The Conservative Party will once again attempt to topple Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government with its third no-confidence motion of the fall.
The motion, which is expected to come before the House of Commons on Thursday, uses past snippets of criticism of Trudeau’s Liberals coming from the New Democratic Party.
The text of the motion quotes NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announcing in September that his party was withdrawing from the supply and confidence agreement with the Liberal government.
“While the NDP leader said that ‘the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for the people,’” the motion says in the preamble and goes on to ask: “Therefore, “the House agrees with the NDP leader and the House proclaims that it has lost confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.”
The motion also includes Singh’s comment criticizing the Liberal government for imposing binding arbitration to end the railway closure in August.
The Liberal minority needs the support of at least one other party in the House of Commons to survive those votes or pass any legislation.
Two previous motions tabled by the Conservatives in September and October failed and this third will likely not pass because the NDP has said it will oppose it.
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
If a motion of no confidence were approved, the government would fall and early elections would be triggered.
Singh said Tuesday that he will not participate in conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s “games.”
He said he’s not going to vote on a confidence motion and trigger an election when he believes Poilievre would cut programs the NDP fought for, like dental care and pharmaceutical care.
“I am not going to follow Pierre Poilievre’s games. I have no interest in that. Frankly, we’re not going to allow you to cut back on things that people need. In fact, I want to expand dental care, I want people to really start benefiting from the pharmaceutical care legislation that we passed,” Singh said.
The no-confidence vote was scheduled after Speaker Greg Fergus intervened to stop a filibuster in a privilege debate over a green technology fund.
The Conservatives have said they would only end that debate if the NDP agrees to topple the government or if the Liberals hand over unredacted documents at the center of the parliamentary deadlock.
Two other Conservative motions will be heard on Monday and Tuesday, and both will be voted on Tuesday, barring any changes to those plans.
– with files from The Canadian Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
