Fun and games in the Canadian Parliament

Another major test in Parliament for the minority Liberal government yielded a show of faux brinkmanship. 

Today's vote on the 2025 federal budget was a confidence vote, and a failure could have resulted in a new election just six months after the last one. Given that pretty much no-one - from the official opposition Conservatives to the much-reduced and leaderless NDP, the Bloc and the Greens, to the Canadian voting public in general - wants an election right now, or any time soon for that matter, all parties had to be quite careful about how they voted. Neither the Conservatives nor the NDP are in any position to fight a new election at the moment.

Yes, of course, the oppositon parties wanted to demonstrate to their voting base their opposition to the government, but they didn't want to do it in such a way that the Liberal government was brought down, thereby triggering an election. The Liberals are two seats short of a majority, so a straight party line vote was not an option. The vote also came hard of the heels of the Conservatives' loss of two of its caucus, one crossing the floor to the Liberals and one resigning completely.

In the end, two NDP members and two Conservative MPs abstained from the vote, thus allowing the Liberals a slim victory of 170-168, while still allowing the opposition parties to say that they voted against the bill. The sole Green MP, Elizabeth May, agreed to vote in favour of the bill after a last-minute agreement with Prime Minister Carney to beef up the Liberal's climate change agenda, which Carney has been gradually trashing since he assumed power. The result of all this wheeling and dealing is that the budget bill passed by a slim two-vote margin, with no Christmas election is in prospect.

You could call it smoke and mirrors. You could even call it a travesty of democracy. Or you could call it realpolitik and democracy in action, depending on your predilections. Yes, it was a rigged vote, but a vote rigged with the explicit permission of all parties. It's anybody's guess what would have happened if MPs had actually voted with their consciences, but this vote was all about optics and little else. Conscience just didn't come into it.