Weekly Writ 11/13: Conservatives and NDP in rough shape ahead of budget vote
Conservatives are divided and the NDP is broke.
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The vote on the budget will take place early next week. It’s still not a given that it will pass.
The Liberals haven’t (yet?) attracted enough floor-crossers to give them a majority. The Conservatives and Bloc look set to vote against and the NDP hasn’t made a commitment either way. Some of its seven MPs could abstain and so avoid defeating the government. But the NDP is also reportedly preparing for a snap election, just in case.
But they can’t be serious, can they?
In the days before the budget was tabled, an election seemed like a plausible outcome from the outside looking in. The Conservatives were running neck-and-neck in the polls with the Liberals and the New Democrats could convince themselves that they could reclaim recognized party status. The Bloc had little to lose.
But now the Conservatives appear to be in a state of internal disarray.
And the NDP is broke.
The Conservatives were rocked last week by the defection of Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont to the Liberals. That defection might have been influenced by the personal slight d’Entremont received when the Conservative caucus did not back him for the speaker’s chair, or it might have been motivated entirely by d’Entremont’s distaste of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership. The reaction from the Conservatives may or may not have included yelling and an assistant cast aside as a door was flung open.
Regardless of the circumstances, Poilievre lost one of his MPs only a few months after the April election. And then he lost another.
The circumstances surrounding Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux’s upcoming resignation are even murkier. Sources have told reporters on Parliament Hill that Jeneroux met with Prime Minister Mark Carney and seems to have been considering crossing the floor. The sequence of events that followed this meeting and led to Jeneroux’s announcement that he would resign his seat (seemingly, at first, in the coming days, then, oddly, in three or four months) aren’t exactly clear, but it’s clear enough that there are some problems within the Conservative caucus right about now.
Undoubtedly, that is going to push some of Poilievre’s supporters into a bunker mentality — perhaps bringing them closer together as they struggle against the forces trying to undermine the leader. But suspicion is also undoubtedly going to eat away at caucus morale when some of those forces are assumed to be inside caucus itself. It’s been reported that upwards of 15 MPs are unhappy with Poilievre’s leadership.
It’s not exactly a propitious moment for the Conservative Party to head into an election campaign. Post-budget (and floor-crossing) polling is largely inconclusive, but as I’ll detail below there are some indications that last week’s events have had a small negative effect on Conservative support and Poilievre’s personal ratings.
And then there’s the NDP.
The Toronto Star’s report on the NDP’s election-readiness preparations starts off normally enough. Faced with the potential of an early election, the NDP is reportedly preparing to fast-track candidate nominations and is planning for a limited campaign focused on individual seats rather than a leader. That makes sense considering where the NDP finds itself.
Then the report casually mentions that the NDP is currently saddled with $23 million of debt.
That’s an enormous amount of money for a party that has averaged about $6.5 million in annual fundraising since the 2021 election. The NDP says they have a plan to pay off that debt in three years by 2028 — an ambitious goal, considering that the NDP only raised $19 million in the three years before the 2025 election, all the while having significant operating expenses to cover.
The New Democrats have carried lots of debt before. They took out a loan of $7 million for the 2019 campaign and $18 million for both the 2015 and 2021 campaigns. But the NDP had not been decimated after those elections. The party will receive fewer expense reimbursements because the vast majority of their candidates didn’t reach the threshold required for their expenses to be reimbursed. The party’s organization has fewer resources available to raise money as they’ve slashed their operating budget. Donor dollars are currently being funneled to the leadership contest and the NDP’s 25% share of those donations might not do much more than cover the costs of the race itself.
The party clarified that it expects to receive $14.5 million in reimbursements for their election expenses from Elections Canada. While that makes the situation less dire in the longer run, it doesn’t solve their cash crunch for a campaign that, if the NDP voted the government down, would be launched within a week.
In short, the NDP literally can’t afford to enter into another election campaign. The party apparently (their election returns have not yet been published) took on debt to the tune of $23 million in order to win seven seats and 6% of the vote. It’s unlikely the party will be able to secure another loan anywhere near that size (if at all) to run another campaign. If $23 million (or $29 million, as their $14.5 million reimbursement implies was their total spending for the campaign) bought them seven seats, what are their chances of re-electing their seven MPs, let alone winning the five more seats they need for recognized party status, on a shoe-string budget?
This is the harsh reality that both the Conservatives and New Democrats face as they contemplate their budget vote next week. Granted, the Liberals might have a few of their own MPs from the progressive wing of their party who will vote yay on the budget through gritted teeth. But the Liberals might also have plenty of good reasons to dare the opposition parties not to blink.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
Why fundraising is worth watching in the NDP leadership race, plus news on the new co-leader of Québec Solidaire, a byelection call in Prince Edward Island, a tie in Nunavut and a leadership review for Scott Moe in Saskatchewan.
What the polls say about the impact of the budget and where things stand nationally. Plus, new polling numbers out of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Toronto.
#EveryElectionProject: Maîtres chez nous vs. le bon sens in the 1962 Quebec election.
Upcoming milestones for David Eby and Mike Schreiner.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Follow the money in the NDP leadership race
Last week, I posted the third quarter fundraising totals for the NDP leadership race. As the data included donations up to September 30, only a few days or weeks after the candidates’ campaign launches, the numbers are of only limited value.
When we get the next set of fundraising data at the end of January, however, we should pay attention to the numbers — because fundraising has been a very predictive metric in past NDP leadership races.