Bloc, NDP to vote with Liberals in first of three confidence budget votes

OTTAWA — Canadians are not headed to the polls just yet. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP have said they will be voting with the Liberals — ensuring a majority — in the first of three confidence votes on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget on Thursday evening.

More specifically, they will be voting against the Conservative sub-amendment which calls on the House of Commons to reject the budget because it did not bring down the deficit to the promised $42 billion in the last fiscal update and failed to include a plan to build more oil and gas pipelines.

Interim NDP Leader Don Davies said his party will not be supporting the Conservatives’ motion because it calls for tens of billions more in cuts to public spending.

“It’s absolutely irresponsible, it’s extremely right-wing, and it’s not the direction that the country should be going in,” he said.

The vote is expected to happen around 5:45 p.m.

There will be a second confidence vote on Friday on the Bloc’s amendment to the budget, this time, which calls for MPs to reject it because it does not do enough for Quebec, in the party’s opinion, and does not have a clear plan to fight climate change.

The Bloc’s House leader, Christine Normandin, said her party cannot support the Conservatives’ motion as it not only scraps her own party’s demands but it supports “oil and pipelines.”

The government has deemed that the amendment and sub-amendment brought forward by both parties will be subject to confidence votes.

“As these motions both explicitly reject the budget, they are considered to be matters of confidence,” said Government House leader Steven MacKinnon’s director of communications, Mark Kennedy, in a statement to the National Post.

If the minority Liberal government loses the confidence of the House, it will be expected to resign or seek the dissolution of Parliament for a general election to be held.

The main motion on the budget is expected to be voted on as early as mid-November, as budgetary matters are automatically considered to be a matter of confidence.

The Liberals find themselves with 170 MPs — two seats short of a majority of 343 seats in total after former Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor to the Liberals. It remains unclear if the NDP or individual MPs will be supporting their budget or abstaining.

Davies said NDP MPs have still not made up their minds on the Bloc amendment to be voted Friday, nor have they decided how they will cast their vote on the budget itself.

The Conservatives and the Bloc have already declared that they will be voting against the budget in its current form, as did Green Party Leader Elizabeth May this week.

The Bloc took the unusual step of tabling an amendment to the budget — something they haven’t done the last time they were the official opposition in 1997 — after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did not table his party’s motion after his speech on Wednesday.

His finance critic, Jasraj Singh Hallan, ended up tabling his party’s own motion on Thursday and, because of the order, it became a sub-amendment to the Bloc’s amendment.

Sam Lilly, director of media relations for Poilievre’s office, declined to say whether Poilievre forgot to table his party’s motion or if it was a deliberate move.

“Amendments and sub-amendments can be made any time within the first two days of budget debates,” Lilly said.

Liberals and the NDP poked fun at the situation, with Davies saying the Conservatives were “asleep at the switch” and allowed the Bloc to bypass them.

“I think that speaks to disarray in the Conservative party right now,” he said.

Liberal MP Sean Casey said Poilievre had a “rough day” after d’Entremont crossed the floor to the Liberals and the swirling rumours that the government is trying to poach others.

“It’s understandable that his heart and mind weren’t completely in it,” said Casey.

On Wednesday, Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet deplored that the Liberals are too busy playing political games instead of negotiating in good faith with other parties to get their budget to pass.

“It is like they have cast all of us in an episode of ‘House of Cards’ with the craziest plot twists imaginable, involving schemes to try to convince other members to cross over to their side through the back door,” he said.

“It is embarrassing to watch. I look forward to the break.”

National Post calevesque@postmedia.com

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