Toronto
The government of Prime Minister Paul Martin barely survived a confidence vote in Canada’s Parliament last week. Martin’s Liberal Party has been accused of taking kickbacks from an advertising firm hired under Martin’s predecessor, Jean Chrétien, from 1995 to 2002. The House of Commons had been paralyzed for weeks as Conservatives demanded that Martin resign and call a general election. But lawmakers split evenly, 152-152, and the Parliament’s speaker gave Martin a victory with a tie-breaking vote. Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper said he was “embarrassed” that Parliament could back a “corrupt party”; Martin said it was time to put the scandal in the past “in the spirit of cooperation.”
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