In a re-enactment of his majority win four years ago, Justin Trudeau spent the morning at a Montreal subway station. But while his Liberal party finished with the most seats in Monday’s federal election, it’s a different political landscape today.
With a shift to a minority government situation, the focus now is how to manage it. The Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, is not going to make it easy for Trudeau.
“On his four years of failures, scandals and mismanagement. and just as we gained across the country, Trudeau and the Liberals lost. They lost seats in every region. And Canadians have put his government on notice,” Scheer said today in Regina.
But a different tone from the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh.
“We’ve got to work together. And so my focus is on delivering to Canadians, and the things that they need. And I’m willing to work with Mr. Trudeau to deliver those things,” Singh said.
In 2017, the B.C. provincial election resulted in a minority Liberal government that was eventually defeated during a confidence vote. Then the NDP’s John Horgan and the Green’s Andrew Weaver agreed to support each other during key votes in the legislature. But it takes time, according to B.C.’s finance minister Carole James, who negotiated for the NDP.
“I certainly remember the time after the election, while we had those conversations. It will take some time. It certainly will require a lot of conversation,” James said.
Two-and-a-half years after signing the agreement, B.C.’s Green Party leader Andrew Weaver offers this advice.
“One of the things I insisted on was that our leaders be in the room. To me that was critical. I mean, initially, there was recommendations from advisors that it’d be done without the leaders present. To me, you can’t get success unless you did,” Weaver said.
The success will depend on whether or not the leaders can find common ground.
Mary Griffin
