Tom Mulcair: Three reasons why the Liberals won’t want to delay the next election

Liberal Strategist Marcel Wieder comments on Chandra Arya no longer being in the leadership race and Mark Carney earning endorsements from cabinet ministers.

Opposition parties have been working on the assumption that the Liberals will be seeking a way to extend the life of their minority government once their new leader is chosen.

That assumption may be dead wrong.

Canada will likely be heading into an election right after the Liberal leadership race. The “natural governing party” won’t be waiting around for the opposition to decide the election date. The countdown towards the next vote will begin the minute our new prime minister gets sworn in.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been trying to convince the Liberals that he wants to help, while simultaneously promising to bring down the government. A tough sell, to say the least.

Many Conservatives had been warily watching these events as a sign that perhaps, with NDP support, the Liberals would be able to hold onto power until the statutory fixed election date next October. They should think again.

Singh’s latest offer produced a massive yawn on the Liberal side. That is perhaps the best indication that they have no interest in extending the life of their government much beyond the day when they choose their new leader. It’s easy to understand.

Flip-flops and contradictions are nothing new in politics. Things can change rapidly, and sometimes (in the immortal words of Jean Chrétien) if you’ve painted yourself into a corner, you just have to walk on the paint.

But it requires a certain je ne sais quoi to be able to say one thing and its opposite in the same sentence. This is a skill that Singh put on display this week.

“I will be voting against the government at the earliest opportunity. If the Liberals are serious, though, about a plan to support workers, call the opposition leaders together. Discuss that plan with us,” he said Tuesday.

He was trying, understandably, to get himself into the Trump tariff story that’s been dominating the news. His worthwhile idea was to show an openness to working with the Liberal government on a legislated response to the expected tariffs. So far, so good.

But this is the same Jagmeet Singh who has been swearing up and down for weeks that he would defeat that Liberal at the very first opportunity.

A slight logistical problem posed itself for Singh. How are you supposed to convince the government that you’re there in good faith to help them introduce new budgetary measures, when their defeat on that same legislation would mean an automatic election?

Singh boasted 22 times in one press conference that he’d “ripped up” his deal with Trudeau.

Hearing Singh this time around, many Liberals were reciting the old line: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Beyond the bruises left after the Liberals had delivered on their end of the bargain with Singh and he turned around and dumped them, there are strategic reasons, big and small, why the Liberals just aren’t interested in delaying the next election.

One is momentum. It would be a real downer, after the high of a leadership race and the election of a new prime minister, to then get back into the grind of a minority parliament and hand Poilievre his soapbox. What possible gain is there in that for the Liberals?

A second is the legislative agenda, the compulsory budget in particular. What would be the advantage to the Liberals of sticking their new leader’s face in the target and handing the opposition parties a stack of cream pies to throw at them?

A third, as surprising as it might sound, is good old Canadian language politics. After prorogation, there would have to be a throne speech. That would pose a singular challenge. No slight intended to our Governor General as a person, but in a country with two official languages, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon still couldn’t deliver the requisite parts of a throne speech in plausible French.

That might seem like a small detail to many, but it would be perceived as a slight by the eight million Canadians who have French as their first language. Not a winning proposition for the Liberals who’ve traditionally done well with that vote.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the Liberals will want to be the ones to decide the date. Being defeated is not a way to start off for a new leader. There will be Liberals who will counsel caution, reminding their new leader about what happened to John Turner when he went straight to an election against Mulroney.

There’s a saying that generals are always preparing for the last war. That would apply here. The prohibitive Liberal frontrunner, Mark Carney, has thus far shown a great deal of aplomb in preparing for and running his leadership bid. He’ll be even more battle-hardened once the election campaign begins.

Carney would also have the prerogative to choose the length of the election campaign. Stephen Harper chose to have the longest federal election campaign in history in 2015. He was concerned about Trudeau and felt that a longer campaign would reveal the Liberal leader’s inexperience and weaknesses, the main thrust of their campaign against him.

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Of course just the opposite happened. The more Trudeau showed himself capable of jousting with the other party leaders, the more Canadians saw in him a possible leader for the country. I was there, as the leader of the NDP and saw how it happened.

There will, predictably, be those around Carney who remember what happened to Mr. Harper and will be counselling for a quick campaign. They should also stop preparing to fight the last war.

In opposition, Pierre Poilievre has exceptional rhetorical skills. As a leadership candidate, he wiped the floor with a seasoned politician like Jean Charest. He’s not to be underestimated. But a federal general election is a different beast. A 24/7 news cycle reveals character. That may not help Poilievre.

I faced him for over 10 years in the House of Commons. I don’t believe he’s changed his stripes. Irascible, headstrong and with a very smug opinion of his opinions, he could easily become his own worst enemy during a long campaign.

With his deep experience and expertise, Carney could surgically dismantle Poilievre’s sophomoric economic prescriptions during a longer campaign. The economy promises to be the main thrust of the Liberal campaign and, from their point of view, the longer the campaign, the better it will be for them to make their case.

The Liberal track record under Trudeau has been sketchy at best. The economy has been his Achilles heel. One of the few promises that he kept from his 2015 campaign was to never have a balanced budget. He excelled at that.

Trudeau’s weakness on the economy has, of course, hurt Chrystia Freeland who backed Trudeau every step of the way for nine years. As an outsider, Carney is the Liberals’ best and, indeed, only hope.

There’s a lot to be forgiven before Canadian voters will give the Liberals another chance. For them to pull it off, they have to show voters that they have not only a new face but a new approach to governing.

Watching Carney rally so many of Freeland’s former colleagues has been revealing. Liberal MP’s have spoken about Carney’s true willingness to listen, a marked change from the Trudeau/Telford reign.

It remains to be seen whether those qualities will allow him to convince enough Canadian voters that he can also change the Liberals' old ways and that they should be given another chance under his leadership.

Tom Mulcair was the leader of the federal New Democratic Party of Canada between 2012 and 2017