NDP-Liberal pact extends Trudeau's tenure, reshapes Canadian politics

On a Monday evening in late March, word leaked out that Justin Trudeau's Liberal government and Jagmeet Singh's New Democrats had struck a deal. The announcement, when it came officially the next day, meant one thing clearly: no federal election was coming until 2025 at the earliest. For Canadians exhausted by the prospect of another campaign, it felt like reprieve. For Trudeau's opponents, it felt like a trap closing.

The arrangement was not technically a coalition—no NDP members would sit in cabinet, no formal power-sharing structure. Instead, it was a confidence-and-supply agreement: the New Democrats would support the government on key votes, keeping it alive in Parliament, in exchange for movement on shared priorities. A dental care program emerged as one immediate fruit of the bargain. Child-care funding arrangements with the provinces would continue. Progressive policies that might otherwise have died in a minority parliament now had a runway to become permanent features of Canadian governance.

What the deal meant for Trudeau's political future was harder to miss. If he held on through the term, he could stretch his time as prime minister to a decade or more—territory occupied before by Stephen Harper, who governed from 2006 to 2015, and Jean Chrétien, who held power from 1993 to 2003. Trudeau's own father, Pierre, had managed sixteen years in office, interrupted only by a six-month Conservative interregnum in 1979 and 1980. The younger Trudeau, written off repeatedly by observers and opponents, had found a way to extend his political life.

The Conservatives reacted with fury and contradiction. Their interim leader, Candice Bergen, claimed that Erin O'Toole, the party's former leader, had predicted exactly this during the previous summer's election campaign—and had been mocked for it. By Tuesday afternoon, the Conservatives themselves were doing the mocking, calling Trudeau the head of an NDP-Liberal government and insisting the New Democrats had abandoned their role as opposition. The party's leadership race, scheduled to conclude in September, now faced a different calculus: whoever won would spend two years or more waiting for an election that might never come.

The timing of the deal raised questions about its origins. During the 2021 election campaign, Trudeau had faced angry protests from the right, a preview of the convoy occupation that would paralyze Ottawa in February 2022. But in his private reflections after that campaign, Trudeau had seemed more stung by criticism from the left. He told a reporter during a walk around Rideau Hall that what had hurt him most was not the rage of the far right but the dismissal from progressives who said he had done nothing. "I expect the progressive parties to come and say, 'You haven't done enough, you need to do more,'" he said. "That's fine. But to have them turn around and say, 'You did nothing?'" The NDP deal suggested that question had stayed with him. Even as trucks bearing anti-Trudeau signs clogged the streets around Parliament in February, he was negotiating with Singh's party.

For anyone who had written Trudeau's political obituary—and there had been many such eulogies—the pact was a reminder that Canadian politics had a way of surprising those who thought they had read the script. The occupation of Ottawa, the war in Ukraine, and now this: a year of events that seemed to arrive without warning. The deal was proof, once more, that counting Trudeau out was a mistake. It was also, as one observer noted, not a great idea to postpone a dental appointment waiting for him to leave office.