fund the social advances of the Pearson era and, except for unemployment insurance expansion, had little of substance in social programs. This was exploited by Lewis, who painted Trudeau as a closet conservative who had balanced the budget rather than helping workers. Lewis said about the Prime Minister, “There but for the grace of Pierre Elliott Trudeau sits God.” In the 1972 campaign Lewis coined the phrase “corporate welfare bums” to attack the government for being too close to the corporate sector and not close enough to the poor.

Lewis demanded a specific list of initiatives as his price for propping up the minority government and Trudeau was quick to comply. Lewis, it was said, was the best national policy director the Liberal party ever had: 1973 saw the full indexing of pensions, the removal of the sales tax on children’s clothing, universal family allowances were nearly tripled and the list goes on. Allan MacEachen, who had managed relations with the NDP for Pearson, did the same for Trudeau and met privately with Lewis often to negotiate issues such as the size of proposed pension increases. In 1973, OPEC radically increased oil prices and Lewis began to demand a national oil company: the Liberals then created Petro Canada, for a time Canada’s main instrument to increase Canadian ownership in the sector though eventually the company was privatized by the Mulroney government.

Perhaps the most enduring reform of the Trudeau-Lewis entente was the 1974 Election Expenses Act, which introduced limits on election expenses along with public funding and tax credits for contributions. This somewhat neutralized the Liberal and Conservative advantage over the NDP and other smaller parties in election spending.

But the more progressive the Trudeau government became in social policy on Lewis’s urging, the more popular it became with voters. No longer could Trudeau be painted as a conservative clone. And the frustrations of keeping the Liberals in power began to boil over in the NDP caucus, especially with members from the West. A B.C. New Democrat MP told me at the time, “I love what we are doing but do we have to do it with you?”. 

The Liberals, meanwhile, wanted an election but did not want to be blamed for calling one (as Justin Trudeau was for calling the 2021 election). Finance Minister John Turner had managed to cut corporate taxes in June 1973 with the support of the Conservatives, but he knew it was still a hot button issue for Lewis. Turner continued to deliver speeches strongly defending his policy of corporate tax cuts in the spring of 1974 and Lewis responded by making a “non-negotiable demand” for an excess profits tax. 

In his May 7th budget, Turner instead emphasized fiscal responsibility and rather pointedly snubbed his nose at the NDP. On May 8th, the NDP voted against the budget and the House fell. For his part, Trudeau used his address to the House to somewhat cruelly describe “David the Daisy,” pulling off petals while pondering an election or not. In the July 1974 election, capitalizing on his restored progressive image, Trudeau was returned with a majority, the NDP lost half of its seats and Lewis was defeated personally in York South.

Martin-Layton

The Martin minority government in 2004 had an even narrower parliamentary footing than Trudeau in 1972 — the Liberals 135 seats plus the NDP’s 19 under Jack Layton equalled 154, as did the combined total of the Conservatives, the Bloc and one independent, evenly dividing a 308 seat House. Like David Lewis before him, Layton demanded more than $5 billion in additional spending for public transit and housing, and the Martin government readily complied. So much so that the Conservatives under Stephen Harper said the 2005 budget “was the first NDP budget.” But perhaps remembering what had happened to their predecessors in 1974, Layton and his team were very hard-nosed when it came to politics. Martin was wounded politically because of the Gomery Commission and the NDP thought they could increase their seats, especially as Layton could take credit for the 2005 budget.

The Martin government, however, was about to implement a long- awaited national childcare program painstakingly negotiated with the provinces by Ken Dryden and the government had just signed the Kelowna Accord with First Nations.

Yet, on November 28, 2005, Layton supported the non-confidence motion of the Conservative opposition. In the 2006 election Layton attacked Martin, rarely mentioning Harper. As explained by Brad Lavigne, a Layton adviser, “We needed to attack the Liberals hard to make it unpalatable for our supporters to switch to the Liberals in the final days.” The NDP political strategy worked as they increased to 29 seats and 17 percent of the vote. But  Harper became PM and national daycare was delayed for another 15 years. The Kelowna Accord never happened.

The 2022 Liberal-NDP accord was negotiated as truckers filled the streets of Ottawa and many despaired about the future of the country. The pact, however, will provide stability for three years and the two parties are pledged to work together on a common agenda. As Tommy Douglas once said, “Dream no little dreams” and, as his career demonstrated, never let excessive partisanship get in the way of making dreams into reality.    

Contributing Writer Thomas S Axworthy is Public Policy Chair at Massey College, University of Toronto. He was Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau from 1981-84.