The Liberal government is having “very good conversations” with the New Democratic Party over getting this year’s federal budget through the House of Commons, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters in Montreal on Monday.
Freeland was asked if the Liberals were willing to go to polls if the NDP were to decide not to support the federal budget. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh hasn’t yet said whether his party, which has a supply and confidence agreement with the minority Liberals, will vote to help pass it.
“We have had good conversations with the NDP. I’ve had good conversations with my finance critic Don Davies over the weekend. This is a budget that does what Canadians need,” she said, adding that this was a budget that made “historic investments in housing.”
Last week, Freeland tabled the federal government’s budget with a heavy focus on housing as well as policies officials say target the struggles facing millennials and Gen Z. The budget promises to build 3.87 million new homes by 2031 – two million more than the current expected pace – with a slew of measures and funding to scale up the pace of new home construction.
Singh criticized the budget last week for “failing to tackle corporate greed.”
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Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, had blasted the government’s spending plans last week and tied the Liberal budgetary deficits to the rising cost of living.
Poilievre called Trudeau a fiscal “pyromaniac” in the House of Commons after the budget was tabled, accusing the Liberals’ “wasteful” budget of stoking the flames of inflation.
— with a file from Global’s Craig Lord.
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