Prime Minister Mark Carney and other Liberal MPs vote in the House of the Commons on Thursday.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
The minority Liberal government survived its first budget-related confidence vote Thursday, with another vote planned for Friday before a scheduled one-week break.
The House of Commons voted 198-139 against a motion put forward by the Conservatives. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP voted with the Liberals.
Four Conservative MPs and one NDP MP were listed as not voting.
The Conservative MPs were Matt Jeneroux, who announced his resignation on Thursday, along with Michael Chong, Laila Goodridge and Shannon Stubbs. The NDP MP was Jenny Kwan.
Mr. Chong told The Globe he tried to vote but had technical difficulties. Ms. Stubb’s office says the MP is on a medical leave. It was not immediately clear why the other MPs did not cast a vote. MPs are able to cast votes remotely if they cannot attend in person.
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon’s office had declared earlier in the day that both Thursday and Friday’s votes would be confidence votes.
“As these motions both explicitly reject the budget, they are considered to be matters of confidence,” the minister’s spokesperson, Mark Kennedy, told The Globe and Mail.
House Leader Steven MacKinnon's spokesperson says the vote on Thursday and Friday will be treated as a confidence matter.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Should a government be defeated on a confidence matter, the result is typically a federal election.
The House is debating a Liberal motion calling on MPs to approve the budgetary policy of the government.
On Thursday evening, MPs voted on a Conservative sub-amendment to a Bloc amendment to the government motion. On Friday, the House will vote on the Bloc amendment before MPs leave Ottawa for a short recess over Remembrance Day.
The traditional procedure for debating a budget involves the leader of the official opposition moving an amendment to the government’s budget motion. Then, the second-largest opposition party moves a sub-amendment.
However, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did not move an amendment after his budget speech Wednesday and Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet quickly took his spot.
The Bloc moved an amendment that says the House should reject the government’s budget statement, before listing four of its policy priorities that it says were not reflected in the budget.
That left the Conservatives in the position of having to move the sub-amendment to the Bloc’s amendment. Conservative finance critic Jasraj Hallan moved the motion Thursday, which proposed to wipe out the Bloc’s language for why the budget should be rejected and replacing it with a list of Conservative priorities that the party says were not addressed, including keeping the size of the deficit to $42-billion.
“When we look at this budget, there is absolutely nothing inside it for the everyday Canadian,” said Mr. Hallan in the House.
Bloc spokesperson Joanie Riopel said the party opposed the Conservative sub-amendment because it would wipe out the Bloc’s wording.
“I stress the Conservative sub-amendment, because yesterday they forgot to move an amendment, so we put forward one in their place,” she said in an e-mail.
All of the opposition parties would need to vote in unison in order to defeat the Liberal government, which is currently two votes short of a majority.
NDP interim leader Don Davies issued a statement saying the NDP has not decided to support the Liberals’ budget.
He said the NDP opposed the Conservative amendment because it called for more pipelines and austerity.
With a report from Emily Haws