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Trudeau has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday in Ottawa, where he will take questions on how he plans to make the new parliament work.

At a Tuesday news conference, Singh outlined pharmacare, affordable housing, financial support for students, climate change action and Indigenous reconciliation as priorities for his party. He said “everything is on the table” when it comes to discussions with Trudeau, and said he would approach this parliament with “an open mind and an open heart.”

“This minority government gives us a chance to be able to fight for the things that we’ve laid out all along this campaign,” he said.

“We are not ruling out anything,” he added later. “But we’re not going to negotiate that here (with the media). What I can tell you is our priorities are very clear…Canadians elected us with that responsibility and I’ll take it very seriously.”

But Singh will have to be crafty about when and how he tries to exert influence on the Liberals, because the NDP’s role as a kingmaker is not as powerful as it might seem at first glance. There are two reasons for this.

The first is practical: the party can’t afford another election campaign in the immediate future. All political parties are financially depleted coming out of a campaign, but the NDP was in by far the weakest shape of the three major national parties heading into the election. While the Conservatives and Liberals had fundraising war chests of more than $20 million at the end of 2018, the NDP’s was less than $4 million. The NDP took out a $12-million mortgage on their Ottawa headquarters last year that will have to be paid back before they can go to that well again.

The NDP will have raised some money during the campaign that should help, but the party’s leadership will still have to think very hard before casting a vote that could trigger a new election.

The second reason is simply the parliamentary math. The Liberal seat count of 157 is strong enough to get something passed with just one of the Conservatives (121 seats), Bloc Québécois (32 seats) or NDP (24 seats) supporting them.

By contrast, all three parties would have to vote together to have enough votes to defeat the Liberals. The Green Party, with just three seats, isn’t strong enough alone to make a difference on either side.