Wednesday November 27, 2019 ~ OTTAWA
Political Analysis by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
Singh will announce his ‘shadow cabinet’ (NDP Caucus critic roles) on Thursday November 28 in Ottawa (8:30 am Pacific Time). The full list of NDP MPs is online at https://www.ndp.ca/team .
It can be confidently argued that the NDP with 24 seats in the House of Commons will have more significant influence on the passage of Liberal government legislation than will the Bloc Quebecois with 32 or the Conservatives with 121. (The Liberals with 157 seats are short of a 170-seat majority.)
That’s because the Liberals need the left-leaning ‘guarantee’ which comes with the NDP brand, to prop up a lot of things that the Conservatives may vote against or not readily support.
And although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be already positioning his party for greater gains in Quebec in the next federal election (as a more assured way to win a majority) he is not likely to automatically favour the Bloc for support — too much of that would look like support for Quebec nationalism which won’t play well across the rest of the country.
It’s tricky stuff, but Trudeau appears to have a good sense of what needs to be done for his agenda to boost the middle class (and economy) and deal with environmental and climate emergency issues.
For the NDP it’s win-win… they will have almost assured goodwill from the Liberals on most things in this first term under NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and the people who gave the NDP a chance under difficult vote-choice circumstances will probably not be disappointed.
The Green Party did increase their seat count from one to three, but neither their number of seats nor their ‘aggressive agenda’ (as Trudeau put it recently) are going to help them advance with much clout in this 43rd Parliament. But certainly their influence for making climate change an integral plank of the 2019 election campaign is a historic contribution for a small party.
NDP strength directed at Ottawa from BC (11 of 24 NDP MPs are in BC):
- Leader: Jagmeet Singh, MP (Burnaby South)
- South Vancouver Island: Randall Garrison, MP (Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke)Alistair MacGregor; MP (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford); Laurel Collins, MP (Victoria)
- Central/North Vancouver Island: Rachel Blaney (North Island – Powell River); Gord Johns, MP (Courtenay-Alberni).
- BC Mainland: Taylor Bachrach, MP (Skeena – Bulkley Valley); Richard Cannings, MP (South Okanagan – West Kootenay); Don Davies, MP (Vancouver Kingsway); Peter Julian, MP (New Westminster – Burnaby); Jenny Kwan, MP (Vancouver East).
========== NOTES:
The first version of this article was published on page 1 in the November 22, 2019 print-PDF edition of West Shore Voice News.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh addressed the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Board on November 27, 2019 in Ottawa.