Prime Minister Mark Carney insists the federal budget was drawn up to contain a series of measures advocated by MPs from other parties, and that those olive branches will become evident in the coming days.
With one MP already crossing the floor to join the Liberals, Carney now only needs two more votes, or abstentions, to approve his budget.
The unanswered question is whether any of those measures will convince enough opposition MPs that allowing the budget to pass is in their interests.
“There were different degrees of input that we received from the various opposition parties,” Carney said in Ottawa, the day after Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne presented his first budget.
“I know, in fact, that there is a lot in this budget that reflects the contribution of those parties from specific projects to certain programs and the reinvestment in them,” he said. “So those parties are aware and part of this is a budget digestion process.”
While that digestion is underway, at least one Bloc MP, four Conservatives and as many as three NDP members now face the prospect of securing funding for projects in their districts if the budget is passed.
Bloc Quebecois MP Alexis Deschênes will have to consider whether budget support for the Exploramer Shark Pavilion in Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, Que., and the Chantier Naval Forillon shipyard in Gaspé merits his vote, or at least his abstention.
NDP MPs and the choices they face
The budget also promises funding for the Filipino Cultural and Community Center in the Vancouver area. While a specific location has not yet been chosen, NDP interim leader Don Davies’ leadership has a large Filipino population that would surely welcome the project.
Vancouver-Kingsway was the federal route where the Philippine festival of Lapu-Lapu Day turned tragic when 11 people were killed in a car attack. Davies may not get the centre, but with such a large community in his constituency, he will have to consider whether he really wants to turn it down.
Similarly, Alberta’s only NDP MP, Heather McPherson, must consider whether support for the Rapid Fire Theater in her Edmonton-Strathcona district will tempt her to abstain or vote in favor of the budget.
NDP MP Gord Johns, who represents the Courtenay-Alberniha party in British Columbia, has been a strong supporter of implementing a clean technology tax credit for the use of biomass to create energy. The budget was committed to making that happen.
He has also advocated for the federal government to establish an aerial firefighting fleet. The budget promises to lease four aircraft at a cost of $257.6 million to “bolster provincial and territorial air firefighting capacity.”
Conservatives face personal and partisan dilemmas
Then there are the four Conservative MPs who could be taking a closer look at budget measures that affect them closely. They include:
- Kerry Diotte, whose tour of Edmonton-Griesbach has been promised support for the Bissell Anti-Poverty Centre.
- Warren Steinley, whose riding of Regina-Lewvan will receive support from the Regina RCMP Heritage Centre.
- Vincent Neil Ho, whose tour of Richmond Hill South in the Greater Toronto Area will raise funds for a Memorial to the Victims of Flight PS752 in Richmond Hill’s Unity Park.
- Conservative MP Gabriel Hardy, in Montmorency-Charlevoix, has been promised money for an Earth sciences center in La Malbaie.
More generally, opposition MPs must consider whether the overall moves in the budget are worth their survival.
In the last election, for example, the NDP promised to create a Youth Climate Corps to help train and employ young people to respond to climate emergencies and get jobs in renewable energy projects.
The NDP’s election promise was to spend $500 million on the program, while the Liberal budget allocates $40 million over two years.
The federal Greens said that while the program “could be transformative,” its two-year timeline and much smaller budget mean it is “at best a pilot project.”
The Greens received much criticism for what they said were scaling back climate policy initiatives, but welcomed other measures on affordable housing, school lunches, dental care, high-speed rail and the move to validate foreign credentials.
The question is: are they enough to secure the Green Party’s sole vote in the House?
The conservatives and the bloc
On the eve of the budget, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre sent a letter to Carney outlining some of your priorities.
The Conservative leader wanted to see a reduction in capital gains taxes, income taxes, taxes affecting house building and the industrial carbon tax.
Poilievre didn’t get exactly what he wanted. The state budget bent on the industrial carbon tax, maintained, but did not deepen, the one percentage point cut in the lowest income tax bracket and kept a promise to rule out a planned increase for capital gains obtained in March.
When it comes to reducing home construction taxes, Carney delivered on his campaign promise to eliminate the GST for first-time homebuyers on new homes up to $1 million, while reducing it on new homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.
Most notably, the budget exceeded Poilievre’s demand to keep the deficit below $42 billion, with a shortfall of around $78 billion.
These measures may not be enough for the party leader, but it remains to be seen if they are enough for some of his MPs.
Apart from Deschênes, of the Bloc, who has to make some decisions about his route in Quebec through Gaspésie-Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine-Listuguj, the Bloc as a whole seems impassive.
The party did six demands of the budget, which the Liberal government said “decided not to address.”
