WATCH: Breaking down the deal the Liberals and NDP agreed to

• The deal will see the NDP not vote against the government on matters of confidence or budgets
• Holding it together will come down to leadership and caucus management
• "If you don’t elect a majority of one party they’re going to work in funny ways.”

Gerald Baier compares minority governments to that of a game of chicken; who’s going to bring it all down first.

And a newly penned deal between the federal NDP and Liberals means that game now has some rules.

“It’s still dangerous and if you decide to disobey a rule, the game goes the way a game goes,” the UBC Associate Professor of Political Science told Kelowna10. “The way to enforce it is through the next election to see who’s mad and happy with the way it played out.”

That next election shouldn’t take place until 2025, according to the confidence and supply agreement arranged by the two parties.

Announced Tuesday morning, the deal will see the NDP not vote against the government on matters of confidence or budgets (supply), which can topple minority parliaments. In exchange, the Liberals will adjust their legislative agenda to make room for some NDP priorities.

This is different from a coalition, as no New Democratic MPs will be in cabinet.

What’s happening is not wildly dissimilar from what took place in British Columbia in 2017, when the Greens agreed to work with the BC NDP to stabilize the legislative assembly.

Baier called the timing of the agreement curious, unable to pinpoint any obvious reason to announce it now.

“I’m not sure what really precipitated it,” he said, adding that perhaps the Liberals were about to act on dental and pharmacare – both NDP priorities -- and saw an opportunity for a longer-term relationship.

Risk, advantages for all involved

Whatever it was, he said the deal doesn’t come without risk to everyone involved. For the NDP, they risk following the tradition of the Liberals pickpocketing their ideas, taking the credit for putting them in place and attracting left-leaning voters.

On the flip side, the NDP could use it as an opportunity to hold the Liberals to minority status.

“Maybe that’s [the NDPs] appeal in the future. We can’t see ourselves to a majority government, but we should be a conscience for these sorts of programs in the future and so keep returning us with forty or fifty seats and we’ll keep that influence on [policy],” he explained.

And whether the two can remain dancing partners until 2025 is anyone’s guess. He said paramount to the deal holding together for three more years will come down to leadership and caucus management. Of course, he said the government can always engineer its own defeat if it sees an opportunity.

Baier said it will be crucial for Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh to communicate and avoid making the other feel left out of anything – something he said should be a relatively simple task for those two.

But keeping a lid on caucus could be another story.

“I don’t know what, say, Charlie Angus thinks of this. Somebody who is a bit more on the outspoken side of the NDP,” he said, warning of a need to keep people in check.

MPs in ridings where the Liberals eek out victories by slim margins over the NDP may start to feel a bit nervous, too.

“If you won a close riding just over the NDP last time around and now your government has decided to adopt a bunch of NDP programs, the Conservatives aren’t your fear, the NDP are your fear … how comfortable do you feel now?”

Tories must balance attacks

He said the federal Conservatives will also have to balance their attacks on the deal. Expected to come down the pipe is a dental-care program for low-income Canadians, national pharmacare, extending the rapid housing initiative and phasing out public financing for the fossil fuel sector more quickly.

Not all of those will be opposed by its base, Baier said, especially as the programs come online.

“Once your voters in say rural Manitoba are getting better dental care ... it’s going to be hard to fight that. Canadians like these universal services,” he said, though admitting there are other policies they could possibly better exploit.

Some have already questioned the agreement as being undemocratic and nothing but a ploy for Trudeau to cling to power. Baier said that is simply not true.

“From an institutional and legal perspective this is how parliaments can work all the time,” he said. “You can argue the election was not about a power sharing, sure but all elections are about electing a parliament and parliaments will work how they work when they finally meet. If you don’t elect a majority of one party they’re going to work in funny ways.”