Canada: Trudeau's minority government survives vote of confidence

The minority government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau survived an important vote of confidence on Tuesday October 6 in the Ottawa parliament, avoiding an early election.

By 177 votes in favor and 152 against, the members of the House of Commons approved the “Speech from the Throne” in which the government set out on September 23 its priorities for the country's economic recovery.

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During the vote on the support motion, Justin Trudeau's Liberals won the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP, left), while the Conservative Party (right) and the Bloc Québécois separatists voted against.

The Greens, who appointed their new leader, Annamie Paul, on Saturday, also opposed it.

The continuation of the Trudeau government was the most likely hypothesis following an agreement reached with the NDP, one of the main opposition parties.

Its leader Jagmeet Singh had announced that he had obtained the two measures he demanded to support the government: the extension of emergency aid to employees who lost their jobs due to Covid-19, and a guarantee of two weeks of leave paid for more workers.

With 154 deputies out of the 338 in the lower house of parliament, the liberals must find the ad hoc support of other political parties to pass their bills and stay in power.

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In his platform, Justin Trudeau pledged to create more than a million jobs to bring the unemployment rate back to pre-crisis levels of around 5.5%.

The Canadian government also announced new unspecified spending, indicated its willingness to put in place measures in favor of the climate and to support citizens and businesses

.

Canada has entered the

of the pandemic according to Ottawa, and in recent weeks has recorded a surge in new cases of coronavirus, which exceeded a thousand each day against a few hundred in August.

More than 9,500 people have already succumbed to the disease since March.