Carney's Liberals Win Budget Vote      11/18 06:20

   

   TORONTO (AP) -- Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's budget narrowly passed 
on Monday, avoiding a possible election.

   Carney's Liberal government does not have enough votes to pass the budget on 
its own but it passed 170-168 with the support of a Green Party member of 
Parliament and some New Democratic Party abstentions.

   "Canadians do not want an election right now," Don Davies, the interim New 
Democratic Party leader, said. "The consequences of defeating this budget would 
not be to improve it or to help Canadians. It would be to plunge the country 
into an election only months after the last one. And while we still face an 
existential threat from the Trump administration."

   The budget vote is considered a vote of confidence in the minority Liberal 
government.

   "Parliamentarians decided to put Canada first," Finance Minister 
Franois-Philippe Champagne said. "There is enough uncertainty in the world."

   The Liberals don't have a majority of seats in the House of Commons and must 
rely on an opposition party to pass legislation.

   The last time a budget vote triggered an election in Canada was in 1979.

   Carney's Liberal Party scored a stunning comeback victory in an election 
last April in a vote widely seen as a rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump. 
But the Liberals fell just short of winning an outright majority in Parliament.

   Carney's rival, populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, was in the 
lead until Trump took aim at Canada with a trade war and threats to annex the 
country as the 51st state.

   A Conservative opposition lawmaker joined Carney's governing Liberal Party 
earlier this month, a political coup on a day the government announced its 
budget for the year.