What's next for Canada's newest minority government?
With the election count all but finalized, it looks as though the governing Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney will be forming a minority government. Here's what that means for the party and the country.
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What is a minority government?
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It's simply a government in which no party holds more than 50 per cent of the seats in Parliament. The magic number in this case is 172, but the Liberals, who went into the election with 152 seats, emerged with 169, three short of a majority. Thus, any piece of legislation will require some opposition votes, in addition to all the Liberal members of Parliament.
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Can they do that?
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Yes, they can. Akaash Maharaj, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, points out that Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet has already said he does not intend to bring down the current government 'for at least a year.'
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'That was a remarkable thing for him to say, because he played his hand and gave up any influence he might have to try to extract things from Carney,' said Maharaj. 'But it does mean that Carney can, in all probability, govern as if he had a majority for the first year. After that, especially once there is a new leader for the NDP, and the provincial elections in Quebec start to put pressure on the Bloc Québécois, the dynamics will change.'
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The New Democratic Party, thanks to its poor showing in the election — just seven seats, a loss of official party status, and the announced resignation of its leader, Jagmeet Singh — has little power and even less desire to rock the boat and potentially trigger another election.
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But the Conservatives, despite their 144 seats in the House of Commons, are in a somewhat weakened position as well.
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'They are likely to find themselves without any dance partners in the political ballet of Parliament,' said Maharaj. 'Having said that, I don't think that they are powerless. More than 41 per cent of Canadians voted for them, and that suggests a significant hold on the public imagination. Conservatives will retain the power to influence public sentiment (and) to hold the government to account.'
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