Remember when a messy Conservative breakup saved the Liberals?

National Post, 19 November 2025

And that wasn't even the most dramatic thing to happen in the battle to pass the 2005 budget

The respective opposition leaders had a straightforward task at Monday’s budget vote. See to it that the government did not fall, as no opposition party was confident that a snap election would be to its advantage, but not appear too accommodating, lest they be thought weak. They pulled it off admirably, with exacting precision, allowing the budget to pass by the narrowest of margins, 170-168. Elegant execution, but risky, as it left no margin for error.

It could have been closer, had the various parties had the stomach for it. They could have produced a tie, to be broken with the Speaker casting, by convention, the deciding vote in the government’s favour. That happened some twenty years ago in a saga worthy of a libretto. It might have been too much even for the Italian operatic imagination.

I had a front row seat when the curtain went up in May 2005. It bears remembering now, as it was the first time the Speaker had cast a tie-breaking vote on a confidence measure. And it was high drama, the likes of which rarely occur on Parliament Hill.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Canadians were used to minority parliaments, with five in 22 years: 1957, 1962, 1963, 1972 and 1979. By the turn of the century though, Parliament had become accustomed to majority complacency, with six consecutive majority governments from 1980 to 2000.

In 2004, Paul Martin inherited a majority from Jean Chrétien, but his budget that year was not voted upon; he dissolved the House for an election soon after its presentation. He returned as prime minister, but with a minority.

Thus the 2005 budget was the first time a minority government had attempted to pass a budget since Joe Clark’s short-lived minority in 1979. While Clark failed due to confused haplessness, Martin and opposition leader Stephen Harper would orchestrate a show that involved romance, betrayal, suspense, accusations of bribery and the final Parliamentary words of a dying man. Nothing in Canadian history had ever been like it.

That 2004 election marked a new era of minority governments; six of the last eight elections have produced minorities. The parties have now become skilled in getting budgets through — no government has fallen on a budget vote. But that first attempt in 2005 was the nearest of near-misses.

Martin’s original budget that year sailed through, as Harper agreed to support it. But there was an amendment — some $4 billion in extra spending as a result of Liberal-NDP negotiations. It too would be a confidence vote.

The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois were opposed. The Liberals, with NDP support, were still a few votes shy. The government was facing defeat. But the fat lady had not even begun to warm up, let alone sing.

Martin persuaded Conservative MP Belinda Stronach to cross the floor to the Liberal caucus. The price was high; she got an instant cabinet post. Stronach was a former Conservative Party leadership contender. More salaciously, she was then romantically involved with MP Peter MacKay, the last leader of the Progressive Conservatives. MacKay had merged politically with Harper’s Canadian Alliance and merged otherwise with Stronach to form Ottawa’s glamorous power couple. Stronach left MacKay one fateful night after dinner for late-night dessert with Martin at 24 Sussex. The deal was done. It was the night of the long dessert knives.

MacKay, betrayed in love and politics, retreated to Nova Scotia where he wore his broken heart on his sleeve in a memorably sad interview from his potato patch. The country boy had been cast aside by the tycoon’s daughter to join another tycoon’s government.

The fat lady was warmed up, but not yet ready to sing. The government was still one vote shy. There were three independent MPs. One went with the Liberals, the other with the opposition. The Liberals had 151 votes now, the opposition had 152. It would all come down to Chuck Cadman, a former Canadian Alliance MP who had lost the Conservative nomination for his B.C. riding in 2004.

Cadman then decided to run as an independent and won re-election over the Conservative candidate. Having been diagnosed with a serious cancer, he got the news in hospital.

How would Cadman, the estranged Conservative, vote?

He had less than two months to live; he would die in July. He flew to Ottawa despite his illness. Enormous pressure was brought to bear upon him. In 2008, a book quoted Cadman’s widow, Dona, to the effect that senior Conservative staffers had offered her husband a million-dollar life insurance policy to bring down the government. Martin’s payoff to Stronach was out in the open and legal; this one was clandestine and perhaps criminal.

When the Liberal Party, by then in opposition, claimed on its website that Harper, then prime minister, had known about the alleged bribe, Harper sued the Liberals for libel. A sitting PM in court against the opposition! More drama still. The matter was settled out of court, but not before Harper testified that he knew nothing of the financial offer.

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