Canada: minority government survives vote of no confidence

The minority government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau survived a no-confidence vote on the budget in parliament on Monday evening, April 26, dismissing the prospect of a snap election this spring.

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By 178 votes in favor and 159 against, members of the House of Commons approved the post-pandemic stimulus budget of 101.4 billion dollars (67 billion euros) over three years, presented last week by the liberal government .

The Trudeau government was able to count on the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP, left), the fourth most important formation in the Commons, which had announced that it did not want to cause an election in the midst of a pandemic.

The budget for the year 2021-2022, which began on April 1, will still have to be approved by the Senate, the upper house of Parliament, a formality expected later this week.

The opposition could still try to bring down the government during the vote on another law concretizing the entry into force of the budget, expected in a few weeks before the summer recess.

After this deadline and once the threat of Covid-19 fades, Justin Trudeau, widely leading in the polls, could be tempted in the fall to call an early election in the hope of regaining an absolute majority in Parliament which he lost in the October 2019 election.

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The centerpiece of the budget provides for an investment of $ 30 billion over five years to establish a network of high-

low-cost

public child care centers

to encourage the participation of women in the labor market. Some 17.6 billion additional dollars (11.6 billion euros) are to be used to "accelerate the green transition" by helping companies to reduce their carbon footprint in fiscal terms or by supporting public transport projects in several large cities in the region. country.

The main opposition party, the Conservatives voted against the budget, as did the separatists of the Bloc Québécois and the Greens. After hitting a record high in 2020, the budget deficit for the current year is expected to drop to $ 154.7 billion, or 6.4 percent of GDP.