Somehow, only the Bloc survive Budget 2025 with their integrity intact
Félicitations, Monsieur Blanchet !
On a narrow margin of 170 MPs to 168, the Canadian House of Commons has voted to pass Budget 2025, avoiding a collapse of confidence and thus a snap winter election. Despite all the suspense, the Liberals were able to beat the opposition and crossbench in a photo finish to keep Mark Carney’s premiership alive.
But wait, hold on one second. This is a minority government! The Liberals only have 170 MPs, and one of those is bound up as Speaker of the House, meaning they really have just 169. The Conservatives (143) opposition, and the crossbenchers in the Bloc (22), NDP (7) and Greens (1) collectively held 173 seats. So by all accounts, if they didn’t support the budget, it should not have passed.
Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre was emphatically clear that “100% of [Conservative] MPs oppose the costly Carney credit card budget, that is going to drive up the cost of food, housing and living for Canadians.” The NDP discussed how to deploy resources in a snap election, as they were fundamentally opposed to the austerity measures in the budget that would decimate the public service.
And sole Green MP Elizabeth May said she was opposed to the budget for its lack of environmental commitments, remarking that “there was much less for climate in this budget than I had thought, even when my expectations were low”. So, certainly all three of these factions did not vote to help pass a budget fundamentally incompatible with the platforms they were elected on as MPs, right?
Right?
It’s fair to say the Liberals damage their integrity with every other law they attempt to pass—after all, I left for that very reason—but Budget 2025 is itself fundamentally contradictory to the campaign they ran. In my opinion, Budget 2025 is in essence a conservative budget…and maverick Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith said the exact same thing.
Liberal MP for Carleton Bruce Fanjoy unseated Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre by campaigning to an Ottawa riding filled with public servants about how he would protect their jobs from the Tories. Now, he votes for the Liberal budget that cuts tens of thousands of public service jobs. Pathetic.
Two Conservatives ended up abstaining, including Matt Jeneroux, who announced earlier this month that he would be resigning soon as an MP, and Shannon Stubbs, who in complete fairness was receiving surgery for a congenital health problem and is on strict bedrest orders.
But curiously, Tory MPs Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid, both in caucus leadership roles, were hovering just outside the chamber, and once they realized there were enough votes for the budget to pass, quickly ran in to record nay votes. The implication we can draw is if there were one or two fewer votes for the Liberals, one or both of them may have abstained as well.
And while five of seven NDP MPs voted against the budget, two of them abstained as well, a move which helps reduce the number of MPs needed for a majority of the votes. Revealingly, one of those two, Lori Idlout, had her vote change from a nay to an abstention, implying that like the Tories, the NDP were ensuring enough of them abstained to pass the budget as well.
Absurdly, NDP interim leader Don Davies told the media and the public that this was in fact true, that the Liberals refused to make any concessions to them, yet they refused to tell the public what they wanted to be included, and then coordinated enough abstentions to help it pass. If that is the case, why have only two of them abstain and not all seven? Why not have all seven vote in favour?
The entire point of doing this sort of thing is to create a fiction for the public, and yet you immediately dispel that fiction the moment you talk to the media? Are the NDP stupid?
And finally, Elizabeth May goes from stomping on a copy of the budget in front of reporters on November 7th, to voting for the budget just ten days later, not because of any amendment to the budget, but merely because Carney made her a verbal promise, and surely a Liberal would never break their word!
What you’ll note is that I have not yet mentioned the Bloc Québécois. That is because, as the headline indicates, they are the only party to engage in Budget 2025 without any bullshit, and that is remarkable in our current political environment.
Rather than being vague with demands like the NDP were, the Bloc put forward six clear and objective policies they wanted to be included in Budget 2025. That is exactly how crossbench parties are supposed to operate; you promise to vote in favour if the bill supports your platform, and you vote against if it does not.
Furthermore, when the budget failing means a snap election, making clear statements to the public on your priorities essentially acts as campaign material. Voters cast their ballots based on the values communicated by political candidates, and the Bloc made a smart decision to explicitly communicate those values by negotiating in public.
Mind you, I don’t actually like these six demands, but the Bloc aren’t targeting me as a voter—for one, I live in Ontario—and my personal feelings are less important than the politicians being clear and explicit in general to the wider public.
So even though I don’t think we need to increase Old Age Security or offer interest-free loans to first-time homebuyers, both of which would worsen inequality rather than fix it, I respect them being clear about what they want and what their voters can expect from them.
And when the Liberals were largely unresponsive to any of these six demands? The Bloc made it clear they would vote against, and then all twenty-two of them did. They said what they would do, and then they did what they said. Truly a refreshing attitude in our cynical times!
So I congratulate the Bloc Québécois, on being the only federal party to successfully escape Budget 2025 with their integrity intact.
Félicitations, Monsieur Blanchet! Enjoy your moral victory!