Canada’s minority government will submit to a no-confidence vote on Friday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Monday, raising the possibility of a fourth election in five years for Canadians.
“I just filed the notice of ways and means motion, which is scheduled to be voted on Friday,” Flaherty told reporters in Ottawa.
The motion is technically a measure that seeks implementation of budget proposals from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, but it effectively amounts to a confidence vote and an important test for both his government and the opposition Liberal Party.
Harper’s decision to submit the government to the test came on parliament’s first day back in session, two weeks after the Liberal Party announced it would withdraw its support from the conservative government and seek to topple it.
But to successfully force Harper’s government out, the Liberals need support from the two top opposition parties — the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party (NDP).
The Liberals are likely to win support from Bloc Quebecois, but the NDP seems disinclined to help topple the government, particularly as public opinion polls show Canadians are reluctant to go to the polls again, for the fourth time in five years.
Harper’s Conservative Party may also have swung momentum in their favor by announcing earlier on Monday new legislation that would improve unemployment benefits for some 190,000 workers.
The legislation was relatively well received by the NDP, whose party chief Jack Layton described it as “a step in the right direction.”
“There is much more that needs to be done as well,” he said.
However, he added: “Our preference remains fighting for the unemployed rather than fighting for a second election.”
The issue of eligibility for unemployment benefits has been a key question, with the Liberal Party, led by Michael Ignatieff, citing Harper’s previous hardline position in its decision to withdraw support for his government.
The Conservative Party’s apparent U-turn on Monday allowed Harper to undercut that criticism and call for unity.
“The public’s No. 1 concern is the economy. It is certainly not an election,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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