OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Canada’s opposition party on Wednesday ended a support agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, raising the possibility of an election before the fall of 2025.
The left-wing leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, distanced himself from the increasingly unpopular Trudeau.
“The deal is done,” Singh said on social media, abruptly ending a pact that had kept the government running.
Trudeau’s Liberals lack a majority in parliament and need the support of at least one other party to pass legislation and maintain government.
Breaking the deal doesn’t mean Trudeau’s government will automatically fall if a vote of no confidence is scheduled. Instead, the NDP will decide how to vote on Liberal legislation on a case-by-case basis and try to squeeze more measures out of it.
The next elections are not for at most a year, but could come sooner depending on the NDP’s decisions about future votes.
“I really hope that the NDP continues to focus on how we can take care of Canadians, as we have done over the last few years, rather than focusing on politics,” Trudeau said.
Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said ending the agreement would likely increase the chances of elections being held before the set date of fall 2025. However, he also said the government could stay in office until then.
“This does not mean that the NDP wants to call federal elections in the short term, as this could lead to a Conservative majority government, a situation that would eliminate the political influence that the NDP currently has in the minority parliament,” Béland said.
Trudeau has said he plans to lead the party into the next election. The Liberals have been in power since 2015, but inflation is a major concern for Canadians.