OTTAWA, Sep 5 : Alleging that the Liberals are “too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests,” NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has said he is terminating the supply-and-confidence agreement his party made with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada.
The deal entered into in March 2022 was scheduled to run until June 2025 and the NDP’s decision has put Trudeau’s party in the minority.
In a video posted on his social media handles, the New Democratic Party (NDP) leader also claimed that Trudeau “has proven again and again he will always cave to corporate greed.”
“The deal is done. 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,” Singh said in a post on X on Wednesday.
“Justin Trudeau has proven again and again he will always cave to corporate greed. The Liberals have let people down. They don’t deserve another chance from Canadians,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC News) said quoting Singh as saying in the video.
Singh said the Liberals will not stand up to corporate interests and he will be running in the next election to “stop Conservative cuts,” it said.
An NDP spokesperson told CBC News the plan to end the agreement had been in the works for the past two weeks but it informed the Liberal government of the decision barely minutes ahead of the video going live online.
The confidence-and-supply agreement struck between the two parties in March 2022 committed the NDP to supporting the Liberal government on confidence votes in exchange for legislative commitments on NDP priorities, CBC News said, adding, that the deal, which ensured the survival of the minority Liberal government, was the first such formal agreement between two parties at the federal level.
Reacting to Singh’s announcement, Trudeau said his government is more focused on tackling the affordability crisis and climate change. “These are the things that we’re focused on. I’ll let others focus on politics,” Trudeau said.
“I really hope the NDP stays focused on how we can deliver for Canadians, as we have over the past years, rather than focusing on politics,” the CBC News quoted Trudeau as saying.
Trudeau said he hoped the next election will not happen “until next fall” so that his government had time to move forward on pharmacare, dental care and school food programmes.
Singh, in a media release accompanying his video announcement, said: “The NDP is ready for an election, and voting non-confidence will be on the table with each and every confidence measure.”
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre termed the NDP leader as “Sellout Singh” and called his announcement on video as a “media stunt.”
In a longish post on X, Poilievre said: “Two years ago, Sellout Singh sold out workers and signed on to a costly coalition with Justin Trudeau that hiked taxes, ballooned food costs, doubled housing costs and unleashed crime and chaos in our once safe streets.”
“In today’s media stunt, Sellout Singh refuses to state whether the NDP will vote with non-confidence to cause a carbon tax election at the first chance,” he added.
Stating that “Sellout Singh has voted to quadruple the carbon tax,” a plan, he said will hurt the Canadian economy, the post further said, “Sellout Singh did all of this after promising he would be an opposition voice.”
In an analytical piece, the Canadian media outlet said that Singh’s decision “injects a lot of uncertainty into Canadian politics — and it could lead to a federal election earlier than planned.”
Canada’s fixed-date election law dictates that a vote will happen in October 2025 — but that date is moot if a majority of MPs turn on the Liberals or if Trudeau goes to the Governor General to request an early election, it added. (PTI )
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