Minority parliaments can't function without at least some amount of compromise and cooperation NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh meets with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019. His party's agreement with the governing Liberals is now a little over year old. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
The confidence-and-supply agreement between the Liberals and NDP is now just over a year old. The primary takeaway from the experience to date might be merely that such a thing is possible — that two competing parties can find agreement on a set of ideas and work together to implement those policies.
For the parties involved, the greatest lesson might be the value of communication and building personal relationships.
"When I contrast this minority government with the last minority government, there's just way more communication. And that, I think, is what helps keep us out of the ditch," said an NDP source, speaking on the condition they not be identified by name.
"Now that I've been through this for a while, I can totally see how it would be possible to end up in a confidence crisis that nobody meant to engineer. Just because nobody's communicating."
When opposing sides are left to interpret each other's actions and guess at motivations, suspicions are heightened and needless conflict can follow. So while the Liberal-NDP deal demands progress on the 27 policy items it covers, what it really requires is dialogue.
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"Having set those structures in the agreement so we don't leave communication to chance, but there are structured meetings where it has to happen — that's been really helpful, both in times when things are going smoothly, but also helpful when things aren't going smoothly," the source said.
"And I think it's also helped to build relationships at many levels between staff, between critics and ministers, between MPs, between the leaders, that [are] also helpful in kind of steering the ship."
A senior government source, also speaking on the condition they not be named, agreed. "By working with folks closely, you learn how to talk to folks and that helps you in good and bad. And there's relationships and capital and goodwill to call on in good and bad," the government source said. "It's a relationship and you need to be building it."
Parties can do more than yell at each other
The value of communication is the basic message of every guide to marriage. But if the notion of relationship-building seems novel in the context of Canadian politics, it's because public communication between parties consists almost entirely of accusations, boasts and taunts.