OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Canadian Parliament on Monday narrowly voted in favor of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget, staving off the threat of a second election in less than a year.
Legislators voted 170-168 to adopt a motion allowing the House of Commons to start studying the budget. Although there will be other votes in months to come, Monday’s result indicates the budget should eventually be approved.
Carney’s Liberals are a few seats short of a majority in the 343-seat House of Commons and needed some opposition legislators to back the budget or abstain. In the end, a handful of opposition legislators abstained.
Carney’s budget, an economic blueprint for the next fiscal year, proposed doubling the fiscal deficit to counter U.S. tariffs and fund defense and housing programs. While it proposed reducing the number of federal government employees, the budget did not have as many austerity measures as some had feared.
Recent polls suggest that if an election were held now the Liberals would retain power.
The official right-of-center opposition Conservative Party is dealing with internal dissent after it lost an April election to the Liberals and leader Pierre Poilievre faces a formal review of his performance in January.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Deepa Babington and Chris Reese)
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