Is an election on the way?
New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh said on Wednesday he was ending the party’s supply-and-confidence deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberals, potentially jeopardizing the survival of the minority government.
Singh said in a video released on X that he had “ripped up” the agreement, which had been scheduled to run until next June, because the prime minister’s party “[does] not deserve another chance from Canadians.”
He said Trudeau “has proven again and again he will always cave to corporate greed,” and that the Liberals had proven “too weak, too selfish and too beholden to stop the Conservatives and their plans to cut.”
The deal is done.
— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) September 4, 2024
The Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to stop the Conservatives and their plans to cut. But the NDP can.
Big corporations and CEOs have had their governments. It's the people's time. pic.twitter.com/BsE9zT0CwF
Originally announced in March 2022, the deal saw the NDP back a Liberal minority government in Ottawa in exchange for the Liberals advancing key NDP priorities in parliament.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Singh stopped short of calling for an election, but described an “even bigger battle ahead” with Conservative Party and Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre surging in opinion polls.
“From workers, from retirees, from young people, from patients, from families – he will cut in order to give more to big corporations and wealthy CEOs,” Singh said of Poilievre.
An NDP spokesperson said the party had informed the Liberals of its intention to end the agreement an hour before the video was posted online, according to CBC News.
While the NDP, which has 24 members in the current parliament, could still support the minority Liberal government on a vote-by-vote basis, today’s decision potentially opens the door to a no-confidence vote against the Liberals – either by Singh, the Conservatives or Bloc Québécois.
A successful vote of no confidence in Trudeau’s government would likely see Canadians head to the polls for the first time since September 2021, when the Liberals were returned for a third consecutive stint in power.
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