2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Raisa Patel)
OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has joined the Bloc Québécois in refusing to help Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives topple Justin Trudeau’s minority government. “We’re not going to listen to someone who wants to cut the things that people need right now. Canadians need relief, not more cuts,” Singh told reporters Thursday.
Earlier this week, Poilievre pledged to use an allotted “opposition day” next week to present a motion in the House of Commons declaring lost confidence in Trudeau’s Liberal government. The Conservative leader has attempted to goad both Singh and the Bloc Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet into backing his motion and triggering an early election — something that can now happen due to Singh’s exit from his supply-and-confidence pact with Trudeau earlier this month. But neither leader has decided to bite: Blanchet told reporters Wednesday that even though he doesn’t support the Liberals, there are still concessions he would like to extract from them, such as increasing pension payments for seniors.
Singh said repeatedly Thursday that Trudeau has let Canadians down, and that he doesn’t “deserve” another chance. He didn’t say when he was prepared to offer voters that chance, but said in terms of his own demands that he would be looking for the Liberals to impose a cap on grocery prices for essential items. Singh’s principal secretary, Anne McGrath, told the Star at the NDP’s caucus retreat in Montreal last week that New Democrats still want to see the Trudeau government table a bill that would improve care for seniors.
Passing such legislation was one of the unfinished items in Singh and Trudeau’s governance deal; early work on crafting the bill had only cleared the consultation phase by the time the pact collapsed. Another bill — which lays out a framework for government-paid drug coverage and a plan to cover diabetes and birth control drugs and devices — is still being studied in the Senate. The passage of pharmacare legislation is a key priority for the New Democrats as a new session of Parliament gets underway, with Singh noting Thursday that Poilievre is “very much interested” in stopping the progress of the bill.
“They’re absolutely timing this vote right while pharmacare is in the Senate,” he said. Hours before Singh made his announcement on Parliament Hill, Poilievre took to social media to blast the NDP leader for his refusal to commit to taking down the Trudeau government, saying Singh “never shows up when it counts.”.
