New Era of Politics in Canada

if the current federal political circumstances seem familiar well maybe it's because we have been here before of our last seven elections five have resulted in so-called hung parliaments but history does suggest there are different paths forward that could make our apparent preference for minority parliament work and work well here to share their wisdom on that we welcome in kingston ontario hugh siegel who was chief of staff to both prime minister brian marooney and premier bill davis he's now ensconced at queen's university in london ontario kate graham professor of political science at western university and a former ontario liberal leadership candidate and in the nation's capital tonto mccharles parliamentary reporter with the toronto star and it's great to see you three again here on tvo i want to go through a couple of graphics relatively quickly off the top here just to set the scene for example here's what canadians decided in the groundhog day election we experienced the other day liberals at 158 conservatives 119 the block at 34 new democrats 25 2 greens and no people's party what does that mean going forward well what it means is if you need 170 votes to get anything passed the liberals need to find a dance partner that could mean 158 liberals plus 25 new democrats that gets you to 183 that's enough or how about 158 liberals and 34 block easts that gets you to 192. that's enough or there's some things maybe the liberals and the conservatives will unite on and that's 277 votes and that would be enough this is where we get hugh siegel into our discussion here by saying i want to take you back to 1977 where we had almost the same circumstances as we had today we had a premier who thought he was popular enough to call a snap election and get himself a majority government and he found out surprise surprise the public was not ready for that they gave him a few more seats but another minority that was bill davis you were there hugh siegel how do you begin to consider options after a second consecutive minority government performance well the first thing you do is you interpret the direction from the voters as clear and precise which is get back to work and stop the part of down cream and if you have a mirror on your desk put it in a drawer and get busy with working with the other political party and that's what mr davis said he would do on election night in fact in 77 and that's what he instructed cabinet and caucus to do and those of us who are on his staff so for example that resulted in the mechanical arrangement between the three parties called the joint legislative planning group unheard of in the history of ontario where our legislative people and their legislative people met on a weekly basis to look at the coming weeks our motto was the old um holiday inn morrow no surprises we would let them know what we needed to do they would let us know what they wanted to do they would let us know what they weren't prepared to agree with we accepted there were some things they had to step their flag on and disagree with and we also look for ways to work together and that continued for the entire four years where mr davis took that minority and made it into a de facto four-year majority government number one number two it's really important that for things that set the tones thrown creatures and budgets you don't put it out and see how the opposition reacts if you really want collaborative government you actually sit down with the opposition parties beforehand and see what you think they need and what they want to tell you they need so you can accommodate as much of that as possible in the program that's how you do collaborative government that's what the voters of ontario wanted that's what they got for 40 years and that is why mr davis at the end of that four-year period was able to win a majority because he had done what the voters had asked him to do during that four-year period and let me do a quick follow-up do you think that which you just described was unique to that time and those people or does it have application for today some of it related to the relationship of respect that existed between existing party leaders which have been built up over time um but i don't think there's anything particularly unique or particularly narrow about that approach it can work and to be fair to the present prime minister and tonda will know this and kate will no doubt agree no government has accepted more amendments from the opposition in majority and in minority and from the senate substantive amendments to legislation than the president trudeau administration so there is some of that collaborative dna there and i think the opportunity now is to make it real all right let's uh fast forward almost a decade and we want to take a look at the 1985 ontario election results because those delivered a hung parliament as well if you go back to 1985 you needed 63 seats for a majority government nobody got 63. the progressive conservatives had 52 under frank miller liberals 48 seats under david peterson which meant the ndp under bob ray held the balance of power so the ndp had a decision to make and to talk about that decision we are delighted to welcome back to the airwaves at tvo dave cook who was a member of the ndp government in ontario from 1990 to 95 and of course a member of the ontario legislature for many years before that as well dave i would like you if you would to take us to the discussions that you as part of the ndp caucus would have had in 1985 holding the balance of power how did you and your colleagues consider your options at that moment well we had several caucus meetings that's for sure and uh we looked at all of the options uh everything from having a full-fledged uh be part of the government uh with whoever we negotiated with uh to what we ended up with the the actual agreement with the conservatives um i would think though the dynamic during that time was so much different than it is today in that um there was pretty much a decision even though we were negotiating with both parties that the message coming out of the 85 election was the public the province was ready for a changing government and uh so we did negotiate with both the conservatives and the liberals but i think it was pretty much as consensus with uh caucus right at the beginning that if we got a deal with the liberals um that had enough of our stuff in it um that that's the direction we had to go um it would of course we would have lost our bargaining power if we had simply said all we're going to do is negotiate with the liberals so we had to go and talk to both parties i think the other thing that was important back then was um we had really good um staff too like in the pre in the uh leader's office um who got along with staff and the other leaders offices and i think that kind of dialogue aside from what mr siegel was just saying with uh the leaders it's also important to have really mature staff who aren't going to play games that simply want to find solutions because i don't know what your guests have said before me but i think the message coming out of the election on monday is you guys better go at least three and potentially four years we don't want to see you again that was definitely a message that came out of monday night i think that's fair to say tell me this though dave i'll do a quick follow-up with you here you know minority parliaments often just go bill by bill and they decide sort of as they go along uh what kind of program they want to pass 1985 was very different i mean the staff you just talked about and the leaders they sat down they worked out a program and a cord of items uh they were all listed what the items were there was several dozen of them both leaders separately but they both signed the agreement and agreed to have parliament last at least two years to get all this stuff done that was unique where the notion of doing it that way come from um i think that was bob's idea um bob ray bob ray's idea because we did have uh the question of whether we should go to a full coalition and there was a lot of um a lot of people that resi that just wouldn't go that direction and quite frankly in many of our caucus meetings we had senior party people um and labor involved in our in our caucus meetings to help us to see where they thought we should go and there was uh no appetite for um for a coalition except for a few of us um so uh the idea came that we had to have a formal agreement we had we couldn't go bill by bill because that way there would be no guarantee that we would have two years of stability and two years of getting a lot of our agenda as part of government policy okay kate graham come on in here and talk to me about this i well remember now this is 36 years ago but there were voices at the time saying this is unconstitutional and and if it's not unconstitutional it's highly irregular and highly suspicious this accord that the liberals and new democrats signed 36 years ago i mean you know your constitutional history here is there anything illegal unconstitutional irregular suspicious about any of that well i mean as a 37 year old i'm probably not the best authority uh to speak to this but you know we are coming up on i believe 50 minority governments in canada and if you include the yukon and the provinces and now 15 federally and i think there are lots of different arrangements that can work and to add to dave's comment earlier in terms of the message of this election i really think that canadians just they're focused on you know the challenges that we've all been through over the last few years they want to see progress on things like climate change housing and child care and so regardless of what that arrangement looks like i knocked on a lot of doors i didn't hear anybody talking about this what i did hear them talking about is wanting to see things like a universal uh accessible affordable child care system in canada so regardless of what this the coalition looks like whether it's build a bill or something that's built to be a bit more enduring i think what canadians are looking for in the next few weeks is a return to what we saw a bit of at the beginning of the pandemic where there was a real rise above of the partisanship and focus on the things that we know matter most to people right now no fair enough but uh you know we're all a bunch of political nerds here so we're going to get a little deep in the weeds which is not a terrible thing but i guess i'm curious you deal with university students smart young up and coming people every day of your professional life do they have an understanding in your view about what's what's sort of permitted and what's not when we have these hung parliaments and how it all works i mean i i do teach political science classes we talk a lot about the mechanics of how this can work but uh i'm teaching a course right now actually incidentally where we had students volunteering on campaigns in several ridings of four different political parties and again the thing that they're interested in is they observed firsthand how divisive our partisan our partisanship can be we saw some really unfortunate moments during this campaign i'm from london i was at the event where you know gravel was literally thrown at the prime minister um those are the things that i'm hearing that students are concerned about right now is in a moment where we're going through you know multiple crises and where our politics can be built to divide us is what are the avenues to be able to overcome that and i think there are examples in canadian history but there's also examples all around the world you know new zealand has had minority governments for the better part of the last 30 years they've taken different paths but i think we need to look at what are the big things we need to accomplish right now and what are the best ways to do that and that's what i'm hearing that students are are interested in right now gotcha all right to that end we'll pass the microphone to taunton charles because you know the players today do you have any sense about whether the liberals and their potential dance partners as we outlined on that show earlier are yet having discussions about how this next minority parliament could work not yet they definitely are not yet having those discussions because first of all the mail-in ballots haven't been counted there could be a shift although um i think there's some 17 writings where you know people are saying that things are still in play but but legitimately for the liberals sake i think there's about two to three seats that could go either way and that could bring them up to 160 or it could drop them down from 158 right to 156 so so they're not having those discussions yet and i talked to new democrat strategists on election night and you know they and i remember this from during the pandemic the way the uh government negotiated or didn't negotiate with um the other sides oftentimes they did come with a ready-made proposal here's what we want to do and there wasn't a lot of input in advance and we saw that for example in the emergency benefits for individuals the serb you know it it it was the pressure of not just the ndp and the conservatives but also liberal caucus members that eventually raised that up from 10 to 75 percent for people so look the ndp say those kinds of discussions they don't expect to get underway until for you know until they get closer the government gets closer to a forming his cabinet and and and uh developing a throne speech which suggested to me that they didn't expect to have a formal arrangement wherein they might have cabinet seats right um and the liberals to be honest i think they're still doing a very deep dive on the results and trying to figure out you know what exactly happened in different writings um but there's no question if we look at the overall picture that 60 of canadians if you combine all the progressive votes the liberal the ndp the greens voted for a program that the liberals put forward largely more aggressive action on climate change the 10 a day daycare and um i think where they might find support from the conservatives but the conservative conservatives are in no mood to start cooperating with the liberals right now because o'toole's trying to save his leadership so so but where they could find some common ground on that would be like on the affordability pocketbook issues you know the the housing measures and some of that stuff look all parties said they would um i think the phrase was build preserve or repair a million houses or a million plus so there are going to be areas of common ground i think for the prime minister what are what what argues for um moving quickly and getting big things done is because whether or not he stays around or wants to stay around passed a minority mandate into another either bid for a majority or what comes beyond he's going to want to get things done big things done either for himself and his next arguments his next prosecution of another election or for whoever comes behind him what mitigates against all that i believe is that um i don't think that many of the other parties are in the mood to help him although they do have to recognize they spent five weeks knocking on doors and hearing those messages so they know that canadians want them to get along uh i think the the push me pull you thing for aaron o'toole is he's under tremendous pressure right now and challenge and uh so you know it's it's i i honestly we're going to see a lot happen in the next six to eight weeks and that'll give but that will set the tone for the next parliament the election night speeches frankly i didn't find them all that conciliatory or um you know cooperative i mean frankly a lot of them hit all their election campaign talking points so all right in which case that takes me to hugh siegel again to say tonda has just told us that the phone calls have not yet started between the parties uh dealing with the new reality that they face drawing on your own experience how's that going to work who picks up the phone first who do they call how does it work well i think it's the prime minister who has to take the first step and quite aside from the telephone calls and all of that there are things the prime minister could do and signal now which would not offend his base but would respond to a strong public and parliamentary desire for example the other parties offered during the days of the pandemic for there to be a joint parliamentary oversight group looking at all the pandemic issues so they could be approached as as as appropriately in a non-partisan way i'm not suggesting the government was especially part of that but if the prime minister were now to propose and there's always a meeting of the last cabinet i wish there'll be some members showing up for the last time and before the new cabinet they could approve that proposal uh where all the parties would work together and establish a ten person committee of all the political parties looking at the pandemic and the future dynamics together that would be a very very positive signal to the other parties and to the country that he's serious about working together and if as kana perhaps worries uh one of the other parties may say we don't want to help that will reflect badly on them but i don't think that would be the response and dave cook do you sense any appetite in the current cast of characters for something as intriguing as the accord that you guys passed in 1985 or does this look more like a kind of a bill by bill minority parliament well i'm hoping that the ndp caucus when they because they would be the natural uh party to have some kind of an agreement with i'm hoping that they won't take that off the table that they'll actually talk about it in caucus um i think there's much overlap with the uh the two uh platforms uh the other thing i think i totally agree with uh with hugh it would be a terrific message if uh right away they get off the bat off the table and and start working together whether it's a committee or the leaders but doing something the pandemic because well i agree there are other priorities for this parliament right now a lot of people most people in this country just want to see um the pandemic dealt with and getting behind us so i think that's really important the other thing is i i read in the paper today some of mr singh's musings about what he wants to see done um and i would just very much caution leaders to start putting out on the table now what their demands are because i think it needs to be looked at together the caucus needs to come in and talk about it and see how they can work together but start putting out more demands um is just not going to work well that's it i mean kate q siegel started this by saying you need to have a a premier or a prime minister who is prepared to kind of share power more than has traditionally been the case do you see in the current liberal administration a willingness to kind of open up more share power more in order to make sure the minority parliament works so i'm feeling very hopeful right now i mean again we we started this discussion by talking about canadian history and there are lots of examples where major policy innovations have come from minority governments and have come from moments where we do see leaders extending the hand and saying we want to work together i heard from justin trudeau on this campaign repeatedly about the issues that i do believe are central to this moment i already mentioned climate change child care housing finishing the fight against covid19 i hope that all of the leaders across parties take the message away from this race that canadians want to see dramatic action we talk so much about buildback better in a new normal and we have this i think unusual moment right now to be able to make some major gains on things that like like child care that we've been talking about for decades it is long past time it is time to get that done and that's what i hope we see the focus on right now i was just gonna say that's no longer really even a fight right like the deals are signed with seven provinces one territory alberta has a signal to the government they are interested in at least talking about how that might look ontario as well so the child care piece i think as a result of the vote is going to move forward right it's on autopilot now it is going to happen um whether or not ontario or alberta ready to leave billions on the table and not do child care i doubt that um but but in terms of you know getting things done i i gotta say guys i feel you all sound so optimistic but um having come off not just that campaign and the last parliament uh and and looking ahead at the challenges facing both the leaders uh and and and getting out of the pandemic i actually see it's i have a bit of a less optimistic view a pessimistic view you know they'll surprise me if they actually pull this off and work together well let me follow up with you on that tonda presumably much of this has helped if the prime minister and his most likely dance partner in this case i guess ndp ndp leader jug meet singh have a decent personal relationship do we know if they do they don't they don't look chuck meat sing just spent five weeks prosecuting the case that justin trudeau you couldn't trust him as far as you can throw him they don't have a good relationship since last spring just junk meet singh has been saying that the liberals never do what they say they're gonna do um they haven't had that kind of relationship even through pandemic i mean they might sort of respect each other's political skills and i think they do but personally uh justin trudeau told the stars editorial board that what the way jug meets singh has conducted himself in this election has contributed to the cynicism he's terribly angry that the ndp party would the ndps went out and campaigned across the country telling everybody that he'd done nothing and his he was very animated when he said it's not nothing we've done child care we're acting on we have a real plan on uh climate change it's not nothing and he was actually quite angry about the what he called the ndp's misleading on the record and contributing to that public cynicism writ large so guys no there's not a great personal relationship there's no bromance they both love social media they both have an instagram game but you know they're this is not uh you know going to be a waltz if anything this is going to be like a what do you call a slam down breakdown dance or something you're a real heck with the new terms there go ahead kate i'm just gonna so hugh started this by saying it's time to put the mirror on the desk uh in the drawer and i actually kind of hope we see the opposite happen you know campaigning is not governing we all know that uh there will need to be a shift now the parties you know no longer in my view have the same incentive around discrediting one another they know and they've heard the message that there are a very short list of issues that matter a lot and so you know that may have been the dynamic during the campaign but i cannot help but retain my optimism that we may see a change uh in the weeks to come well you see let me follow up with you on that because you know one of the reasons that they said that 45 years ago the minority parliaments in ontario lasted for six years and worked as well as they did is that bill davis and the then ndp leader stephen lewis really got on very well and eventually developed a lifelong friendship how significant is it in your view that the players actually like each other to make this work well let's remember that when the majority conservative government was reduced to a minority in 75 in large measure because mr lewis campaigned so effectively and said some very very tough things about the davis government uh that did not that that did not spawn the relationship of working together in mutual respect that developed afterwards when mr lewis was leading the opposition mr davis was a minority premier the liberals had been reduced to third place which has always happened for new democrats and conservatives and on that basis the relationship was built so i would not i don't disagree with congress analysis at all but i wouldn't presume that the nature of the dynamic going forward will be always limited by what it's been up until election day because all of these readers have seen the message they've heard it if they have confident cultures it'll be explained to them their issue is what do you do now and you can't make progress through sustained tactical animosity it doesn't get you anywhere and that's the choice they have to make did cook you want in on that okay could i just pop in the per sec the let's also remember in 1977 uh stephen resigned as leader and so for the largest part of minority government uh michael cassidy was the leader of the ndp and if i remember correctly i don't think that michael cassidy and bill davis were best friends um the reality the reality in that four years was the ndp had a new leader and i would say as a member of that caucus we were not overly optimistic of how well that leader was going to be leading us and take us into the next election so we did not want an election the liberals didn't want an election so the dynamic really was we got to do everything we can to work as well as we can with the government and avoid an election so it was quite a different dynamic than say when stephen and and mr davis were were there together okay but hugh let me circle back with you on one thing and you mentioned that in in 1977 after winning the second consecutive minority government mr davis basically said okay no more monkey business no more snap elections we're going to serve the full term unless i'm you know voted down in an emotion of non-confidence by the opposition but i have no plans to call any snap elections and he didn't my question for you is should justin trudeau make the same commitment to canadians that mr davis made 46 years ago so the benefit of doing that and i would say to the prime minister uh as was as mr davis concluded was if you say that and you make that part of how you intend to govern that means that if there is a fracture that is produced by the opposition they're gonna pay the price for it so you create a negative incentive for the opposition to stir things up in a way that produces a destroyed parliament and you therefore absolve yourself in a way that's constructive so i think when you take the high ground that way and you're cracked with voters but what your intention is that isn't in and of itself a stabilizing effect kate i don't know that the prime minister calls you for advice but if he does sorry todd go ahead you wanted to add stephen harper brought in a law that said fixed elections that was his intention you can stay your attention but you know and then he proceeded to call an early election so it's not worth the paper it's written on sometimes yes but having said that kate graham do you think if uh do you think justin trudeau should make a commitment to canadians no more snap elections we're gonna serve the full four year term i'm really worried about and some of this tone was uh a bit much for me in this campaign uh about criticizing the fact that we're having an election because the underlying assumption is that elections are things to be avoided you know that we should just allow power to continue on without checking in with the public august is normally kind of a sleepy time and this year instead there were literally hundreds of thousands of people standing on doorsteps and on zoom meetings and having phone calls and talking about the direction that we want to go as a country so you know what's the right tactical advice uh smarter people than i can sort that out but i think we need to be really careful about talking about elections like they're things that are a waste of money or things that we should avoid they are the reason that we as canadians get to have a say in the direction that we go and you know i i for one am hoping that we have some time where we stop talking about it like it's a big waste of effort and money i don't see it that way at all no fair enough but tonda is also right that we do have something called the fixed election date law which everybody you know pays homage to and then proceeds to ignore do you think maybe we ought to do things a little differently on that regard well i mean it dynamics are different obviously depending on the moment in time i do think the predictability is nice uh one of the things that was problematic in this election and again speaking from a campus perspective is you know we didn't have the time to have voting stations on university campuses for example that lots of people had some difficulty in voting so a fixed time allows us i think to plan for elections and make sure that everybody has the easiest opportunity to vote so there are some benefits there but again i i know that there are moments in time where an election makes sense and i do think that as canadians we should value more the opportunity for us to have a say in those moments in time dave cook down to my last time there we got a provincial election coming up next year we got a municipal election i think there's a couple of other provincial elections uh so there will be lots of opportunity but i still think the dramatic message coming out of monday was you guys gotta i shouldn't use the term guys but you the mps have got to work together and uh and put together the agenda um and deliver and that is our time on this episode of the agenda speaking of which hugh siegel dave cook kate graham tonda mccharles really good having all four of you on tvo tonight until next time thanks steve bye everybody thank you bye everybody the agenda with steve pakin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you thank you for supporting tvo's journalism

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 1,222

Rating: 3.7317073 out of 5

Keywords: The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, The Agenda, accedo, Liberal minority government, hung parliament, Election 2021

Id: 6_3l3Aym0N0

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021