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Please Advise! Let’s Make a Deal, Say New Dems and Liberals

The Tories claim the government now will be ‘Jagmeet Singh-led.’ To where?

Steve Burgess 23 Mar 2022TheTyee.ca

Steve Burgess is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The Liberals and NDP have cut a “confidence and supply” deal that will keep the Liberals in power until 2025. What's your take? Who wins this deal?

Signed,

Co-Dependent

Dear Cod,

Dr. Steve has been listening to Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen. So he knows that the enormity of this unholy deal makes the death of the Roman Republic look like a rigged municipal byelection.

This is a disaster. It's worse than Sharknado. A Liberal air mass has collided with a cold NDP current to create a cyclone of socialist tyranny. The Liberals and the NDP — or as Bergen puts it, the NDP and the Liberals — are the most dangerous team-up since Marx met Engels. It's the worst partnership since Samson met Delilah, since typhoid met Mary, since Turner met Hooch, since pineapple met pizza. Make your own disastrous madlib!

The deal is not a formal coalition, which would bring NDP MPs into cabinet. Instead the NDP promises to keep the Liberal government in power until 2025 — essentially creating a functional majority — in exchange for government backing of NDP policy initiatives like dental care and national pharmacare.

Bergen thinks the deal will go over badly. “There are a lot of Liberals coming to me,” Bergen said Tuesday, “and saying they are very worried about the economic direction under a Justin Trudeau government.”

Bergen did not say that these people were big guys, really big strong guys, crying and calling her "sir." But same energy.

You might think Bergen and the Conservatives would see the Liberal-NDP agreement as a Faustian bargain in which both parties are Lucifer. Not quite. Bergen does see a Mephistopheles at work here, and it is Jagmeet Singh. Trudeau, she implies, is the pathetic victim driven by a greedy lust for power while Singh is the devious devil proffering the sinister contract. Bergen says the government will be “Jagmeet Singh-led.” She also claims that “82 per cent” of Canadians did not vote for this deal, an unusual number she reaches by saying Liberals didn't vote for it either.

Meaning, apparently, that NDP supporters did. That this was their plan all along. Trudeau fell into their trap.

And what is the NDP agenda, according to Bergen? Propping up Putin, for one thing. They will do this, she says, by crippling the Canadian oil and gas industry, thus leaving the Russian strongman as the only option for a fuel-thirsty world. Suddenly it's all starting to look very clear, isn't it? We're through the looking glass here, people.

Bergen says the NDP are in charge. Dr. Steve tends to see it differently. In political team-ups like this there's always a Batman and a Robin. And it ain't Robin who reaps the glory. The NDP are now locked in with the government. They got some prizes — glittering ones, admittedly that they will trumpet as their doing. But they will still be instituted as Liberal government policies.

And what happens when the Liberals do other things that are not so popular, either with the NDP or the public at large? NDP maneuverability is gone. Singh has sold his leverage for a mess of dental and pharmacare. Which isn't nothing. But he is now a junior partner in a government that could well be coming to the end of its natural governing cycle, and if the 2025 public are in a “Throw the bums out” mood, well, the NDP are now running a three-legged race tied to the bums.

Regardless, the Conservative position seems to be that secret deals like this are not the way to make a government. Apparently you make a government by driving a bunch of trucks to Ottawa, blocking the streets and putting up a bouncy castle.

Nonetheless the dastardly compact is sealed. And the Conservatives say, brace yourselves. Here comes the Putinado! Nero is picking up his fiddle; Mrs. O'Leary's cow is aiming a hoof at the lantern.

Like it or not the socialist paradise is coming. Canadians of all ages will be forced to get around on bicycles while wearing propeller beanies to generate wind power. Bike lanes will become car lanes and vice versa. You won't be allowed to go to a restaurant unless you have been vaccinated against racism. The menu says prime rib but it's actually kale. Bacon is cancelled. So is fun.

But hang in there, beleaguered freedom fighters. Help is on the way in the shape of Pierre Poilievre. Of course if Jean Charest wins the Conservative party leadership it means eight more years of depravity and Bolshevism, but that's a concern for another day. For now, the Conservatives seem to be suggesting, keep your truck topped up and your bouncy castle patched. Your country may soon have need of you once again.  [Tyee]

Read more: Federal Politics

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