NDP declares supply and confidence deal with Liberals is ‘done’

Canada’s New Democratic Party has pulled out of a supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals, leaving the minority government in danger.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh posted on X just before 1 p.m. Wednesday that the Liberal-NDP deal “is done” in a video.

“Today I notified the prime minister that I have ripped up the supply and confidence agreement,” Singh says in the video.

The deal was made in March 2022, keeping the minority government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in power until June 2025.

The agreement committed the Liberal party to implement NDP-focused priorities including dental care and healthcare in exchange for the NDP caucus to support the party by providing votes for legislation or budgets.

By pulling out of the agreement, the NDP will now vote on any future Liberal legislation on a case-by-case basis.

Tensions between the two parties became strained after the Liberal government forced Canada’s major railways in August into binding arbitration to end the Teamsters’ union work stoppage. A move by the prime minister that the NDP leader called “cowardly, anti-worker and proof that he will always cave to corporate greed.”

Leader of Canada’s Conservative party Pierre Poilievre called for the NDP and the Bloc Québécois last Thursday, to vote non-confidence in the minority government when Parliament resumes on Sept. 16.

Poilievre urged the opposition parties to force an early election by this fall.

A statement on the official NDP website reads the leader saying “the NDP is ready for an election, and voting non-confidence will be on the table with each and every confidence measure.”

The website says the party is ready to face Poilievre’s “Conservative cuts” and be the party that “can stop the conservatives.”

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. pic.twitter.com/BsE9zT0CwF

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) September 4, 2024

This is a developing new story. More to come.