TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's budget narrowly passed on Monday, avoiding a possible election.
Carney's Liberal government does not have enough votes to pass the budget on its own but it passed 170-168 with the support of a Green Party member of Parliament and some New Democratic Party abstentions.
“Canadians do not want an election right now,” Don Davies, the interim New Democratic Party leader, said. “The consequences of defeating
this budget would not be to improve it or to help Canadians. It would be to plunge the country into an election only months after the last one. And while we still face an existential threat from the Trump administration.”
The budget vote is considered a vote of confidence in the minority Liberal government.
“Parliamentarians decided to put Canada first,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said. “There is enough uncertainty in the world.”
The Liberals don’t have a majority of seats in the House of Commons and must rely on an opposition party to pass legislation.
The last time a budget vote triggered an election in Canada was in 1979.
Carney's Liberal Party scored a stunning comeback victory in an election last April in a vote widely seen as a rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump. But the Liberals fell just short of winning an outright majority in Parliament.
Carney’s rival, populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, was in the lead until Trump took aim at Canada with a trade war and threats to annex the country as the 51st state.
A Conservative opposition lawmaker joined Carney’s governing Liberal Party earlier this month, a political coup on a day the government announced its budget for the year.
