QuoteRex Murphy: Liberal-NDP 'coalition' will make Canada worse off. But that's just fine for Singh and Trudeau

This is two leaders of political parties cobbling together an arrangement for their shared comfort and ease

worse off. But that's just fine for Singh and Trudeau



Throw away any notion that their new partnership is in your interests, as both NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insist. Your interests are the last things on their minds.



Who are the European politicians who attacked Trudeau over the...

U.S., Japanese, South Korean officials condemn North Korea's missile launch...



This column originally appeared exclusively for subscribers who are signed up for the NP Comment newsletter, NP Platformed.



Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.© Provided by National Post Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

The big news of the week was the NDP and the Liberals going from cohabitation to official marriage. I call it big news, but in one sense it isn't. It's not about inflation, or how Canada is responding to the Ukraine crisis. It's not about some serious inquiry into the invokation of the Emergencies Act and the wide and dangerous powers the government wielded, unjustifiably in my view, for over a week.



No. It is two leaders of political parties cobbling together an arrangement, the only object of which is their shared comfort and ease. Throw away any notion that their new partnership is in your interests, as both NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insist. Your interests are the last things on their minds.



First, about the deal itself, I note considerable unease within the contracting parties when outsiders describe their pact as a "coalition." Well, if it barks, has four legs, is called Spot and runs to the door when you come home, chances are it's a dog. The affected sensitivity about calling it what it effectively is — even if it doesn't meet the strict, formal definition of a coalition — arises from the fact that when two parties that are supposed to have real and separate identities, and have over their histories (and as recently as the last election) lambasted one another with fury and zeal and thrown up all sorts of harsh objections to one other, are seen heading off to the bedroom, hand-in-hand, people might start thinking that up to now they have been sold a bill of goods.



The sniping and abuse they have hurled at each other turns out to have been just a show — sciamachy and empty theatricals for the benefit of the cheap seats. When it comes to securing mutual political advantage — the key word is "political" — the NDP and the Liberals are water from the same brook, paint from the same can. Or, more precisely, political parties with no core ideas or core principles other than "how can we best hang onto power?" (Liberals) and "how can we get a slice of it for ourselves?" (NDP).



Singh is more the leader of a fog than the once-sternly principled NDP. He has enfolded himself and the historic party of Tommy Douglas, the party that was once so much the working man's party, into the Liberal bed clothes, and fatally abandoned what the political consultants call the "brand" — the essential defining characteristics of an established political movement.



In the case of the Liberals under Trudeau, there's really hardly any change at all. For the life of his tenure, the Liberal party has been his brand — a woke, shallow, I-feel-your-pain performance vehicle, very NDP in its expressed sentiments, with being green its main obsession.



Which brings us to why, apart from mutual ease and protection from opposition, this crafty deal was made. And it was made, let us point out, after the most consequential election since 1945, at least according to Trudeau. It's funny how that characterization died out so quickly after it was proclaimed. Just like the so badly "needed" invocation of the Emergencies Act.



The coalition is a blazing signal that the country is still going headlong into its net-zero fantasies, putting the brakes on oil production and hurling bundles of money at anything that can pretend to be green.



The carbon tax will be increased at the beginning of next month. And every feeble gesture towards lowering carbon emissions will receive both a benediction and a subsidy from this vastly overextended government.



The Liberal-NDP coalition is designed to allow the green agenda to go forward regardless of runaway inflation, regardless of the need to repair our economy after two years of shutdowns and the collapse of many small businesses, regardless of the effect gasoline and home heating prices are having on low- and fixed-income Canadians and regardless of the leverage the green agenda of countries like our own gives to tyrannical regimes such as Putin's.