ATHABASCA/BARRHEAD/WESTLOCK - The new agreement reached by the NDP and Liberals agreement last week will result in the creation of nationalized programs that will drive up the country’s debt, undermine the oil and gas sector and allow the Liberal government to avoid any accountability it would face in a minority Parliament, says Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen.
“We’ve always known the NDP and Liberals have a shared vision for more bureaucracy, more government spending and more debt,” said Viersen. “With rising inflation and cost of living, the NDP-Liberal Coalition could not come at a worse time. Canada does not need backdoor socialism.”
Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs shared a similar sentiment, questioning the NDP’s future effectiveness as an opposition party in the House of Commons.
“It’s obvious that the NDP has been propping up the Liberals’ tax and spend, anti-energy, anti-rural, anti-private sector and anti-freedom agenda since 2019, but their capitulation to the prime minister’s power grab makes it official,” she said in a March 24 statement. “Individual NDP MPs are now effectively the equivalent of Liberal backbenchers, so Conservatives question whether they should continue to participate in Question Period, in committees, or in bill debates, the same way as members of the Official Opposition or other Opposition parties do.
On March 22, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an agreement had been reached between the two parties that will remain in effect until June 2025.
Through this agreement, the NDP has agreed to support the government on confidence and budgetary matters while the Liberal Party continues to govern for the next three years. The NDP will not move a vote of non-confidence or vote for a non-confidence motion for the duration of the arrangement.
Other votes which impede the government from functioning may be declared confidence by the Liberal government, but in such cases, the Liberals will try to inform the NDP as soon as possible and the NDP will make the Liberals aware of their voting intentions before such a vote takes place.
In exchange for their support, the NDP has secured promises from the Liberals to make progress on a lengthy list of initiatives, the first being the launch of a new dental care program for low-income Canadians, which will start with children under the age of 12 in 2022 and then expand to teenagers, seniors and disabled individuals in 2023.
Next, the two parties will make progress towards a universal national pharmacare program by passing a Canada Pharmacare Act by the end of 2023, followed by tasking the National Drug Agency to develop a national formulary of essential medicines and bulk purchasing.
Regarding the introduction of nationalized dental and pharmacare programs, Viersen said that such government programs will result in huge increases to the cost of dental care, likening it to a water well drilling program introduced in his youth that immediately caused the cost of a well to increase.
“That’s the reality with the dental care program as well: the demand will go up, and the supply will likely remain the same and it won’t necessarily make it any easier to get dental care across the country,” he said.
Viersen also pointed out that establishing a nationalized program means creating a bureaucracy to administer it, while roughly 85 per cent of Canadians already have access to dental care through their employment or other programs.
“There’s very few people that are ending up without dental care, and a big, nationalized program run from Ottawa isn’t what we need at this point,” he said.
Oil and gas support
Other aspects of the Liberal-NDP deal include advancing measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and to accelerate the trajectory to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Some spinoff measures of this aspect to the coalition include creating a Clean Jobs Training Centre in 2022, moving forward with home energy efficiency programs that enhance energy affordability and reduce emissions, and developing a phase-out of public financing for the fossil fuel sector.
“They are united in wanting to end the oil and gas sector in Canada, and to keeping Canada landlocked and partially dependent on foreign oil, which makes no sense for a country with among the largest oil and gas reserves, and the most responsible development in the world. Even before their formal power grab pact was made public, they united to defeat a Conservative motion in the House of Commons to secure Canada’s energy self-sufficiency,” Stubbs said.
Viersen also criticized this aspect of the coalition, noting that while Conservatives are in favour of ending “corporate welfare,” they believe the oil and gas sector should continue to be supported politically in the same way the government supports tourism, the auto industry or even potato farmers.
Viersen said there is several trillion dollars in natural resources sitting right here in Canada waiting to be developed.
“If we don’t develop them, the world will get their energy from some other place, as we are currently seeing with Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas,” he said.
The agreement also allows for the expansion of “Election Day” to three days, making a significant investment in Indigenous housing in 2022, creating a standing Federal-Provincial-Territorial table on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, ensuring all federally regulated workers have 10 days of paid sick leave, introducing legislation to prohibit the use of “scabs” during a strike, and implementing a Homebuyer’s Bill of Rights.
Accountability
While announcing this coalition, both parties made it clear that they will not agree on every single issue and that the Liberals may pursue elements of their agenda the NDP do not agree with.
However, Viersen charged that the coalition will still allow the Liberals to avoid any accountability they would have faced in a minority government, adding that Canada is in for a rough ride.
When asked if the coalition could work in the Conservatives’ favour by giving them time to choose a new leader and prepare for the next election, Viersen said they were preparing to fight another election in about 18 months to oust Trudeau from power.
“I know many of my constituents have been saying, oh, you should just get rid of him,” he said. “There has to be a non-confidence vote and an election for that to happen … We would like to be governing, not waiting for the next election.”
