Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government on Monday said that an opposition push for an anti-corruption committee would trigger a vote that could force a fall election in Canada.
Liberal House of Commons leader Pablo Rodriguez said the government considers the Conservative motion to be a matter of confidence.
Trudeau’s Liberal Party won re-election last year, but does not have the majority of seats in parliament and must rely on at least one opposition party to remain in power.
Trudeau said he does not want an election, and that his government is focused on the health and economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The opposition is going to have to decide whether they want to make this minority government work or if they have lost confidence in the government,” Trudeau said.
The opposition Conservatives, the New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois have said that the Liberals are avoiding scrutiny of contracts and programs set up to deal with the pandemic.
The Liberals temporarily closed parliament in August, which shut down the work of committees probing the We Charity deal.
Trudeau has said he should have recused himself from a Cabinet decision to award a contract to We Charity to administer money to students having trouble finding work due to the pandemic.
The almost billion-dollar program came under scrutiny after it was revealed that We Charity, an organization Trudeau’s family has worked for, was chosen to administer it. Trudeau’s wife, brother and mother have been paid a combined C$300,000 (US$228,990) for speaking at a number of We Charity events.
The Conservatives said the committee could explore the We Charity deal.
Rodriguez said the motion would allow the opposition to pull Cabinet ministers from their work and require them to testify “day after day.”
The parties were to debate the motion and a vote was expected as soon as yesterday.
Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said he does not anticipate an election.
He expected the Quebec-based Bloc Quebecois party to prop up the government if it came to a vote.
“The Conservatives make it sound as if the case is open and shut on Liberal corruption, and the Liberals make it appear as if they have something to cover up,” Wiseman said. “The We scandal is not as big an issue in Quebec and I believe the BQ [Bloc Quebecois] fears that both the Liberals and Conservatives may make gains in Quebec at their expense in a snap election.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema