UPDATE: Liberal leader Ignatieff has said that his party will ‘provisionally’ support the budget if it is amended to provide regular updates on how the plan is working.
This week may be a big week for US politics but it could well be a bigger one in Canada. As readers may recall, last fall Canadian PM Harper and his Conservatives succeeded in staving off the collapse of his government by getting a six week recess to give himself time to work on the budget.
The budget has been unveiled and like budgets in much of the rest of the world it calls for some major cuts and some fairly significant deficits. Members of two opposition parties, the NDP and the BQ have made it clear they will not support the budget because it does not spend enough on social programs and because it cuts taxes.
This means that the key rests with the largest opposition party, the Liberals. At this point they have not given any clear idea of how they will vote but they are expected to decide by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. If the Liberals vote against the budget then it is likely the government would fail and new elections would be called.
Recent polls indicate that the Conservatives would have a strong lead in those elections, likely giving them an absolute majority in Parliament, something the Liberals would like to avoid.