Few changes from new Liberal majority expected by Sask. political scientist

A Saskatchewan political scientist is expecting few changes for people in this province, now that Prime Minister Mark Carney has secured a majority government.

Three byelection wins on Monday have resulted in the Liberals having 174 seats in the House of Commons.

The byelection results follow five opposition MPs crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party in recent months.

Read more:

• Liberals return to Parliament with majority after three byelection wins
• Liberals suspend federal fuel excise taxes until Labour Day
• Sask. Premier Scott Moe calls tariff deal with China a ‘tremendous, landmark agreement’

Jim Farney, Regina director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, hoped one thing in particular will stay the same with this new majority government. He also said he hoped to see one change.

“If you look at the amount of legislation the government’s actually been able to pass – including the budget, because they’ve been in a minority situation – parliamentary procedures have been really slow for the last year,” Farney said. “And so there’s been a lot of stuff that has simply really drug its feet.”

In an interview, he cited the public service staffing reductions as evidence of this.

Farney said he would like to see the working relationship continue to improve between Carney’s government and Scott Moe’s SaskParty government.

Farney understood why some people may question the legitimacy of a majority built partly through floor crossings. But he said it’s a matter of two conflicting pieces of logic when it comes to government.

“Most people, when they cast their ballot, are voting for the party leader and the party label – not so much for their local representative,” he said. “And so that’s where the kind of legitimacy concerns come from.”

He also felt the ability of a Member of Parliament to cross the floor is one of the few checks on party leadership between elections.

“We tightly discipline our MPs, but in the last resort, the thing that they get to choose in between elections is which team they’re playing for.”

Farney stresses the five members who joined the Liberals are “remarkably diverse ideologically,” which he felt is important, along with a seeming lack of promises made to them by Carney.

“Sometimes there’s a clear quid pro quo, you know, you’re across the floor to join cabinet, or maybe there’s a quiet promise of an ambassadorship after the next election. I haven’t seen anything like that in any of the reporting around what we’ve seen in the last couple of months,” he said.

But despite the diverse ideologies, he doesn’t feel the Liberal caucus is at the point of fracturing. He used the example of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives becoming so big that the party couldn’t be held together.

“The people who managed the (Stephen) Harper minority government, and then the Harper majority, used to talk about, what’s your minimum winning coalition,” he explained. “What’s the smallest group of MPs you can put together and form a majority government with?

“The narrow majority Carney’s got right now, or that we can expect to have in the near future, is not in that place. But I’m sure somebody is thinking about, you know, are we getting into the point where we would say no to somebody who wanted to cross to the Liberals for some sort of ideological reason.”

Questions about leadership

Farney expects there are questions and discussions within the Conservative party about the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, and that would be likely to include Saskatchewan voices.

“Kind of a core responsibility of a party leader is holding your party together, and something it’s pretty clear is not working well for Mr. Poilievre on that file right now.”

Farney also believed Carney has less reason to worry about a threat to the left wing of his party from the New Democrats and their new leader, Avi Lewis.

“I think what’s left of the federal NDP voter base in in Saskatchewan will either stay out of loyalty or move to what’s now a pretty conservative Liberal party,” he said. “I think what Mr. Lewis’s win means for the NDP is there is no threat to the left wing of the Liberals nationally.

“And so Carney is able to pursue his kind of pro-business proclivities, without much worry from that flank.”