OTTAWA—With days to go before Prime Minister Mark Carney tables his first federal budget, opportunities to secure alliances to help it pass are dwindling in a parliamentary scenario where a handful of votes stand between the survival of the Liberal minority government and its total collapse.

While no clear pathway to passage has yet emerged, it may be the NDP’s drastically diminished seven-member caucus that decides Carney’s fate.

It’s not a guarantee that those MPs will all vote the same way, two NDP insiders told the Star Thursday, which could create openings for some to oppose the budget or abstain from doing so.

While Defence Minister David McGuinty said in South Korea Thursday that he has “every confidence” his government’s budget will pass, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon

See Full Page