Federal Election 2023 A Delusional Dream

On The Myth That Won't Die

Let’s dispatch with the substance of the issue of foreign interference – I think there should be a public inquiry and I do think certainty that David Johnston is not giving the Liberals the benefit of the doubt through a confirmatory process is the right way to go. I believe Johnston’s report today, but I also am aware that ethics issues require not just the lack of conflict, but the lack of appearance of a conflict. And in this case, I don’t know that Johnston can be seen as fully beyond reproach.

(I will gladly take this opportunity to shit on Sam Cooper, whose dogshit reporting has been corroborated to be bullshit by Johnston and who has been made a complete fool by this process. Short of his stories making him into a National star, his name will be synonymous for reporting hubris and failure in the same way Duke Lacrosse will forever be a short hand. And given his Watergate comparisons and refusal to listen to anyone who disagrees, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy, really.)

What is more interesting is the idea that because Johnston didn’t call for a public inquiry the NDP might pull the plug, an idea going around my mentions and Twitter, which seems to suffer from a basic misunderstanding of power and how it actually works. It’s counterintuitive, but if the NDP gained 20 seats at the next election from the Liberals and the math worked for a Liberal-NDP government, they’d have the exact same amount of power as they do now.

And there’s two massive downside risks for the NDP.

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There are, as always, four basic outcomes of a Canadian election – Conservative majority, Conservative minority, Liberal minority, Liberal majority. For those New Democrats upset I’m not considering an NDP government possible, I don’t give a shit, they might one day replace the Liberals but that day won’t be any time soon. Right now the NDP has their dream outcome, and for some reason people think they might roll the dice and risk it. They won’t.

I think it’s safe to say we can take a Conservative majority off the table – the math just doesn’t work for it, in my view. So there’s three options from going to an election – the status quo, a Tory government, and the Liberals not needing you anymore because they win a majority. Is a majority particularly likely? No, but would you bet your life – or even $100 – that Quebec won’t do classically Quebec bullshit and swing wildly in campaign? Given the Liberals are a 10 point lead in Quebec from a majority on the current lines (which is what would be used if the next election was held now), gambling on Quebec is a dumb strategy.

The other chance is Poilievre wins, a risk that I am obviously lower on than others but a lot of the political class believe to be real. Why, if you’re the NDP, would you willingly risk Poilievre and put your legislative agenda at risk? Well, a chance to win extra seats would be the answer, to which I scoff, because the NDP are going to get fucked when they go to the polls. How is Charlie Angus going to win again in Timmins? I don’t care that Nanos has them at 23%, we know that fades the second the actual prospect of actually having to vote NDP gets real.

The NDP has little money at this point – they had somewhere between $4M and $10M in net debt after 2021 excluding the value of fixed assets they won’t want to sell according to my best reading of their financial statements, and raised a shade under $7.5M in the five fiscal quarters since. Assuming they didn’t sell off those fixed assets, they’ll still likely be net positive in an asset test but reliant on debt to fund day to day running of the party. Even if I am wrong and they’ve gotten back to neutral, that’s no fucking condition to be fighting a campaign in.

But let’s put all of this aside, every bit of it, and assume that the NDP could get a Parliament that’s 140 Liberals and 45 NDPers instead of 160 elected on the ballot as a Liberal Liberals and 25 NDPers. How does the NDP have any more power than they have right now? The NDP’s leverage doesn’t come from the size of the caucus, but from whether or not it is a necessary component of government. For some reason, there’s this idea from some that the NDP having more seats would give them more leverage, but it won’t.

In Australia 2010, Julia Gillard needed to secure the votes of the crossbench to govern and so she had to promise the Greens a carbon tax after explicitly ruling one out for the support of one (1) singular lower house MP. Would the Greens have had more leverage if they had 3 MPs? No, because the leverage comes from necessity, and with the Bloc’s current hostility to the Liberals they’re pretty essential.

So, the end game for the NDP is to take a massive risk and potentially see all their leverage go, all for a best case scenario where they have the same amount of power as they did this time – except the Liberals are now jaded and pissed off, and might not be willing to offer them as much stability and substance in policy terms. Oh, and their leader doesn’t have his pension yet.

Not to be that guy but Jagmeet gets the pension in 2025, and while he is obviously favoured in Burnaby South he is not an overwhelming favourite, given the NDP’s general polling malaise on the west coast. It’s not necessarily determinative, but if you’re tallying the reasons he’ll go for one or not, this has to be one why he won’t.

I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be so glib about the risks of an election this year. Yes, the NDP forcing an election in 2023 would be the single stupidest decision in Canadian politics of my life and risk everything they claim to care about for no discernible policy upside, but hey, maybe they’re stupid enough to do it. I mean, they’re not, but let’s let Conservatives dream anyways.