{"id":385974,"date":"2025-11-17T20:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T20:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/385974\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T20:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T20:30:17","slug":"outcome-remains-uncertain-hours-before-key-federal-budget-vote-for-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/385974\/","title":{"rendered":"Outcome remains uncertain hours before key federal budget vote for Liberals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Members of Parliament are scheduled to vote on a motion from Finance Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne at 6:45 p.m. Monday.Spencer Colby\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The outcome of Monday evening\u2019s confidence vote on the Liberal budget remains uncertain with just hours to spare.<\/p>\n

Liberal cabinet minister Wayne Long, when asked on Parliament Hill Monday afternoon if the budget was going to pass, crossed his fingers and said \u201chere\u2019s hoping.\u201d<\/p>\n

While various Liberals on Parliament Hill have expressed their expectation<\/a> that the government will survive, no opposition party leaders have clearly pledged to act in a way that would avoid an election as of shortly after 2 p.m.<\/p>\n

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A vote is scheduled to take place at 6:45 p.m. on a motion from Finance Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne. The motion states: \u201cThat this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Champagne said the mood of Canadians is for Canada to \u201cgo forward\u201d with the budget plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s really a question for the opposition,\u201d he said Monday on Parliament Hill.<\/p>\n

Earlier amendments to that motion, by the Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois and Conservatives, were both defeated after the Liberals declared those votes matters of confidence.<\/p>\n

A Prime Minister whose government is defeated on a clear confidence vote typically goes to the Governor-General to seek the dissolution of Parliament and a federal election campaign.<\/p>\n

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday he hopes the federal budget will pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty confident it\u2019s in the best interest of the country to make sure we pass this budget,\u201d the Progressive Conservative Premier told reporters at the Ontario legislature, after a virtual First Ministers Meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney and his fellow premiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t matter what political stripe you\u2019re from. We need to work as Team Canada right now and that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked later how this viewpoint might be received by federal Conservatives, Mr. Ford said he\u2019s not concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s up to them. We\u2019re the Ontario PC party,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The Liberals hold 170 of the 343 seats in the House of Commons. Liberal Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia only votes in the event of a tie.<\/p>\n

There are 173 opposition MPs, made up of 143 Conservatives, 22 Bloc MPs, seven NDP MPs and Green Party MP Elizabeth May.<\/p>\n

The Liberals would need two opposition MPs to vote with the government. Other options that would allow the government to survive include four abstentions or a mix of those two.<\/p>\n

NDP interim Leader Don Davies has previously mused that some of his MPs may abstain, but he has yet to provide an update Monday.<\/p>\n

Ms. May has said she can\u2019t support the budget in its original form, but also said she would be holding talks with the Liberals over the weekend to see if an agreement can be reached that would allow her to vote in favour of Monday\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n

Votes on the budget are widely considered to be confidence matters.<\/p>\n

In Question Period, both the Conservatives and the Bloc pointed to recent criticism from interim-Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques, who released a report Friday saying the government is unlikely to meet its own fiscal targets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Prime Minister\u2019s costly deficit gambles our future on the national credit card,\u201d said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister responded by urging Conservative MPs to vote for the budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is a historic day,\u201d he said, later adding: \u201cThis is an opportunity to build our country. The vote is today. Stand up and be counted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Kennedy, a spokesperson for Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon, told The Globe Monday that \u201cthis is a confidence vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, there have been calls over the years for a clearer definition of which votes are matters of confidence.<\/p>\n

History shows there have been grey areas in the past that did not involve the budget. For instance, Prime Minister Paul Martin\u2019s minority Liberal government lost a May 10, 2005, vote on a motion about amending a report to a committee so that it recommends that the government resign.<\/p>\n

Mr. Martin did not recognize the vote as a confidence matter. His government was defeated on a confidence vote a few months later.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Lester Pearson, another Liberal leader in charge of a minority government, was narrowly defeated on a tax-increase bill in 1968. He came back to the House with a confidence motion, which the Liberals won.<\/p>\n

Since the pandemic, Members of Parliament have the option of voting in person or remotely.<\/p>\n

A handful of MPs did not vote in the two recent confidence votes earlier this month. In some cases, MPs said they had technical issues with their voting app.<\/p>\n

Globe opinion writer Andrew Coyne says that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget is underwhelming, despite the hype.<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

University of Prince Edward Island Professor Don Desserud, an expert on Parliamentary procedure, said online voting is relatively new and there isn\u2019t a lot of precedent related to votes that could be in dispute because of technical issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cParliamentary convention has always considered a budget defeat as a clear vote of no-confidence, so it would be unprecedented for a government to seek clarification on such a vote,\u201d he said in an e-mail. However he cautioned that Parliamentary conventions are known to evolve over the years.<\/p>\n

With a report from Laura Stone in Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Members of Parliament are scheduled to vote on a motion from Finance Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":385975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-385974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115566937700410634","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}