James Moore: Imagine if this fragile Parliament shrinks down to a 1-seat margin

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James Moore is a former federal cabinet minister under prime minister Stephen Harper, and a columnist for CTVNews.ca.

Andy Rooney once said that “numbers are the most certain things we have.” That can absolutely be true, and the one certainty about the numbers of the current Parliament is the baked-in uncertainty given the events of the past week.

Some numbers to consider:

• On April 28, 19,811,520 Canadians who could vote chose to exercise their privilege to vote. There were 1,959 candidates to choose from across Canada’s electoral landscape. Of the 1,959 candidates, 343 were chosen to sit in the Parliament of Canada. Of the 343, 169 were Liberals, 144 Conservatives, 22 Bloc Québécois, 7 New Democrats and 1 Green.
• Of the 343 MPs elected, you deduct 1 MP who becomes the Speaker of the House, meaning that 172 is the magic number to command a majority government – albeit a shaky one. So, when the voters of the Nova Scotia riding of Acadie-Annapolis elected Conservative candidate Chris d’Entremont (23,024 votes) over Liberal candidate Ronnie LeBlanc (22,491 votes), and that Conservative MP flipped to become a 170^th Liberal MP 190 days after being elected, the ripple effects are large.
• Then, when another Conservative MP (Matt Jeneroux of Edmonton Riverbend) signals that he’s leaving Parliament, things get instantly ultra shaky. The numbers today with Jeneroux in Parliament: 143 + 22 + 7 + 1 = 173 combined opposition votes versus 170 Liberals. He leaves and we’re at 172-170, and that is not only a parliamentary knife’s edge, but also extraordinary leverage for opportunistic political entrepreneurs.

As the parliamentary vote margin shrinks down to 2 votes or a 1 vote margin, consider the power that one or two or a few members of Parliament could wield to extraordinary advantage.

Could there be a Joe Manchin in Ottawa?

Joe Manchin served as the governor of West Virginia. He was a self-described “centrist, moderate conservative Democrat” and won almost 70 per cent of the vote in the 2008 West Virginia gubernatorial election as a Democrat. He later successfully ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2010, 2012 and 2018. In his last campaign (2018) he won 49 per cent of the vote as a Democrat in a state that voted for Donald Trump overwhelmingly in every election: 2016 (68.5 per cent Trump), 2020 (68.6 per cent Trump) and 2024 (70 per cent Trump).

In the 2020 U.S. elections, the U.S. Senate seat count after election night was evenly split 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, but it was “Democrat controlled” because the tie-breaking vote in the Senate is cast by the vice-president, who was then-Democrat Kamala Harris. In that 117^th session of Congress, as well as the following 118^th session after the 2022 midterms where the Senate was also split, Manchin was the one vote swing margin in the Democratic Party to sustain their majority. Manchin was always independent. He was the only Democratic senator to vote for Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Jeff Sessions and nominee for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. He voted for Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh when President Trump nominated them to the Supreme Court in his first term, but he later voted to impeach Trump in both votes when they came to the Senate floor. He was truly independent.

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He was an independent voting Senator in a red state while sitting in the blue Democratic caucus. And when he decided to not seek re-election in 2024 at the age of 75, his power and control grew because he was the one swing vote. And he used his power to bring benefits to West Virginia, to bring emphasis to projects and priorities that were his, and he was the most powerful and talked about politician in Washington not named Donald Trump.

So, a question on my mind as I think about this current 45^th Canadian Parliament is, could there be a Joe Manchin or two or three or more who could destabilize things in Ottawa even more than we’ve seen these past two weeks and advance an agenda of their choosing?

The agendas that surface could be endless

What if a group of regional MPs, across party lines, who are not planning to seek re-election and who don’t particularly care about partisanship, propose significant regionally beneficial amendments to legislation? They would get noticed and traction and the government would have to respond – perhaps to the benefit of that region.

What if a group of MPs along gender or cultural lines align to advance a policy that is of profound importance to them at a level far deeper than the typical red team versus blue team versus orange team advantage-based analysis? It would get noticed and would probably move forward and would be incredibly rewarding to those MPs.

What if two or three Liberal MPs from a region fight together and make an absolute demand for a piece of infrastructure that must be funded lest they pull their support for the governing party? Why wouldn’t they? If they’re not running again and/or have no aspiration to cabinet and/or care more about their local reputation than their partisan affiliation, why wouldn’t they? Maybe they should.

Now imagine if this 45^th Parliament shrinks down to a 1-seat margin, the agendas that could surface could be endless. It could be fascinating. It could be inspirational and bring to the forefront issues that some Canadians have avoided talking about for fear of the political heat. It could be disruptive and divisive and unbelievably challenging to manage for all the parties in Ottawa. It could be unsustainable and impossible for Prime Minister Mark Carney to manage and result in an election.

From 1,959 candidates to 343 Members of Parliament, to a couple of Canadian Joe Manchins holding the balance of power and the power to shape this Parliament, I can assure you that there are MPs tonight who are asking themselves: what if I do it?

More from James Moore:

• 7 questions I hope will be answered in the upcoming budget
• Carney’s pipeline hesitation reveals limits of his ‘nation-building’ vision
• Carney’s ambitious ‘major projects’ is what Canada needs, but come with big risks
• The astonishing collapse of the NDP