Canada’s Budget 2025 passed following a 170–168 vote in the House after four opposition MPs abstained, creating a narrow path for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s fiscal plan to survive despite loud criticism from both the Conservatives and the NDP.
Conservative MPs Matt Jeneroux and Shannon Stubbs did not vote, while NDP MPs Gord Johns and Lori Idlout also abstained, producing just enough of a gap for the government to avoid defeat.
The Conservatives’ role is central because two of their abstentions altered the arithmetic directly. Jeneroux, who is resigning in the spring, skipped the vote entirely after earlier reports suggested he had been approached about crossing the floor.
Stubbs, who posted a video attacking the Liberals the same morning, was absent due to major surgery, later confirmed by Conservative MP Damien Kurek, who said she “would have loved nothing more than to vote down this disaster Liberal budget.”
Had both Conservatives voted no, the tally would have been 170–170, forcing the Speaker to break the tie but still leaving the budget able to pass.
The two NDP abstentions served a different political function. Although Johns and Idlout lowered the opposition’s vote count, analysts noted that the budget would still have survived even if all seven NDP MPs had voted against it, because a tied 170–170 result would have been resolved by the Speaker in the government’s favour.
Inside the chamber, strategic behaviour went beyond abstentions. Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and MP Scott Reid voted only after the outcome was known, citing unspecified technical issues despite being physically present.
Optics could be inferred that both the Conservatives and the NDP positioned two abstentions each to avoid triggering a December election, signalling broad reluctance among opposition parties to fight another campaign months after the April vote.
The final result shows that Budget 2025 did not win because of its merits but because neither the Conservatives nor the NDP wanted to bear responsibility for collapsing Parliament ahead of the holidays. Each abstention, delay or procedural pause collectively created the conditions for passage, making the question of blame less partisan than the vote totals suggest: both major opposition parties allowed the budget to pass by choosing not to stop it.
On the government side, the survival margin was built partly through last-minute realignments. Green Party leader Elizabeth May supported the budget after securing assurances on Paris Agreement targets, giving Carney a crucial vote. Earlier in November, Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor to join the Liberals, further stabilizing the government’s count.
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