NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will support the Liberals’ most recent budget, after weeks of being coy about how his party would vote.
The Liberals introduced the budget just over two weeks ago but Singh refused to say whether he would support it until Wednesday, when the bill is up for its first vote.
The New Democrats have an agreement in place to back the governing Liberal Party on confidence and budgetary votes in exchange for movement on key policy priorities.
But Singh has said the budget doesn’t provide adequate funding for a new disability benefit and Indigenous communities.
On Wednesday, Singh said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown an “openness” to addressing those concerns.
More than two weeks after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled the 2024 federal budget in the House of Commons, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the prime minister ‘showed an openness to resolve’ his concerns with the government’s fiscal plan.
“We took time to reflect on [the budget],” Singh told reporters outside the House of Commons.
“But we’re not going to let them off the hook. I received openness to responding to concerns I raised and now we’re going to hold them to account.”
But when pressed by reporters, Singh didn’t say if he was offered any guarantees that his concerns would be addressed.
Instead, the New Democratic leader pointed to things in the budget that his party supports, including funding for pharmacare and a national school lunch program.
“We made sure that these things happened,” Singh said.
The other opposition parties all said they would be voting against the budget when it was introduced in April.