Budget Vote Could Bring Down Carney's Government

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney faced a vote on his budget in Parliament on Monday that if lost could trigger an election. Carney's Liberal government does not have enough votes to pass the budget on its own. 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 budget vote, expected Monday evening, is being treated as a vote of confidence in the minority Liberal government, the AP reports. For the budget to pass, it needs the votes of at least two members of Parliament outside the party—or four vote abstentions from the opposition benches. The last time a budget vote triggered an election in Canada was in 1979.

Carney's Liberal party scored a stunning comeback victory in the April election in a vote widely seen as a rebuke of President 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.

"We have a minority Parliament, but we do believe we have a mandate," Liberal House of Commons leader Steven MacKinnon said last month, per Global News. "If there has to be an election, we will confidently take our plan to the people, but we don't think an election is necessary," he said, adding that "the opposition parties are, in my view, being very, very cavalier about the country's future."