The federal New Democratic Party may have to unite with the Liberals as a means to counter the Conservatives on Parliament Hill, says a veteran NDP MP.
Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin told the Toronto Star that the next election could make or break the New Democrats.
Recent polls suggest the NDP has seen voter support fall to about 13 per cent, from 17 per cent in last year's election.
Martin told the newspaper it was evidence the party couldn't keep spending $15 million at every vote just to see 29 MPs or fewer win seats.
But the parliamentarian said he was only proposing an informal alliance.
He'd "rather stick pins in his eyes" than back a formal merger like one that saw the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance become the Conservative Party, Martin said.
Still, he told the Star the NDP has to try "to swallow up the centre" or resign itself to watching Conservative governments stay in power.
"I'm talking about some kind of informal coalition," Martin said, "and those are things we could have done under (former prime minister Paul) Martin but (he) wasn't willing. The phone never rang."
When asked about Martin's suggestion, a Liberal party spokesperson told the newspaper: "I will not waste any breath on the musings of Pat Martin."
The federal Conservatives' spending spree over the past few months serves as mounting evidence of a pending election, according to one economist.
Claude Denis, a professor of political science at the University of Ottawa, told Â鶹´«Ã½net last week that a spring election may be in the offing.
"It's been on the way (an election) in a sense since the Conservatives won their minority government. The situation is unstable," Denis said.
