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What minority government means & other election night thoughts

What minority gov't means

As I'm sure you've heard, Trudeau and the Liberals will be staying in power; but this time it's a minority government.

A liberal minority was the most likely outcome of this election, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to most.

A minority government isn't necessarily a bad thing for any of the parties, it just makes them work differently.

"It forces the Liberals to co-operate with the other parties," says Maxime Héroux-Legault, the Political Science Assistant Professor at UBC-Okanagan. "They will need support from either the Conservatives or NDP in order to pass anything."

For the regions with Conservative MPs in the Okanagan, Liberal power doesn't mean not much will get done for them.

"For certain issues, whoever is in power can have a minimal impact on the decision that is being made," says Héroux-Legault.  "A lot of times the truly dividing issues don't stand in the way of regional propositions by MPs."

The Liberal minority may not have been a surprise, but the NDP's tumbling numbers kind of were.

"At the start of the campaign the NDP outlook seemed bleak," says Héroux-Legault. "But after the debates their popularity looked like it was picking up some steam. It was a bit surprising seeing them fall that low when the projections had them doing reasonably well."

So a Liberal minority government forces Trudeau to work with the Conservatives and/or the NDP, which could mean either compromises, or a possibility of another election in the near future.



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