Patrick Meagher
and Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — A political game of chicken over a key part of Canada’s agricultural economy threatens to send Canadians to the polls as early as this fall, according to some analysts’ breathless reading of the tea leaves. The prospect of dairy, egg and poultry quotas being a catalyst in the Trudeau government’s imminent defeat on Parliament Hill makes for great editorial fodder, but the brutal fact is, the economic and cynical self-interest of too many MPs makes a pre-Christmas election unlikely.
The Bloc Quebecois is threatening a non-confidence vote unless Bill-282 — a law enshrining the supply-managed sectors as non-negotiable during international trade talks — is passed into law by Oct. 29. The bill, popular with Quebec’s dairy producers, is currently tied up in the Senate, which is controlled by Liberal appointees.
But a non-confidence vote is unlikely to pass in October for two reasons. The Bloc needs the NDP to vote with them and the Conservatives but the NDP has no money to campaign for an election. Secondly, the only “supply management” that truly matters to most of this Ottawa crew is managing the supply of taxpayer-funded dollars into their personal bank accounts, in the form of their upcoming pensions, once they turn 65.
There are 80 MPs in the “class of 2019” — first elected on Oct. 21 that year — who are close to qualifying for the gold-plated MPs pension plan after a minimum six years in parliament. They will fall short of this retirement trough if they lose an election that is triggered before the currently scheduled election date of Oct. 27, 2025 (a date that was specifically extended from the original Oct. 21 to ensure no potential pensioner gets left behind.)
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh will qualify for the pension a little earlier, in February 2025, because he was first elected to the House of Commons in a February 2019 by-election. So, there’s no way that this opportunist wants an election before February. Singh has always been about Singh. Ripping up the NDP-Liberal agreement was just window dressing. After that photo-op, Singh immediately criticized the Liberals but his post-coalition NDP MPs then supported the Liberals in a confidence vote on Sept. 25 and again on Oct. 1.
The class of 2019, includes 22 Liberals, 7 NDPs, 19 Bloc and 33 Conservatives. But both the Conservatives and Bloc are riding high in the polls and the prospect of winning big clearly assuages any pension anxieties. Surely, the Conservatives in swing ridings have already been offered plum jobs if they lose in an early election.
As for the NDP, it’s no secret that Singh is not popular among his own. In this “me, myself and I” anti-Christian climate we live in, it’s hard not to imagine that NDP MPs have agreed to keep Singh alive as long as he agrees to keep them alive until late October next year because they all fear losing their seats.
