Interim NDP Leader Don Davies says the Liberals are making phone calls to NDP members of parliament to see if they will join the Liberal Party in an effort to reach a majority government.
Davies told Global News he’s not worried about his six other NDP MP colleagues switching political teams.
“I do know that there’s been certain calls made by Liberals. I would probably describe them more as ‘feelers’ that have been put out,” Davies said. “But I can tell you that in our two caucus meetings that we had, our NDP caucus colleagues have committed to being strong, united New Democrats in Parliament, and I have every confidence that they’re going to remain so.”
The Liberals earned 169 House of Commons seats in the federal election, just three short of a majority government. Global News reached out to the prime minister’s office to ask if they had approached NDP MPs about crossing the floor, and a spokesperson for the prime minister had no comment.
Prime Minister Mark Carney ruled out making a formal deal with the NDP when asked if he’d be interested in pursuing a governing pact at his first press conference after the election on May 2.
“No. Short answer, no,” Carney said. “Obviously by definition in Parliament, we will need to get majority support to pass legislation, but … we will be putting forth legislation that’s consistent with our platform and consistent with the requirements of the time.”
Nathan Cullen, a former NDP MP, says he thinks Carney is being “dismissive” of pursuing a deal because of political inexperience, but that he will likely change his mind once he realizes that the Bloc Québécois is an “unpredictable” and “expensive” political dancing partner.
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“There will come a time, I predict — and I feel pretty assured with this — that he’s going to have to phone up the Orange Caucus and find out if there’s some work that they could do together,” Cullen said.
The NDP went from 25 seats in the House of Commons to just seven in the last federal election, failing to keep the 12 seats needed to maintain official party status which guarantees a party speaking slots during question period and committees. The last time the party lost status was after the 1993 election with nine seats. The NDP regained official party status in the 1997 election.
Davies told Global News he has not spoken with Carney yet, but he is planning to ask if the prime minister will make the NDP an official party.
“If not that, then there’s other ways that Parliament can allocate money to different party caucuses in order to help them discharge their duties,” Davies said. “I go back to the fact this is a minority Parliament, and so making sure that parties can function in a responsible way, I think, is to everybody’s advantage, including Prime Minister Carney’s.”
While the party has not done a post mortem yet of what went wrong during the election campaign, both Davies and Cullen said the supply and confidence agreement former NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh made with former prime minister Justin Trudeau may have contributed to the slump in the polls.
“There’s certainly mistakes that were made. We’re not happy with where we’re at and we’re committed to doing better in the future,” Davies said. “That agreement, it produced excellent results for a lot of Canadians, but the electoral results for the NDP is not satisfactory… so we’re not in any hurry to enter into any agreement with anybody.”
“It’s a classic squeeze of a junior partner in a coalition government,” Cullen said. “You take a lot of the grief for the bad things, and you have a hard time taking credit for the good things.”
Singh announced his resignation on election night after losing his own seat of Burnaby Central with only 18.2 per cent of the vote share.
The rules and timeline for the leadership contest to choose the next permanent NDP leader have not yet been publicly announced.
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