How the Liberals and New Democrats made a deal to preserve the minority government

The residence at 7 Rideau Gate — a 19th-century home nestled between Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex in Ottawa's New Edinburgh neighborhood — is typically used as Canada's official guest house for visiting dignitaries and foreign leaders.

On March 14, an otherwise uneventful Monday in the nation's capital, it was also where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh came to a historic agreement between their parties during a three-hour meeting.

By the following Sunday, their officials had worked out the final wording of a tentative agreement. At 4 p.m. the next day, a note from the Privy Council Office alerted cabinet ministers to a cabinet meeting abruptly scheduled for that evening at 7:15 p.m. Liberal MPs were told of a virtual caucus meeting at 8:30 p.m., while NDP MPs were called to their own meeting for 8:45 p.m.

In those meetings, Liberals and New Democrats were let in on this week's big surprise, first reported by the CBC's Vassy Kapelos shortly after 9 p.m. on March 21: a confidence-and-supply agreement that would allow the Liberals to govern with NDP support until 2025, contingent on the implementation of a negotiated list of policies and priorities.

The key to making the deal work in practice might be found in the agreement's second sentence: "To ensure coordination on this arrangement, both Parties commit to a guiding principle of 'no surprises.'"

The deal itself should not have come as a complete surprise. Initial discussions between senior Liberals and New Democrats happened after last fall's election; Maclean's broke news of those conversations in October.

But those early talks did not deliver anything concrete and the conversation was more or less put aside.

"There was no animosity. We just needed a little break," a senior Liberal source with direct knowledge of the talks, speaking on condition they not be named, told the CBC this week.

Unlike similar confidence-and-supply agreements in Ontario, British Columbia and the Yukon — which came about very quickly after elections — there was no great urgency to the negotiations between Trudeau and Singh. The Liberal minority government was relatively secure and found the support it needed to pass several measures before the House of Commons adjourned in December.

Still, reports of possible collaboration were greeted enthusiastically in November by Erin O'Toole, who was still hanging on as Conservative leader. Faced with his own problems, O'Toole condemned what he described as a Liberal-NDP "coalition."

But unlike the negotiations between Jack Layton's NDP and Stephane Dion's Liberals in the feverish fall of 2008, these Liberal-NDP talks do not appear to have considered a coalition government at any point.

"We want to be independent enough to be able to be critical. We want to be able to oppose and to call for more," an NDP source, speaking on condition they not be named, said this week.

The discussions picked up again in the new year. As the Canadian Press reported this week, a phone call between Trudeau and Singh after the birth of Singh's daughter in January helped to get the ball rolling again.

Those discussions involved a small number of advisers — Trudeau's chief of staff Katie Telford and senior adviser Jeremy Broadhurst for the Liberals, Singh's chief of staff Jennifer Howard and NDP national director Anne McGrath for the New Democrats.