Will We Have An Election?

They met and Justin offered the premiers more money. Chantal Hebert offers her take on the situation:

A boost in health-care spending was always expected to be one of the main items of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s next budget.

If the restraint that was on exhibit at the health-care table is a harbinger of that budget, it may turn out — much like the prime minister’s health plan — to be more prudent than ambitious.

If they are to be competitive against the Conservatives in the next election, the Liberals need to shore up their economic credentials. Trudeau’s conservative approach to health-care funding could translate into a decisively more fiscally conservative budget.

But that could yet put their minority government on a politically unsustainable course in Parliament.

It's beginning to look like the agreement between Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh is in trouble:

At week’s end, the most vocal critic of Trudeau’s proposal to the provinces has turned out to be his partner in the current Parliament.

By comparison to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, the premiers, even as they expressed their collective disappointment at not being offered more money, sounded remarkably at peace with the situation.

But then, Singh was left with very little to show for the influence that is supposed to attend his caucus’s non-aggression pact with the minority Liberals.

He had called on Trudeau to draw a red line on the contracting out of surgeries to for-profit clinics. But according to provincial sources, the prime minister spent little or no time dwelling on the issue.

To add insult to injury, the New Democrats’ top demand of a national pharmacare program did not rate a mention in the first ministers’ list of priorities.

As for the Conservatives, they had nothing to say in the lead-up to the meeting between Trudeau and the premiers:

Should he become prime minister, Pierre Poilievre now says he would live by the terms set out by Trudeau.

The Conservatives have no interest in fighting the Liberals on the health-care battlefield in the next election campaign. Their leader’s stance essentially neutralizes an issue that has never been a winning one for his party.

But for all that, no one expects Poilievre to support the upcoming budget and the Bloc Québécois is unlikely to come to the rescue of the Liberal government.

So, it will be up to Singh. Will we have an election? Time will tell.

Image: The Toronto Star