Canadian MPs are set to vote on a Conservative motion that is trying to topple Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, but it will likely fail.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tabled the motion before the House of Commons on Tuesday and MPs from the four main political parties spent hours debating it.
The motion simply states: “The House has no confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.”
The motion is expected to be put up for a vote Wednesday afternoon after question period.
It will likely get defeated since both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois indicated last week that they will not support it.
If a non-confidence motion were to pass, the government would fall and a snap election would be triggered. The minority Liberals need the support of at least one other party in the House of Commons to survive such votes, or pass any legislation.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said that his party will vote against the non-confidence motion, saying that they won’t let Poilievre “call the shots.”“We’re going to vote [sic] against Conservative cuts and against the Conservative motion,” Singh said Tuesday.
He argued that the Tories have a track record of cuts to health care, noting that Poilievre voted against the dental-care program for low-income Canadians and the national pharmacare program that were agreed upon under the Liberal—NDP deal. The NDP pulled out of that deal on Sept. 4.
Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois said Tuesday it wants to give the Liberal minority government a chance for now, and that it stands ready to negotiate on important issues.
“We are in a situation where there will be other chances to bring down the government, so we’re saying let’s give the government a chance,” Bloc Québécois MP Alain Therrien said in French during a House of Commons debate Tuesday.
Despite the motion not expected to pass, the upcoming vote serves as a first test for Trudeau and his government since the collapse of their supply-and-confidence deal with the NDP.
It comes after a tumultuous summer for the Liberals, which saw two major byelection losses on top of the NDP withdrawing support from the supply-and-confidence agreement earlier this month.