This is how we got socialized medicine in Canada. The NDP plays federal politics precisely to wind up in this position, holding the balance of power over an unpopular Liberal government. This is how the NDP gets their own party platforms passed into laws. The NDP has never formed even a minority federal government, yet they have passed many socialist laws into reality. They don't need to elect many members of parliament. This is also why Liberal majority governments are usually more conservative than Liberal minority governments. If you govern from the center, you draw votes from both the left and right. But if you govern from either left or right, you often then must incorporate votes from the extreme fringe to retain power. So we get center, or far left, or far right. Here we have leftist Liberals forced into the far left - basically communism.